Business Correspondence of Pietro Tealdi

Miscellaneous business correspondence, mostly relating to the cloth trade, addressed to Pietro Ascagno Tealdi, merchant of Manchester.

Numbers 1-255 comprise letters from abroad, January 1836-August 1838, the majority from Italy (mainly Ancona, Genoa, Leghorn and Turin), with a few from Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. The correspondence is written in Italian, with the exception of: 

• numbers 100, 209 and 212 (in English);
• numbers 5, 12, 23-24, 28, 34, 41-42, 54, 78, 82, 99, 120, 135-136, 143, 164, 175, 189, 197, 200, 203, 236 and 243 (in French).

Numbers 256-276 comprise letters from James Clayton and Joseph Clayton, textile merchants of Bradford, January 1836 - June 1837, with two exceptions: no. 258, from John Clifford of London, 20 February 1836, and no. 267, a circular of Act. 22, 1836.

Also referred to as Italian MS 64.

Pietro Ascagno Tealdi (also known as Pietro Ascanio and Pierre Ascagne The'aldi), was born about 1803 in Mondovi in Northern Italy. It is not known when he came to England, but in 1828 he married Jeanne Taylor (also known as Elizabeth Jane/Jean Tealdi) in Yorkshire. Tealdi was a merchant in Manchester from the early 1830s (three daughters were christened in Manchester in 1831, 1833 and 1835). On 22 August 1832 Tealdi was present at a meeting of merchants, bankers, manufacturers and traders of Manchester about Russian aggression towards Poland. Tealdi dealt mostly in the cloth trade, but was also known as a picture merchant and had an interest in a vinegar works. In 1838 he fell into insolvency. He was declared bankrupt, but in June 1840 this was annulled. He appears to have left England at this time, and in March 1841 his son, Carlos Ascanio Cossato Tealdi (1841-1927), was christened in the British Chaplaincy at Genoa. Tealdi probably later went with his family to live in Cisanello, near Pisa, Italy. It is not known when he died, but the death of his widow, Elizabeth Jean Tealdi, age 69, was reported in 1877.

The manuscript is available for consultation by any accredited reader.

Presented to the John Rylands Library by the antiquary Francis Buckley (1881-1949) in April 1948.

Description compiled by Jo Humpleby, project archivist, and Elizabeth Gow, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts and Archives, with reference to the Times Digital Archive and the web page www.familysearch.org.

Catalogued in the Hand-List of the Collection of English Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1937-1951 (English MS 1130).