Daniel James

Daniel James (17 April 1801–2 November 1876) was one of the three founder partners of Phelps, Dodge & Co., a New York trading organisation established in 1833/4, exporting cotton to England and importing manufactured goods in return such as tin, tin plate, iron and copper. James was born in America but was to live in Liverpool for 47 years running the British side of the business called Phelps, James & Co.  The company was to dominate the export market of tinplate from the United Kingdom for three-quarters of a century at a time when Wales was the centre of world production. Early life Daniel James, born in Truxton, New York, was a wholesale grocer who in 1829 married Elizabeth Woodbridge Phelps (born 1807) daughter of merchant Anson Greene Phelps (born 1781). In 1831, Daniel moved to Liverpool with his wife to replace Anson Phelps's existing partner – Elisha Peck – who had spent fifteen years in the job and wanted to return to America. Partnership The Phelps, Peck & Co partnership ended in 1833, when the building housing their New York warehouse collapsed. To revive the business Phelps set up the partnership with his two sons-in-law Daniel James and William Earle Dodge, Sr., forming Phelps, Dodge & Co. in the US and Phelps, James & Co. in England. Phelps was the senior partner in this arrangement with a two-thirds interest and the remainder split between the sons-in-law. In 1837 Phelps's daughter Caroline (1812–1881), whose fiancé, Josiah Stokes, had been killed in the building collapse, married his brother James and he would eventually (in 1847) be the third son-in-law of Anson G Phelps to join the organisation as a partner with a 15% share. He would leave in 1878 to enter the banking business.