Fire insurance policies, 1839-1861

Henry Rieman and Sons was a provision and commission merchant firm founded by Rieman about 1827. In the late 18th or early 19th century Henry worked in sugar refining with his father Daniel and Basil Warfield. One of the early ledgers in this collection (vol 16) records a [Daniel] Rieman, Warfield, ; [Henry] Rieman, sugar refiners about 1807-12, but the city directories do not. From 1827 until about 1832 Henry continued sugar refining with his brother Samuel as the firm H.;S. Rieman, sugar refiners (see vol. 1). Henry was concurrently engaged in the grocery trade. The firm [Joseph] Yager ; [Henry] Rieman, grocers and bacon sellers existed from about 1819 until 1827. Henry Rieman continued the grocery and bacon selling business alone after 1827 (along with the sugar refining with Samuel at the same address). In 1837 he changed the name to Henry Rieman and Son, grocers and bacon sellers. The firm became Henry Rieman and Sons, provision dealers and commission merchants in 1847. The two sons were Alexander and Joseph H. Rieman. Much of the firm's activity through the 1870s dealt with shipping pork from Terre Haute, Indiana and Cincinnati, Ohio to Baltimore where it was cured. During the period 1880-1886, Henry Rieman and Sons does not list the type of business in which it engaged. However, Joseph's sons had opened Rieman and Bros. Company (1877-1889), a provision and commission merchant firm which perhaps absorbed some of Henry Rieman and Sons' business while the elder Rieman's were engaged in other activities. Alexander was president of the Western Maryland Railroad from 1873-1874 and vice-president from 1874-1884. Joseph H. Rieman was president of the Commercial and Farmers National Bank until 1896. In 1887 Henry Rieman and Sons moved into the field of investments, calling themselves capitalists in the city directory. This remained the activity of the firm through 1898 when open the death of Joseph, Charles E. Rieman took over Henry Rieman and Sons. It became a real estate firm in the twentieth century, but this collection deals with its activities as provision and commission merchants.

This collection consists of 41 volumes and 7 boxes of materials relating to Henry Rieman and Sons. The bulk of the material dates from 1830-1899 although many of the land deeds are earlier and one volume of business records deals with transactions up to 1952. The volumes are daybooks, cashbooks, ledgers and journals from the company. The boxes are almost exclisively land deeds of property held by the Rieman family.

The Rieman family owned property in Baltimore and numbered the deeds to the properties on which ground rent was still collected as Plat 1 through Plat 36. The deeds for these properties are filed according to plat number. Those land deeds no longer binding (either deeds for land sold or earlier deeds for land in plats 1-36) had no plat number and are filed according to street name.