Richard Horwell

• formal_name:
• first_date: 1816
• last_date: 1816
• function: Bookseller
• locales: Alexandria
• precis: Bookseller in Alexandria (1816) with William Isabell (234) and Robert Gray Jr. (191).
• notes: Bookseller
  Alexandria
  Bookseller in Alexandria (1816) with William Isabell (234) and Robert Gray Jr. (191).
  Horwell was a tailor who operated a suspender and corset manufactory in Alexandria from the 1790s onward. He occasionally invested in other businesses, such as in his 1804 joining with Francis May in a tobacco processing factory. In 1815-16, he invested in a bookstore operated by Robert Gray Jr., along with William Isabell, another retail merchant there; Gray apparently also invested in a "ready-made clothes" factory with Horwell and Isabell at that same time. This unusual affiliation was terminated in May 1816, with Gray continuing the bookstore and Horwell and Isabel continuing their clothing business. A year later that firm was also dissolved and Horwell continued his suspender and corset business alone until at least 1834, when it was last listed in an Alexandria city directory. Being about sixty-seven at that time, that year was likely the time of his retirement from business. He died in 1856 in nearby Georgetown, likely at the home of one of his unrecorded children.
  
  
  Personal Data
  
  Born:
  ca.
  1767
  Cornwall, England.
  
  Married:
  
  ???
  Wife Anne died at Alexandria, Dec. 11, 1814.
  
  Died:
  Nov. 11
  1856
  Georgetown, District of Columbia.
  
  No offspring yet found; place of death suggests residence with one.
  
  Sources: Artisans & Merchants; advertising notices in Alexandria papers, 1798-1824; obituary in Alexandria Gazette, Nov. 14, 1856.
  
• Related Bios:
  • Robert Jr. Gray
  • William Isabell

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