Frederick Beck
Charlotte Reeve Conover. A History of the Beck Family Together with a Genealogical Record of the Alleys and the Chases from Whom They Are Descended. (Dayton: Privately Printed, 1907), 73-76.
Frederick Beck was an accountant
The next business venture was in the drug and paint store of E. and F. King, on India Street, Boston, as a clerk, at a salary of five hundred dollars per annum. The next year your grandfather received eight hundred dollars, and the third year was admitted a partner under the firm name of E. & F. King & Co. He left the concern. He was an expert accountant, and especially clever in detecting counterfeit money. He says:
“When I was clerk for E. and F. King, I found a great heap of money that their former clerk had taken in and could not pass. I was then extremely ready in casting interest, and as neither E. nor F. King knew anything about accounts or figuring, I was very satisfactory. In those days they used often to borrow money for one or two days from other concerns, and so they would come in and I would say that the interest was a dollar. Sometimes they would undertake to say that I was wrong, but I convinced them I was right. In two years I was partner there; then I disagreed with one of the partners there and left. I liked this of work very much indeed; I received the money, deposited it, looked after the account.
“When twenty-six years of age, I became engaged to Sarah S. Balch, daughter of William Balch, Newburyport, a shipowner engaged in navigation and the East India business. Was married September 25, 1844, and went to live in a new house just built in Dorchester, and owned by Mr. Edward King, an old and valued friend. After living in his house two years, I built a house quite near on the same street, where your Aunt Alice was born. When she was about six months old, her mother was taken with a mysterious stomach complaint, and by order of her physician went to a water-cure establishment in Waterford, Maine. She left her home, thinking she would be absent about six weeks, but she never returned. Instead, she returned to her father’s house, where, after many months of great suffering, she died on the 25th of April, 1848, after a married life of three years and seven months.”
In 1843 Mr. Beck became teller in the new concern originated by Mr. William H. Foster, called the “Grocers’ Bank.” Of this enterprise he writes:
“The bank had to get the charter from the State, and I was instrumental in getting up the bank, because one of my friends from Newburyport, in the Legislature, had interested himself to get the charter. I was only there a short time. The salary was only about nine hundred dollars, and I was receiving and paying teller …
“After being there about nine months I was offered the cashiership of the Mattapan Bank in Dorchester, without any solicitation at all. None of the directors knew anything at all about a bank. It was necessary then to have one-half the capital in gold, $50,000.00, and that I borrowed myself of Foster, of the Grocers’ Bank. This I carted out to the bank in Dorchester; it was counted ther by the Commissioners, kept over night, and returned to the Grocers’ Bank the next day. I carried on that whole bank for about two years, and then I had an offer to go back into my old business as wholesale druggist and dealer in window glass with Banker & Caprenter, of 103 State Street, who carried ona large business in importing window glass from Germany. I was special partner in the concern. Here I remained four years, and then sold out my interest to a Mr. Emerson, a wealthy shoe manufacturer, the father-in-law of Mr. Carpenter.