New Bedford Whaling Museum

The New Bedford Whaling Museum will catalogue a large collection of manuscript account books from Merchant’s Bank, one of New Bedford’s earliest financial institutions. The collection of over 1800 volumes represents a complete record of the daily and summary activities dating from the Bank’s inception in 1825 to its expansion as a national bank in 1865, through the end of the whaling era, during the height of textile production, and the years leading up to the Great Depression in the mid-1930s. A finding aid and Re:Discovery database will give researchers and the general public better access to these materials.