All about coffee by William H. Ukers

Another grandson of Samuel Wilde is William B. Harris, who engaged in the coffee roasting business in Front Street from 1904 to 1917. From 1908 to 1918 he acted as coffee expert for the United States Department of Agriculture. William B. Harris is a son of Samuel L. Harris, who married a daughter of Samuel Wilde, and who for a number of years was connected with Samuel Wilde's Sons. [Illustration: PIONEERS IN THE ROASTED COFFEE BUSINESS OF NEW YORK CITY With approximate dates of their entry into the trade] Although a number of roasters and grinders for family use were patented in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century, the coffee merchants depended almost entirely on English manufacturers for their wholesale equipment until 1846, when James W. Carter of Boston brought out his "pull-out" roaster. This machine, and others like it, encouraged the development of the coffee-roasting business, so that when the Civil War came, coffee manufactories were well scattered over the country. The demand for something better in coffee-machinery equipment was answered by Jabez Burns with his machine for filling and discharging without moving the roasting cylinder from the fire. Among the early grocery concerns in New York that were also coffee roasters were: R.C. Williams & Co., starting as Mott & Williams in 1811, changing to R.S. Williams & Co. in 1821, to Williams & Potter in 1851, and to its present title in 1882; Acker, Merrall & Condit Co., founded in 1820; Park & Tilford, founded in 1840; Austin, Nichols & Co., founded in 1855; and Francis H. Leggett & Co., founded in 1870. There were twenty-one "coffee roasters and spice factors" in New York in