William P. Roome & Co. first engaged in the importation of tea, but they added coffee to the business in 1889. Col. Roome disposed of it in 1903 to assume charge of the tea and coffee department of the Acker, Merrall & Condit Company, a position which he still holds.
Frederick A. Cauchois, another picturesque figure among New York coffee roasters, entered the trade as a clerk in the New York office of Chase & Sanborn in 1875. After further tutelage under Frank Williams in the coffee brokerage business, he bought the old Fulton Mills (Colgate Gilbert & Co., 1848), in Fulton Street, where he did some of the most original advertising for coffee that the trade has seen. His Private Estate coffee in little burlap bags, his donkey train that carried the bags of green coffee through the streets of the metropolis, his system of delivering fresh coffee daily to the grocery trade, and his Japanese paper filter device to insure the proper making of the coffee, made him famous. He brought something of the spirit of the old English coffee house to America, and incorporated it in Keen's Chop House in New York. He died in 1918.
The business of Russell & Co. was founded by Robert S. Russell & Frank Smith at 107 Water Street in 1875. In 1895, S.L. Davis, one of the present owners, formerly with Merrit & Ronaldson, became a partner. In 1900, Frank C. Russell, son of the senior member, was admitted to a partnership; and upon the death of his father in 1904, he and Mr. Davis became owners of the business.
Ross W. Weir, who, in addition to being a successful New York coffee roaster, has also attained prominence as president of the National Coffee Roasters Association and chairman of the Joint Coffee Trade Publicity Committee, handling the million dollar coffee advertising campaign, was born in New York in 1859, the son of J.B. Weir, one of the pioneer forty-niners, who at one time was engaged in the export commission business in San Francisco.
Mr. Weir began his business career as a general utility boy in the jobbing grocery house of S.H. Williamson, 36 Broadway, New York, in 1875. Then he was a clerk for Park & Tilford, office man with Arbuckle Bros, and with Geo. C. Chase & Co., tea importers, for two years, afterward being admitted to a junior partnership. In 1886, the firm of Ross W. Weir & Co. was formed to engage in the roasting of coffee and importing and jobbing of teas at 105 Front Street. In 1887, the business was removed to 58–60 Front Street. When the corporation of Ross W. Weir, Inc. was formed in 1915 to take over the business of E.J. Gillies & Co. Inc., Mr. Weir became president and treasurer of the combined organization.
Col. William P. Roome, New York
Pioneer Wholesale Coffee Roasters