9 “Above Vulgar Economy” The Intersection of Historical Archaeology and Microhistory in Writing Archaeological Biographies of Two New England Merchants Mary C. Beaudry 173 “You say, in finishing the life of Daniel Gookins, that his family is extinct: This is a mistake, he was my mother’s great-grandfather” (Tracy 1793). In composing this admonitory letter to the Massachusetts Historical Society, Nathaniel Tracy revealed a preoccupation with genealogical research that he had had little time for in earlier years. The son of a wealthy Newburyport merchant, Tracy became a successful, rich man in his own right, an able and active merchant, public figure, owner of many mansions, fabled host among the most brilliant of Massachusetts’s glittering Revolutionary-era elite. But the revolution that won Tracy great fortune in the end brought about his economic downfall. By 1793 he and his family had spent several years living in retirement in an “ancient” house in Newbury. After Tracy’s death, his widow, Mary Lee Tracy, sold the farm to Offin Boardman, another Newburyport merchant, an ambitious self-made man. Boardman commanded privateers that had been outfitted by Nathaniel Tracy. The profits he made from his share of prizes of captured ships enabled him to set up his own mercantile enterprise and to purchase ships, a wharf and warehouse, and eventually the country estate of his former employer. Boardman moved to the farm with his wife in 1799, after spend- ing lavishly on its improvement. His family lived there in grand style, enter- taining frequently and maintaining the latest fashions. Yet at his death in In Small Worlds: Method and Meaning in Microhistory, ed. by James F. Brooks, Christopher DeCorse, and John Walton, 173–198. School of Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico.