Adventure Seed: Abernathy and Weekes, General Grocers.

Abernathy and Weekes, General Grocers – Google Docs

Abernathy and Weekes, General Grocers

This Connecticut company first starts appearing in tax records a decade before the War of 1812.  A general grocers with sidelines in transport and warehousing, Abernathy and Weekes persisted as a private corporation until 1935, when it was dissolved by the state of Connecticut after the death of Blaise Abernathy, intestate.  Mr. Abernathy had been sole proprietor of the company after the death of his business partner Oscar Weekes in the First World War; neither Abernathy and Weekes had any other listed family, or other heirs.

Which is a sad story, but why does anyone care? Because of the advertisements that Abernathy and Weekes placed in various newspapers, journals, pamphlets, and other publications during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century.  The company regularly announced that they had a wide and comprehensive stock of items that are today on secret government occult watchlists: and not ‘eye of newt’ or ‘toe of dog’ stuff, either.  We’re talking about the hardcore materials that gets used to blight counties and sway towns.  The ingredients that black-bag sorcerers try to weaponize before the NSA finds them and then no-knocks a silver-and-steel team right through the wall.

The thing is, most of these ulta-restricted materials aren’t easy to find — so if a 19th Century grocer was buying from a particular supplier and place, there’s a decent chance that maybe a similar business operation is going on in the 21st Century.  At the very least, it’s worth checking out. Even a negative result is a good result, here: believe me, the federal government never minds getting confirmation that they’ve locked down every possible source for a powder that could be used to flatten Syracuse, New York.  
So it’s perfectly justifiable to send out a team to canvass Connecticut state records and archives to try to find out what happened to Abernathy and Weekes’ ledgers, correspondence, and corporate papers. Nobody expects that team to find the original documents, of course, but it never hurts to look.  And if it turns out that said documents still exist, and in a warehouse somewhere: why, it makes perfect sense to quietly go to said warehouse and informally check out said materials. Perfectly safe, too.  After all, when’s the last time anybody ever found anything dangerous in a government storage facility?