Garrat Noel

Who was Garrat Noel?

Garrat Noel was a bookseller and educator in New York, New York, in the 18th century. He emigrated from Cadiz in 1750. In 1751 he worked as a "teacher of the Spanish tongue ... also ... reading, writing, arithmetick and merchants accompts." By 1752 he kept a shop on Broad Street, and in 1753 on Dock Street. From his shop Noel also operated a circulating library of "several thousand volumes of choice books, in history, divinity, travels, voyages, novels, &c."

In addition to books and periodicals Noel sold stationary and other sundries: "Playing cards by the dozen or single pack. Best ink powder and ink. Paper of all sorts, by the ream or quire, penknives, pencils, quils, pens, wax, and seals, ink-pots and pewter-stands, and boxes, paste-board files with laces, brass-wire files, blanks of all sorts, scales and dividers, and pocket compasses, pounce and pounce-boxes, memorandum books, fountain pens, ivory folders, leather paper cases, blank books for accounts of all sorts, alphabets, copy books, receipt books, 9 leaved carts of the Channel and West Indies.