The Anchor House subscription game

A private draw-poker game takes place alongside negotiations over financing new wharf facilities.

Later accounts claim that the wharf was won in a single hand. The surviving records suggest something less dramatic: a losing investor sells part of his interest afterward, and the buyer assumes outstanding construction payments.

The result still matters. It changes who can finance the landing’s expansion.

Accounts disagree about marked cards and a warning given by a spectator. The written settlement excludes wages, dependents and personal promises from anything the winner can claim.

That restriction becomes a precedent cited in later arguments about what a gambling debt actually allows.