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David Wilkinson letter 1824

C

cncFireman

Hot Rolled
Joined
Jun 19, 2013
Location
Farmington Missouri
I purchased these two items below. First is an unknown token or medal? of Samuel Slater. Second is a letter dated September 14th 1824. It is a request for materials from what I believe to make out is Nathaniel Cushing & Co. I have made out 96% of the letter minus a few words I have struggled with. The letter is signed Respectfully David Wilkinson. I guess I will see how legit it appears to be when it arrives. The signature Is very similar as the patent drawing that was remade in the 1840s.

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Your date for the letter looks legit. The artistic elegance of the handwriting certainly suggests that it was written before the era of thumb-writing on a keypad.

Seriously, it is always nice to find someone who appreciates this sort of thing.

-Marty-
 
It was written by a clerk... notice that he actually signs it below Wilkinson's name. That is fairly unusual. It is more common to just have the signature of the sender who may or may not have actually signed it. The handwriting style is conventional for the time in business letters. Because Wilkinson didn't sign the patent that is preserved (which is a copy made in the 1840s), it isn't unusual that the signatures should be similar. Both would have been signed by professional secretarys.
 
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The Slater Mill Centennial Commemorative was celebrated in 1890. The watch fob may have been produced then - about the time the locals decided they had something of value in the Slater Mill. Most of the pictures from before 1890 in "Images of America - Slater Mill" show the mill and environs in "industrial garb" - as still being used industrially. Shortly after 1890 started the acquisition and refurbishment/restoration of the mill, proceeding through the late 1920s.

Slater Mill - Pawtucket, RI - Philatelic Photographs on Waymarking.com In 1921 the Old Slater Mill Association, a non-profit organization, was founded with the mission of saving the historic Mill. Restoration began in 1923 when modern additions to the structure were removed to return the mill to its appearance in 1835. The Old Slater Mill Museum opened in 1955 and in 1966 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
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The group of men above were the "moving force" to the restoration of the mill (Rhode Island industrialists all - who felt some obligation to preserve their history - it became very "socially acceptable" to be part of this circle.)

The before 1890s pix show the mill expanded to three floors and auxiliary buildings - by the late 20's the mill had been brought back to two floors and most of the surrounding buildings removed.

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and more or less the same view today (post 1920s)

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Joe in NH
 
Thank you 99Panhard. That does make much more sense of the D. J. CARPENTER signature below his. I also took a second look at the inventory being sold. I found another letter but marked D" Wilkinson. Records tell of a partnership of the Wilkinson family and Mumford. It is by George Mumford who owned a Hardware firm George Mumford & Company in Pawtucket until passing on in 1855. His business was passed on to his son George A Mumford. The letter appears to be dated July 3rd 1826. It is another letter sent to Nathaniel Cushing. The letter basically says that the bars? they received were bad. Most sold were returned as they were rough & twisted in cutting. And he is asking what they should do about them. It makes sense why his clerk would sign these as Wilkinson was a busy man. Too busy to Patent his inventions or Mark his machines let alone sign a letter. In the 1820s his bread and butter was nail making as they were punching out some 4K pounds of nails a day with the nail machines they purchased before loosing it all in the economic crash of 1829.

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Asquith said:
Brads = cheap, stamped flat nails.

Quantities were presumably pounds, but I don't know what the 'm' represents.
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The common abbreviation for thousand is still "m" today. It comes from the Latin for thousand, milia, and is also the root of our word mile. The Romans measured long distances in thousands of paces (milia passuum). Caesar's soldiers counted steps in the days before odometers.

The order was for 115 thousand brads of various lengths. These would have been cut from strips of sheet iron, with a long taper. Cut brads usually did not have heads.

Roman numerals include M for thousand, and are still used for dates on things like movie copyrights, like MMXVII for 2017. But a capital M used as an abbreviation rather than a numeral means millions, from the Greek word mega.

Larry
 
Joe in NH said:
... Note how the machine "flips" the bar stock to allow the two punched edge burrs to appear on the same side of the nail. ...
Joe in NH
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I think the nail doesn't care so much about whether or not the shear burrs are on the same side. The raw stock is fed at a slight angle to the shear blade. Flipping the blank makes the cut-off nails tapered.
 
"M"... the Roman numeral for 1,000. It is, or still was during my working career, used in the printing industry. "15m" was 15,000 pieces.

One way to date otherwise unmarked advertising is to look for a little code, in very small type, at the bottom of a page. If it reads something like "15M 11/51" it is a printer's code meaning "15,000 printed in November of 1951." This was very common... practically all printers used it so that when a customer came back for more, they could tell at a glance when the last job was done and how many had been printed.
 
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Pathogen said:
What words could you not read?
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I thought I couldn't read Brads. Brads didn't make sense to me until Ausquith pointed the meaning out. It sure looked like Brads to me but I kept thinking I was seeing it wrong. I'll be able to see them more clearly when they arrive but so far I pretty much make out both letters. I found this picture below of an early nail making machine dated 1834.

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I enjoyed those YouTube videos of the Tremont Nail Factory. Thank you Joe. Would be another wonderful place to visit should they ever give public tours.
 
gbent said:
I think the nail doesn't care so much about whether or not the shear burrs are on the same side. The raw stock is fed at a slight angle to the shear blade. Flipping the blank makes the cut-off nails tapered.
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This seems true too.

The gentleman who gave us our tour (back in the 1980s - I think the same gentleman in the video actually) indicated that nails not flipped during cutting would "spiral" in driving because of the burr being on the opposite corners.

A forgotten technology - do you think many today could know for sure?

Joe in NH
 
Makes Me Feel "Old"!

cncFireman wrote:

" Brads didn't make sense to me until Ausquith pointed the meaning out. "

This comment makes me feel old ! The term "brads" was still in widespread use in my lifetime. If I hadn't seen this comment I would have thought the term was still in widespread use for thin wire nails with small heads.

In my youth, the long defunct Pelham Paint & Hardware hardware had shelves with little boxes of brads. The boxes were yellow with blue printing. I still see these boxes at Estate Sales and Flea Markets. That was how small quantities of small fasteners were packaged before the custom of displaying hanging packages on pegboards.

I'd be interested to know if the style of script is identifiable. Is the date too early for it to be considered Spencerian?

John Ruth
 
Nail making was the single largest metalworking trade in 18th and early 19th century Birmingham. The War of 1812 interrupted that trade and the Americans, who were by far the biggest customer, started making their own. This was a serious blow to the Birmingham economy. The nail trade, while it went on, was never the same. It was for reasons like this that the Birmingham merchants opposed the war, and the embargo on machines. They were well aware that they had a strong manufacturing advantage UNTIL the Americans were forced to shift for themselves...then it was only a matter of time before they would be able to produce their own. There was considerable testimony and a petition presented to Parliament to this effect. Not surprisingly, it didn't resonate with the politicians, none of whom, at that point, had any knowledge of the new technology or, for the most part, trade.

And... I still call little nails "brads." I'd no idea the term wasn't commonly used today!
 
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