What's new
What's new

Another David Wilkinson Letter

cncFireman

Hot Rolled
Joined
Jun 19, 2013
Location
Farmington Missouri
So I had the previous thread where I showed two letters I purchased that had to do with David Wilkinson and the nail side of his buisness. I purchased another David Wilkinson letter from 1827 a while back. This letter is signed David Wilkinson & Co from which research has this as the machine shop/ machine building side of the buisness (mostly textile machinery but some machine tool sales as well). This letter is addressed to Lazell Perkins & Co who latter became the historical Bridgewater Iron Works. It is a request for high quality iron bars in various sizes that is meant to be "drawn into smaller work" it ends with Yours Respectfully David Wilkinson & Co.
_20200221_164644.jpg
_20200221_164551.jpg
_20200221_164532.jpg
 
Last edited:
john-perry-newell-lazell-perkins-co-bridgewater-mass-1859-1860-lazell-perkins-co-bridgewater-mass-between-1859-and-1860-date-2AEGJA3.jpg


Lazell Perkins & Co. hails from my traditional home town of Bridgewater, MA. They were one of the earliest "production" foundries and rolling mill, 2nd largest ironworks nationally at the time of the American Civil War. And rolled the "ingots" which were used "log cabin style" to surround the pilothouse of the ironclad "Monitor."

I have also heard that they machined the base-ring for the Monitor turret - but I have not found evidence of this in their buildings or structure. It would leave quite a base for a machine 30' in diameter.

Ericsson's Ironclad was unusual in that full drawings of all component parts were made, and work subcontracted to a good cross section of northern machine shops. Also one of the first instances of quality control in that parts were made "to gauge" - and the gauge moved between producers to be sure of assembly.

Lazell-Perkins went by various names over the years with LPCo. being one of the earliest. Later styled Bridgewater Iron Works, the area later (after 1908) as "Stanleyville" as the Stanley Co. (Hardware Manufacturer, not Rule & Level) bought the property for rolling iron sheet.

My brother worked summers in the late 1960s as a laborer at Perkins Iron Foundry - which was a successor closer to Route 28 in Bridgewater. Ruined his back most marvelously moving and descaling castings from the cupola furnace used then. The company still continues with an EPA approved "Meehanite" process.

Somewhere in my Great-great grandfather's writing, he writes about the "Thumping coming from down the hill" (his property on Main Street overlooked the valley between Main and High Streets) and surmised that "business for the Iron Works must be good." In the picture above is seen a very white house on the hill above the letter "a" . This white house stands between GG Grandfather's house and the Ironworks and was owned by one of the managers of the Ironworks.

This would be the same Great-G Grandfather who when a vendor came to his door, GG Mother replied "You can go around back where you'll find him slopping the hogs - You'll know him as he has a hat on!"

Our family has several era familial cross-connects with the Perkins Foundry Family. I have an 1876 era photo album when cheap photography allowed many to assemble and trade family pictures with neighbors. Several pix have the Perkins surname and one thinks these were family friends. Our family tended to partake the Cotton Gin business, which relied on iron from LPCo, but steel not generally used until well after the Civil War. Great-Grandfather transitioned into the Bridgewater Coal & Oil business and sold coke to the Ironworks.

Today the property is much reduced from even its industrial past that I remember as a kid. Now called "Industrial Park" with walking trails and "nature vistas." The old timers would shake their heads as to them nature was something to be overcome, not admired.

IMG_20140624_175618_681-1024x576.jpg


Joe in NH
 
Joe I actually have that engraving of the Bridgewater Iron Works in black and white that had been framed I pulled off ebay a while back. I have more lazell perkins letters as well as other early names of the industrial revolution such as the lowell machine shop, William A Wheeler, Shepard leach, lincoln drake, James S Brown and a few other lesser knowns. In fact the lowell machine shop letter dated 1849 is addressed to Lazell Perkins & Co.

At least the remains of the Bridgewater works remains instead of being bulldozed to make more room for homes.
 
Last edited:
You mention the Ebay engraving - I almost bought that.

Meanwhile, the original for the lithograph - an oil painting - was claimed to exist in the "American Steel Producers Main Office" in New Jersey, which was shown and referenced as such in the footnotes in the old "American Heritage Series" of books - yunno, those hard-cover books which typically sold in volumes 1 through 14 in a check-out line at the (then) new supermarkets. Books which were cheap and attractive and reasonably informative, and shopping mothers of the 1960s and 70s would buy them for their children "so they could read and learn from something other than comic books." Mom bought my brother and I our set in the mid 1960s.

As a college student I clipped the picture and sent an inquiry to the American Steel Producers Office - this back in the late 1970s. I got a very kind reply back which thanked me for the query but they (American Steel Producers) have no knowledge of the painting and assume it had been removed and donated to a historical association.

So the whereabouts of the original oil painting remains unsolved.

One place I have thought to pursue this would be the "Old Bridgewater Historical Society" which has their office in West Bridgewater. They have MANY 19th century paintings of the well shod of Bridgewater, MA, including some from my own family which we donated as 19th century paintings tend to be large/don't adapt well to modern home space/sensitive to damage & difficult to keep/and at risk historically while outside of curatorship. Some things can be too important to trust to individuals. OBHS has facebook. Old Bridgewater Historical Society - Home | Facebook but their website seems "challenged."

As to the locale of the picture, I remember distinctly going to Cub Scouts on a side-street from High Street in Bridgewater. Later I discovered if one stood in the center of today's "Highview Terrace", one gets EXACTLY the view shown in the picture. Many more trees now.

Curiously, Ed Battison has familial connections to Stanleyville and the Iron Works. His father worked there for a while and Ed and his family walked to church at the nearby (other side of Main Street) St. Thomas Aquinas Church.

If you can lay that woodcut down on a scanner and make a scan, I would appreciate it.

Joe in NH
 
I have also heard that they machined the base-ring for the Monitor turret - but I have not found evidence of this in their buildings or structure. It would leave quite a base for a machine 30' in diameter.

I think that I have read that this item was machined by the Amoskeag mill in Manchester, NH. I can't check, and could be wrong.
 
They were said to have the largest pit lathe in those days

"The Amoskeag Manufacturing Co." by Browne (1915) indicates...

The 'new foundry' was fitted up with some of the
largest furnaces in the country at that time, one of them having
a capacity of twelve tons. There still exists in the present
old shop a giant lathe used in those days. This measures
twenty feet in diameter, and was said to be the largest in
the country. The McKay works of Boston, that had contracts
for building iron clads of the Monitor type, sent to the Amos-
keag Company to turn out the big brass rings of the gun turrets,
as they could not get this work done elsewhere. The old
engine lathe is still in occasional use and shows an interesting
link between the present and the days when the country was
shaken with civil war, and peaceful industry gave way to pur-
suits leading to conflict.

Joe in NH
 
Last edited:
1929 photo of the big Amoskeag lathe here:-

April 24, 1929.
Amoskeag Machine Shop... - Followers of John Patrick Jordan - Manchester, NH history and beyond. | Facebook


I'm intrigued by the sealing problem on the Monitor's turret. Ericsson inevitably blamed the crew for the intolerable water ingress problem, saying that he'd designed the turret to sit on the brass ring, with no soft packing, whereas the crew had introduced rope packing. The crew weren't fools, and they had more interest than anyone in keeping water out. This makes me wonder whether the metal to metal sealing was defective from the start, and soft packing was introduced out of necessity.

The brass ring, assembled from segments, would have been machined all over. The turret comprised numerous iron plates riveted together. The innermost iron ring protruded below the rest, and its edge seated on the brass ring. As I understand it, the turret had to be constructed on board, due to its weight. I wouldn't totally rule out the possibility of in-situ machining while rotating the turret with it wedged up on its central spindle, but it's a lot to ask. Otherwise, it begs the question of whether there ever was good metal-to-metal contact with the brass ring.

It appears that the brass ring was supported on a series of deck 'joists'. If the turret's sealing edge was somewhat uneven, and its high points sat on parts of the brass ring that weren't well-supported by joists, might permanent distortion of the brass ring have occcurred? However, it does seem surprising that there could have been sufficient distortion to explain the rate of ingress.

Enough of this pointless speculation!
 








 
Back
Top