NEW HAMPSHIRE TEXTILE INDUSTRY

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/31/2004

A large archive of approximately (575) letters, 1843-1862 from the Granite State. The letters, with many from textile mills along the Merrimack and Cocheco Rivers, represent incoming correspondence to cotton machinery manufacturer, P. Whitin & Sons of Whitsinsville, MA. The letters vary from brief queries to detailed machinery orders. Included are a number of correspondents who offer commentary on their latest innovations and improvements. Among the locales with approximate number of letters: Nashua (80); Manchester (68); Peterboro[ugh] (46); Salmon Falls (41); Dover (42); Mason Village (78); East Jaffrey (24); New Market (43); Portsmouth (32); Claremont (24) and Fisherville (17). The correspondents (many ALSs) include: Phineas Adams [Stark Mills]; Benjamin Saunders [Jackson Co.]; Waterman Smith [Manchester Print Works]; Frederick Livingston [Phoenix Mf’g Co.]; P. Lawton [Salmon Falls Co.]; Charles P. Richardson [Columbian Mf’g Co.]; M. Paul [Cocheco Mf’g Co.]; Benjamin Wheatland [New Market Co.]; and John Lowe [Exeter Mf’g Co.] Also included are eleven letters from Josephus Baldwin, a manufacturer of bobbins and spools. Six of the letters in the archive contain small machinery hand drawings, one in an excellent 1846 3pp. order letter from Fisherville. A small portion of the material reads: B. Saunders, Jackson Co., Nashua, June 289, 1858 - “Friend Hoadley would hardly be pleased at your sweeping remarks upon his pattern frame. Nevertheless I think you are correct & should any one doubt it we will garentee to satisfy them of its truth if they will compare the two frames now in operation in our Mills.”; “We are saving in labor with your frames…getting the quality of the work more than 25 pr ct better with less than half the waste.”; Phineas Adams, Stark Mills, Manchester, April 28, 1862 - “I send you a clock such as we use in Manchester on all machinery from the lap head to the dresser. It is a Hank Clock, the one sent is for a one inch roll. We are now making 212 clocks for the Pemberton Mills…I think the clock gives me as good a result on the Railway Head as any spot in the mill. I pay the grinders, strippers & drawing hands by the R.way clocks - And then I know every night how many pounds each section of cards have given me.”; J. S. Fisk, Sunapee Mills, Claremont, Dec 30, 1847 - “We are now running twenty 64 spindle throstle spinning frames which are in complete repair. At times we have a little lack for power to drive them as we want them to run. We have thought of altering them to the Ring Spinning…”; “Our Frames are what is termed dead spindles which require more power than the live spindles.”; M. Paul, Cocheco Co., Dover, Nov. 21, 1845 - “I want the two pickers as soon as you can get them out to make a double operation in our No 3 Mill…I shd like a cylinder in the place of the first beater & the other kind of cylinder that I allude to has two beaters and pins made from No 10 steel wire…the pins set spirally from the centre of cyl so as not to throw off the cotton to the ends. Those pins open the cotton & prepare it for the beaters & are said to be a great improvement…”; B. W. Watson, Salmon Falls, Nov. 6, 1861 - “I wish to find somewhere this fall or winter so as to be ready for work as soon as the cloud which now hangs over us lifts a little - a small cotton mill where I can commence to manufacture on my own account…I would prefer to lease a mill say of fifty looms…Will you allow me to ask whether you know of anything which will meet my case? If so, & you will please put me on track, you will confer a favor upon one who has only his hands & head to depend upon…” D. J. Daniels, Franklin, May 8, 1847 - “In consequence of your not directing the Picker to Franklin NH as I wrote it was unloaded at Amoskeag, and before another train could pass over the Northern R Road to Franklin, a freshet had carried away part of the road, and I was compeled to wait another fortnight or team it up at additional expense…”; No postal covers present. A few letters with staining [still legible], but overall clean and in VG+ condition.

Click on a thumbnail above to display a larger image below
Hold down the mouse button and slide side to side to see more thumbnails(if available).