SEEKING PATENT OFFICE APPROVAL FOR ELEAZER CARVER'S IMPROVEMENTS ON THE COTTON GIN, IN A SERIES OF LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS, PLUS SAMUEL LEONARD'S LIVELY TRAVEL JOURNAL THROUGH THE SOUTHERN STATES TO PROMOTE THOSE INNOVATIONS, 1838.
[Various places, including Bridgewater, Mass., Washington D.C., Charleston, S.C., and New Orleans: Jan. - June 1838]. In a series of two manuscript documents, four letters, and a 48 pp., approx. 8700 word manuscript travel diary, Samuel Leonard records his efforts to promote Eleazer Carver's cotton gin improvements throughout the antebellum south. A fascinating archive, including many anecdotes from Leonard's travels.
The collection includes Carver's patent letter, in a secretarial hand, but signed by Carver and witnessed by Artemas Hale in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, January 1838, authorizing Samuel Leonard to act as his "true and lawful attorney... to proceed to the City of Washington and from there through the Southern and Southwestern States for the purpose of procuring from the Commissioner of Patents at Washington Letters Patent for a new & useful machine denominated & called a "Variety Couch" and also for certain improvements in Cotton Gins and for exhibiting the models of said machine and improvements in Cotton Gins in the several places, cities & towns which he may visit….” The second document, dated Jan. 21, 1838, appoints Leonard as agent for the firm of Carver, Washburn & Co., Bridgewater, Mass., "to receive orders, and make contracts for the sale of Cotton Gin stands and of saws and grates…. When at New Orleans, or in the country above that city he will have the goodness to make himself acquainted with the Cotton Planters and obtain all such information from them in relation to the different kinds of Cotton Gins in use in that country as may be of service to us….” The four accompanying autograph letters signed, all with integral addresses to Leonard as he traveled, include one from Artemas Hale [Boston, Feb. 10, 1838], and three from Eleazer Carter [Bridgewater, Feb. 14, March 2, & April 3, 1838]. Hale alerts Leonard that there will be four boxes of cotton gins waiting for him when he reaches Charleston. Carver writes to ask the progress of his patent in Washington and “whether any doubt exists with the commissioner of the originality of the inventions- whether you have left the gin model at the P. Office- how the machines are estimated by the members of Congress- and whether there has been a patent granted for a roller gin like mine say a combination of any number of rollers placed parallel and acting with each other as friction rolls.” He also suggests contacting Messrs. A. Ledoux & Co. in New Orleans to introduce the new gins as they "would probably have much influence with the French cotton planters." He asks about Leonard's luck promoting his "Variety Couch," a type of easy chair he has invented. Accompanying these letters and documents is Leonard's highly personal and amusing travel journal as he attempts to secure the patents and promote Carver's inventions. In a very legible, near daily diary of his life on the road, Leonard records his adventures in the south. The manuscript (lacking the first four pages), begins on page 5, Feb. 3, [1838], in Washington, D.C.: "I attended at Congress the house of Representatives being in session and heard Mr. Bell of Tennessee and Pope of Kentucky make a speech on the Mississippi contested election...." He mentions getting duplicate drawings done for the patent office applications. On Feb. 9 he writes: "I presented the models, specifications and drawings to the patent office and paid the fee--I wrote two letters to Mr. Carver--and shifted my boarding house from Brown's Hotel to Mr. Beers Native American Hotel." He also mentions Mr. Pennington of Baltimore, who happened to be at the same boarding house. Mr. Pennington (John H.) was promoting an early aerial device, the steam kite. Leonard saw "a model and drawing of a machine for flying--he [Pennington] is a droll kind of man but very good humored he has to bear ridicule from all quarters. He proposes to give lectures to the citizens of Washington on the possibility of flying by steam power.” [John H. Pennington submitted his patent application for a "Steam-kite or inclined plane, for navigating the air," in 1838]. He continues to spend time on Capitol Hill listening to speeches. He hears both Clay and Calhoun speak on the subtreasury bill but finds that Calhoun of South Carolina "is a great man but I was some disappointed in his manner of delivery not so distinct as I imagined." Leonard tells the story of a Washington woman (Mrs. Anne Royall) who publishes a newspaper and threatens local politicos with scandal and exposure if they do not subscribe to her paper: “By what I saw of her she is an impudent [?], a real Paul Pry. She knows everyone of the Congressmen and it is said she finds out their intercourse with the women of loose carracter [sic] in the city and if they don’t subscribe to her paper or give her money she would be likely to expose them in her paper so they submit to her demands and get clear of her as quick as possible.” On the 20th, Leonard exhibited the cotton gin at the Capitol, and received several letters of introduction to southern planters. He also reports on a duel between Cilley of Maine and Graves of Kentucky in which Cilley was killed. [This duel resulted in the passage of a bill to prohibit dueling in the District of Columbia].
Leonard left Washington on Feb. 26, passing through Baltimore, Norfolk, and Wilmington, North Carolina (which he refers to as "a stinking hole"). He arrived in Charleston, South Carolina on March 7 where he put up at the Planters Hotel on Church Street. He met with Messrs Leland & Bros. to whom some of the Carver cotton gins were consigned. He arranged to have two boxes of gins shipped on to New Orleans. He walked through the market in the city, noting that the black population was of every shade of color, and "were as merry as crickets and were very well dressed generally." He was “amused to see and hear the negroes song while loading and unloading the vessels in the harbor. The wharfs in Charleston covered heaps on heaps with bales of cotton and hogsheaves of Rice.” He mentions witnessing an auction of "horses and negroes" in the market, with negroes bringing between $300-$800. In the middle of the night on March 13, he was awakened by shouts of "murder" in the yard below his hotel room. The alarm turned out to be a fight between two play actors, the tragedians [Junius Brutus] Booth and [Thomas] Flynn. Booth "being crazy by liquor" had attacked his friend Flynn with a hand iron.
Leonard's next port of call was Savannah, where he resided at the City Hotel and witnessed the St. Patrick's Day festivities. He met with G.W. Anderson to demonstrate the gin with sea island cotton but "they did not like the appearance of the cotton after it was gined." He also visited Maj. William P. Bowen of Fair Lawn, a planter, to try the gin on black seed sea island cotton. He left Savannah by steamboat on March 24, arriving in Tallahassee about nine days later. He mentions Indian depradations against the settlers there. From Florida, Leonard caught a steamboat, the Newcastle, for New Orleans, arriving there on April 16. There he settled in at the Exchange Hotel and made a call on Mr. Green, the agent for Carver Washburn & Co. for a cash advance. He mentions the auction room at the Merchant Exchange where merchandise and negroes are sold. A few days later he makes his way to Mobile, calling on Robertson Beal & Co., and on Mssrs. Young and Altmeyer, dealers in furniture to show them Carver's "Variety Couch."
He returns to New Orleans for a few days before boarding a steamboat up the Mississippi to Natchez. Several pages of his journal are devoted to the violent storm on the river which nearly sank the boat- passengers were called upon by the captain to shift from one side of the boat to the other as ballast. In Vicksburg he mentions hearing about a duel with "bowe knives," and comments that “the state of society in Miss. is anything but good Profanity, Gambling drinking women and dueling are the order of the day. I attended a sale of negroes today it was a heartrending sight to [see] the poor creatures in tears it is hard business to separate husbands and wives parents and children, brothers and sisters. I have even heard some here express their dislike to this practice. I heard one say that a negro trader must have no feeling."
The next steamboat he took, bound toward the mouth of the Cumberland River, on his way home, included several gamblers on board. At Nashville, Leonard showed the gin to a Mr. Collins and a Mr. Brown before making the excursion out to the Hermitage to meet Andrew Jackson: “the old General said he was glad to see us and would have us drink a glass of wine he showed us his pictures and his swords and a variety of articles which had been presented to him….” From Nashville, via steamboat, canal boat, and railroad, Leonard's diary ends with his arrival in New York City on June 1, where he was waiting for a boat to Providence and home. Item #65261
Cotton was of great economic importance in the first half of the 19th century, comprising some two-thirds of all American exports by 1836. Patented improvements in the mechanization of Eli Whitney's roller gin began in the 1830s, as well as improvements in the saw gin. According to an article by Benjamin Spence, "Manufacturing in Bridgewater, 1900-1910," [Bridgewater State Univ.: 2008, pp.3-7], Eleazer Carver started a cotton gin factory on Carver's Pond, near Bridgewater, shortly after the end of the War of 1812. Carver (1785-1866), a millwright and mechanic, had traveled extensively in the southern states before the war "working as an itinerant gin builder in Mississippi." By 1816, he had returned to his hometown and with the help of Artemas Hale and Nathaniel Washburn created Carver, Washburn & Co. to improve on the Eli Whitney invention. "Driven by steam rather than horse power and able to clean the cotton as well as take it from the seed, the Carver gin, it is said, was the one most extensively used in the South during the 1850s."
Samuel Leonard (1796-1867) is listed in the 1850 Census as a machinist in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He is referred to as a Colonel in some of the letters in this collection, and according to family genealogy he was a Colonel in the State militia.
Price: $7,500.00