Mar 29, 2018 - Sale 2471

Sale 2471 - Lot 347

Price Realized: $ 438
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(SCIENCE.) Carver, George Washington. Letter to a young protégé. Autograph Letter Signed "G.W. Carver" to "My very own precious boy Mr. Davis." 2 pages on one sheet, 11 x 8 1/2 inches, of Tuskegee letterhead; 2 punch holes in upper margin, mailing folds. Tuskegee Institute, AL, 9 April 1933

Additional Details

An effusive letter, containing some interesting scientific information. "Mr. Ford had decided not to push the project he wanted me to look over . . . I have what they needed worked out in the laboratory. I want them to see it. I cannot take it all up there." Henry Ford and Carver became friends through Carver's efforts to produce synthetic rubber and a soybean-based plastic which Ford used in automobile production. Carver concludes: "Dear, the coconut (cocus nucefera) is propagated almost wholly from the seed (the nut itself). The young plants come out from the two little eye-like spots. The nuts grow in bunches similar to grapes, from 12 to 15 in a bunch, at the top of the tree." The recipient was apparently Ford Clinton Davis (1906-1976), a white peanut factory employee in Alabama, and a protégé of Carver.