Jun 05, 2008 - Sale 2148

Sale 2148 - Lot 368

Price Realized: $ 4,800
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
ORDERING SUPPLIES FOR THE WHITNEY ARMORY WHITNEY, ELI. Letter Signed to iron manufacturer John Adam and--Whitney's accompanying autograph order list. 2 leaves. The letter: 2 pages with integral address leaf, 330 x 198 mm, uneven browning, separations at folds, worm holes and tears at the seal affecting the docketing, address panel, and closing words of the letter, but not signature. The order list: 1 page, 325 x 202 mm folded, staining and uneven browning affecting docketing panel, minor separations at folds, illustrated with pencil sketches on verso. New Haven, 12 March 1799
Set Alert for Similar Items

Additional Details

Eli Whitney is best known as inventor of the cotton gin, but later he was also a pioneer in mass-producing weapons with interchangeable parts. He began producing muskets at the Whitney Armory in Hamden, CT in 1798. Very little is known about the specifics of this important operation; the Eli Whitney Museum notes that "Eli Whitney himself did not patent or otherwise write descriptions of his machinery . . . there were no patent models made, and none of the actual machines has survived the 160 years from that period to today." This letter and the accompanying memorandum in Whitney's hand provide a taste of that missing documentation.

Whitney's letter, written to John Adam, a partner in the Forbes & Adam foundry operation, covers a great deal of ground in a page and a half. He announces that he has had a great-coat tailored for Adam, now ready for delivery, and then goes into the specifics of his order: "Please to let the face of my trip hammer be made about one inch wide and let it be left without hardening. I wish you to forward my gudgeons, stakes, husk, hammer &c to Litchfield . . . The gudgeons I shall want first." Next he asks for help in recruiting a workforce: "Can you procure for me in your quarter one or two nailers who are expert workmen & masters of their business. I want sober, industrious, active men who know how to set them selves to work and are willing to keep at it. It is my intention to employ them in forging some of the light limbs of the musket." Whitney concludes with an effort to drum up more business: "If any thing new should cast up in your quarter respecting makeing gun barrels, please to inform me. I have seen Capt. Wadsworth since I come from Canaan & should Capt. Johnson undertake to make some barrels for me I find it will bee in my power to send Mr. Morgan to spend some weeks in instructing the work men." The letter is in a secretarial hand, but is signed boldly "Eli Whitney" in his own hand.

The accompanying order sheet, which appears to be in Whitney's own hand, gives specifications for 3 pieces of rolled iron, "2 gudgeons made to patterns," a husk, a socket, 10 stakes, and a hammer, and "Half a ton of rolled iron to be made as soon as the best Salisbury bloomed iron can be procured." It is docketed "Eli Whitney, memo for rol'd iron &c, March 1799." On the verso are pencil patterns of the gudgeons and other parts.