costumegirl

What a terrific find! Did the seller have any background info on how/where it was found or who previously owned/had it?

Sewnoma

Old penmanship always blows me away. What a neat little scrap of history...such a seemingly inconsequential piece of paper, amazing for it to have survived for so long.

Future generations will have very little from our times...digital bits and bytes just don't hang around the same way as paper ephemera does. Taco Bell receipts and junk mail will be about it.

J Miller

Speaking of technology, the pen that telegram was written with was a dip pen. No cartridges, no internal ink capacity, just dip it and write. Early fountain pens were filled with an eye dropper. It took until the late 19teens for a workable filling mechanism to be perfected so the pen could be filled from a bottle without an eye dropper.

I also find it interesting that wagons continued to be used for local freight up until the 1920s or so as well. Motorized trucks were really not common or reliable until after WW I.


Joe

neece

How cool

Alawai

"...Send wagon at once..." I love it! That is pretty dang cool!!

SteveH

no background, basically a picker moving product...

SteveH

Well, it arrived yesterday in great shape.

Anyone here care to help me decipher the names on this? ( I now have a good resolution color scan if need be)

I am hoping to determine who is sending "instruments" to the three singer factories. If I can get the name, I may be able to match it to a company, and then i'd at least have an idea of what "instruments" they might have been.

Cogito

H. B. Grinnell sent a request to S. A. Bennett

SteveH

Well that helps with part of it already!!
S.A. Bennett is mentioned in a footnote here

"Singer Manufacturing Company Records, 1850-Ca.1975. (Madison, WI.: Wisconsin Historical Society) S.A. Bennett to Clem Studebaker 16JUL85"

In 1868 after the Civil War, Singer established a factory in South Bend, managed by Leighton Pine, to manufacture cabinets.


Part way there!!

IrishgalfromNJ

What a neat piece of history.