11:04 AM



Welcome back to my blog!
above- Notice the glass cases holding thousands of patent models. 

I received another email from Eugene Morris before he left on vacation. I asked him where I could find the patent models. If you recall in my St. Louis Salesman’s Journal, he was overwhelmed when he visited the Patent Office in Washington DC. The building is now used for the National Portrait Gallery.
On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Eugene Morris wrote: 

Ms. Isenburg:
The Patent Office sold the models in 1925. They were purchased by Sir Henry Wellcome, the founder of the Burroughs-Wellcome Co. (now part of GlaxoSmithKline). Although he intended to establish a patent model museum, the stock market crash of 1929 damaged his fortune and the models were left in storage. After his death, the collection went through a number of ownership changes. A large portion of the collection was donated to the nonprofit United States Patent Model Foundation by Cliff Peterson. (http://www.celinea.com/d-477775683.htm) Rather than being put into a museum, these models were slowly sold off by the foundation. A comparatively small number of models (4,000) are currently the property of the Rothschild Patent Museum. (http://www.patentmodel.org/default.aspx ) 
Gene Morris 

I responded with
Hello Eugene,
Thanks for the info and I am checking out those sites. I did follow thru and order the patents copied. I had to break the news to my group that it will take 60-90 days to get this documentation. Patience is very important when doing research- it not at all like the movies!
Much of my research is based on credit reports from the RG Dun & Co. Collection at Harvard Business School. I should be headed up there in a week or two and check out the lawyer who completed the paperwork for the patent. In the past, I’ve run across lawyers owning stores and this may very well be the same case. Also I will check on Coolidge and Linus Jackson while I am at it.
Thanks again for all your help,
Elizabeth Isenburg

Above- 1st floor to the Patent Office....can't you just see our salesman with his foot on a stool thinking about all the innovations around him?

Last night I finished re-typing up my credit reports for Savannah Missouri. Although I complained, I loved re-reading each entry. 
It is overwhelming to think of having a full report on each town- even just for the 1850s, this could take many, many months of driving up to Harvard. However the knowledge gathered could help understand the Arabia's collection better. If I follow that path it means 15 towns!
However, now that I am thinking about it rather than doing the entire city of St. Louis, I could find a middle ground, grouping by the type of ware sold- that way we would draw conclusions about their daily operations and how the market was changing.
If I did have a few thousand laying around I could pay someone who lives in Boston to go to Baker Library and write these up....

If you recall I had to type these report again because I had these files on outdated storage computer disks and an OCR program couldn’t’ read them. One of our recent guests, Jeremy Rowe, who is very knowledgeable in this area said the printer I used back in 2003 printed the letters with jagged edges and if I could email myself the file from my old Mac in the basement. I don't recall if this is still hooked up to a phone line (remember those days). What a great idea and I will do this next time.
As for my schedule, next week is booked. Monday we have company from the American Antiquarian Society….Tuesday is the Rotary Change in Commend….Wednesday- more company…Thursday an appointment in town and Friday- my only free day- is the start of the Fourth of July Weekend. I wouldn’t as much as I am pulled dream of driving into Boston to do research. The last time I did that was in 1999. I received a ticket on the Boston Turnpike for speeding and it is not a good excuse to say, “I have to get to the library!”