10:33 AM

Welcome back to my blog....it was a good week since it didn't snow and I made it to Harvard Business School Library to check the R G Dun & co. ledgers.
For those who liked details, I left the house at 7:20am with a temp of 9 degrees with a cup of hot coffee. Traffic was very light and I arrived at 9:30am. I left at 3:45pm and got home at 6:20pm. One tank of gas, $7.40 tolls and $12 parking- $49.40 in all.

I called up 14 ledgers in all and made lots of work for the library staff who have a ritual of bringing the ledger box to your table and removing it from the acid proof case and laying it on the form triangle pads. I step back and wait and thank them every time. These volumes are priceless and if I were the guardian, I would do the same. 


Preparation saves time and back in 2003 another researcher gave me the idea to make up my own form. I had 25 firms to look up and realized when I was printing the pages the night before this was too much for one day. However, I tried my best, taking ten minutes for lunch (which I packed) and three stretching breaks of 5 minutes, and was pleased I got thru Cincinnati, East Liverpool, Kentucky and Pittsburgh---- leaving Boston, NYC, Baltimore, New Jersey and Bennington Vermont to tackle on another day. I will have to go back to all these ledgers at some point to read page by page for any queensware, crockery, chinaware establishment that Amos Broadnax did not mention by name and that will take a considerable amount of time, patience and serious eye strain. (Did I mention, I love doing this- LOL).




As I said, I was happy with my results (even if I couldn't find the listed report for Gray & Hemingray! Pages are often renumbered in these ledgers and index are not always helpful.)


 That all was yesterday and today I am working on my draft including some of the new info I learned from the credit reports and Google Patents Beta. Let's take the paragraph Amos Broadnax visits George W Sholl in Cincinnati, Ohio. 
The red words are the revision- How's this sound? 





I had a long talk with Mr. George W Sholl of the firm G. W. Sholl & Bro. who had just obtained a Patent for the manufacture of earthen ware coffins. To be precise, David who is the Bro. in G W Sholl & Bro, patented the idea to add to their trunk manufacture- since what is a coffin but a large trunk, indeed. They planned ahead in ’53 and moved into a larger store with and now are the largest manufacturer in Cincinnati with profits of 17,000 annually. I was shown the first ones they made and some very handsome as the one resembling a heavily veined gray marble and another coated with white glaze used for common chamber pots.  I doubt not that they will bye and bye, they be making them really beautiful. Mr. Sholl was greatly pleased with the appearance of iron in our kaolin and wants two barrels sent to him. He says that if it will answer his purpose for manufacturing durable coffins, then our fortune is made and that he can afford to give more for ours than any other man in the Union. My head is reeling, as I doubt not that he will soon realize a very large fortune out of his invention whether we sell him material or not… Still, I think thousands of tons of kaolin are destined to be worked up into coffins. That very thought ran chills up my spine for my own loved ones and I noticed this evening the weather turned a little cool and I remain fine to this present writing.

Enlarge the text by clicking on the image