This autograph letter signed (ALS) is three pages on a single folded sheet plus an address panel on verso with Pottsville, PA postmark. The letter addressed to Peter Cooper, Esq. And signed Paul A. The letter was sent from Pottsville and dated 14 February 1842. The letter reads in part. My time has been entirely taken up in putting up an establishment for the making of pig iron with anthracite coal, and consequently have had no leasure to attend to the process of making bar iron on the principle I practiced at your mill. Within a few weeks, however, I have sett myself to hunting up ore and suitable location to complete the process. If your new furnace should possess properties that would be desirable, both in regard to pudling pig iron, or to make iron upon my place, I think it would be the means of resucitating the business in many good locations now entirely useless. I was the first to open the way of blooming on the system now so successfully practiced in New Jersey, & which the want of means deprived me of reaping the least advantage. This letter has a short tear from the wax seal near Sabbatons signature but is otherwise in very good condition overall. The following is historical information on Peter Cooper from Wikipedia. Peter Cooper (February 12, 1791 April 4, 1883) was an American industrialist, inventor, philanthropist, and candidate for President of the United States. He designed and built the first American steam locomotive, the Tom Thumb, [1] and founded the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in Manhattan, New York City. Peter Cooper was born in New York City of Dutch, English and Huguenot descent, [2] the fifth child of John Cooper, a Methodist hatmaker from Newburgh, New York [2][3] He worked as a coachmaker’s apprentice, cabinet maker, hatmaker, brewer and grocer, [2][4] and was throughout a tinkerer: he developed a cloth-shearing machine which he attempted to sell, as well as an endless chain he intended to be used to pull boats on the Erie Canal, which De Witt Clinton approved of, but which Cooper was unable to sell. [6] The effluent from his successful factory eventually polluted the pond to the extent that in 1839 it had to be drained and refilled. Seeing the B&O as a natural market for iron rails to be made from his ore, he founded the Canton Iron Works in Baltimore, and when the railroad developed technical problems, he put together the Tom Thumb steam locomotive for them in 1830 from various old parts, including musket barrels, and some small-scale steam engines he had fiddled with back in New York. Cooper began operating an iron rolling mill in New York beginning in 1836, where he was the first to successfully use anthracite coal to puddle iron. [7] Cooper later moved the mill to Trenton, New Jersey on the Delaware River to be closer to the sources of the raw materials the works needed. His son and son-in-law, Edward Cooper and Abram S. Hewitt, later expanded the Trenton facility into a giant complex employing 2,000 people, in which iron was taken from raw material to finished product. Cooper also operated a successful glue factory in Gowanda, New York that produced glue for decades. [9][10] A glue factory was originally started in association with the Gaensslen Tannery, there, in 1874, though the first construction of the glue factory’s plant, originally owned by Richard Wilhelm and known as the Eastern Tanners Glue Company, began on May 5, 1904. [10] Gowanda, therefore, was known as America’s glue capital. Cooper owned a number of patents for his inventions, including some for the manufacture of gelatin, and he developed standards for its production. [12][13] Despite this, he lived relatively simply in an age when the rich were indulging in more and more luxury. In 1854, Cooper was one of five men who met at the house of Cyrus West Field in Gramercy Park to form the New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company, and, in 1855, the American Telegraph Company, which bought up competitors and established extensive control over the expanding American network[14] on the Atlantic Coast and in some Gulf coast states. [15] He was among those supervising the laying of the first Transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858. Political views and career. In 1840, Cooper became an alderman of New York City. Prior to the Civil War, Cooper was active in the anti-slavery movement and promoted the application of Christian concepts to solve social injustice. Influenced by the writings of Lydia Maria Child, Cooper became involved in the Indian reform movement, organizing the privately funded United States Indian Commission. This organization, whose members included William E. Dodge and Henry Ward Beecher, was dedicated to the protection and elevation of Native Americans in the United States and the elimination of warfare in the western territories. Cooper’s efforts led to the formation of the Board of Indian Commissioners, which oversaw Ulysses S. Grant’s Peace Policy. Between 1870 and 1875, Cooper sponsored Indian delegations to Washington, D. New York City, and other Eastern cities. These delegations met with Indian rights advocates and addressed the public on United States Indian policy. Speakers included: Red Cloud, Little Raven, and Alfred B. Meacham and a delegation of Modoc and Klamath Indians. Cooper was an ardent critic of the gold standard and the debt-based monetary system of bank currency. Throughout the depression from 187378, he said that usury was the foremost political problem of the day. He strongly advocated a credit-based, Government-issued currency of United States Notes. In 1883 his addresses, letters and articles on public affairs were compiled into a book, Ideas for a Science of Good Government. Cooper was encouraged to run in the 1876 presidential election for the Greenback Party without any hope of being elected. His running mate was Samuel Fenton Cary. At the age of 85 years, Cooper is the oldest person ever nominated by any political party for President of the United States. The election was won by Rutherford Birchard Hayes of the Republican Party. Cooper was surpassed by another unsuccessful candidate: Samuel Jones Tilden of the Democratic Party. In 1813, Cooper married Sarah Bedell (17931869). Of their six children, only two survived past the age of four years: a son, Edward and a daughter, Sarah Amelia. [18][19] Edward served as Mayor of New York City, as would the husband of Sarah Amelia, Abram S. Hewitt, a man also heavily involved in inventions and industrialization. Peter Cooper’s granddaughters, Sarah Cooper Hewitt, Eleanor Garnier Hewitt and Amy Hewitt Green founded the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, then named the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, in 1895. It was originally part of Cooper Union, but since 1967 has been a unit of the Smithsonian Institution. Cooper was a Unitarian who regularly attended the services of Henry Whitney Bellows, and his views were Universalistic and non-sectarian. [21] In 1873 he wrote. I look to see the day when the teachers of Christianity will rise above all the cramping powers and conflicting creeds and systems of human device, when they will beseech mankind by all the mercies of God to be reconciled to the government of love, the only government that can ever bring the kingdom of heaven into the hearts of mankind either here or hereafter. [23] Cooper conceived of the idea of having a free institute in New York, similar to the École Polytechnique (Polytechnical School) in Paris, which would offer free practical education to adults in the mechanical arts and science, to help prepare young men and women of the working classes for success in business. Cooper Union offered open-admission night classes available to men and women alike, and attracted 2,000 responses to its initial offering, although 600 later dropped out. The classes were non-sectarian, and women were treated equally with men, although 95% of the students were male. Cooper started a Women’s School of Design, which offered daytime courses in engraving, lithography, painting on china and drawing. The new institution soon became an important part of the community. The Great Hall was a place where the pressing civic controversies of the day could be debated, and, unusually, radical views were not excluded. In addition, the Union’s library, unlike the nearby Astor, Mercantile and New York Society Libraries, was open until 10:00 at night, so that working people could make use of them after work hours. Today Cooper Union[24] is recognized as one of the leading American colleges in the fields of architecture, engineering, and art. Carrying on Peter Cooper’s belief that college education should be free, the Cooper Union awarded all its students with a full scholarship until fall 2014. In 1851, Cooper was one of the founders of Children’s Village, originally an orphanage called “New York Juvenile Asylum”, one of the oldest non-profit organizations in the United States. Cooper died on April 4, 1883 at the age of 92 and is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. Aside from Cooper Union, the Peter Cooper Village apartment complex in Manhattan; the Peter Cooper Elementary School in Ringwood, New Jersey; the Peter Cooper Station post office; and Cooper Square in Manhattan are named in his honor. If you have questions about how to pay for this item please let me know. The item “1842 Paul A Sabbaton Handwritten Letter ALS to Peter Cooper re Pennsylvania Iron” is in sale since Monday, July 17, 2017. This item is in the category “Antiques\Manuscripts”. The seller is “timomills” and is located in Lincoln, Nebraska. This item can be shipped worldwide.
- Type: Handwritten Manuscript
- Subject: Americana
- Original/Facsimile: Original
- Place of Publication: Pottstown, Pennsylvania
- Date of Publication: 1842
- Author: Paul Alexis Sabbaton
- Language: English
