1867-1868 George J. Adams Northeast Industrial Textile Mill Lot 2 Piece Pair For Sale
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1867-1868 George J. Adams Northeast Industrial Textile Mill Lot 2 Piece Pair:
$74.95
Historic 1867 and 1868 Northeast Industrial Textile Mill Archive Featuring Rice Barton Machinery Billhead and Greene Handy Bayley Chemical Letter
An exceptional, interconnected two-piece mid-nineteenth-century industrial business archive tracking the post-Civil War textile manufacturing supply chain and corporate networks of Providence, Rhode Island. This authentic lot consists of an elaborate 1867 illustrated machinery manufacturer billhead and an 1868 handwritten merchant letterhead, both addressed directly to the same prominent mill agent, George J. Adams, Esquire. Together, these documents tell a complete story of regional commerce, capturing both the heavy manufacturing equipment and the industrial chemicals required to operate a major Reconstruction-era textile operation.
The first piece in the archive is an ornate commercial billhead from Rice, Barton and Company, celebrated machinery manufacturers based in Worcester, Massachusetts. Datelined May 15th, 1867, the document features an elaborate, bold typographic advertising header detailing their production specialties, including calico and paper printing machinery, drying and tentering machines, hydro extractors, steam boilers, and steam engines, located near the depot of the Boston and Worcester Railroad. The handwritten invoice details a specialized industrial transaction charging twelve dollars and fifty cents for boxing one rotary machine, explicitly tracking the shipment under railroad car number 509.
The left margin identifies the corporate partners at the time as George M. Rice, George S. Barton, and Joseph E. Fales. The reverse side of this sheet contains a crisp, period clerical docket endorsement in iron gall ink summarizing the vendor name, date, and twelve-dollar-and-fifty-cent total for quick ledger reference.
The second piece in the archive is a handwritten business correspondence sheet from Greene, Handy, and Bayley, prominent commission merchants and chemical importers operating out of Number 48 Pine Street in New York City. Datelined New York, December 10th, 1868, the letterhead explicitly lists the individual partners as Edward Greene, D. G. Handy, and J. Roosevelt Bayley. The iron gall ink message coordinates an industrial shipment directly to George J. Adams in Providence, stating that enclosed please find an order for ten casks of bleaching powders, and noting that the billing invoice will follow as soon as they receive the formal vouchers back from their local field agent.
The reverse panel features a perfectly matching vertical filing docket penned by the same accounting hand reading Greene Handy and Bayley, twelve ten sixty-eight.
The structural creases on both sheets show they were folded identically to fit the exact same office cubby boxes, proving they remained completely undisturbed within the original company files for over a century and a half.
Both components are in excellent antique condition, displaying deep, clear ink values, sharp industrial typography, and strong paper preservation. The sheets display a natural light patina, clean margins, and standard light horizontal fold lines from historical mailing that emphasize their genuine archival history without impacting the legibility of the text. This lot serves as a premier, cohesive display group for advanced collectors of American industrial history, early railroad shipping ephemera, nineteenth-century textile mill manufacturing, or unique early American advertising graphics.
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