This presidential campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company around 1868. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer, and is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign badges. The reverse legend is a quote by Grant when he was asked to accept a conditional surrender.
Obverse: Profile image of Grant facing left. Legend reads: GENERAL U. S. GRANT 1868.
Reverse: Legend reads: I PROPOSE TO MOVE IMMEDIATELY ON YOUR WORKS.
This presidential campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1868. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer, and is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign medals.
Obverse: Bust of Ulysses S. Grant facing forward with a legend that reads: GENERAL U. S. GRANT 1868.
Reverse: Bust of Schuyler Colfax facing forward, with a legend that reads: SCHUYLER COLFAX 1868.
This presidential campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company around 1868. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign medals. Grant issued the reverse quote during the Overland Campaign of the Civil War.
Obverse: Bust of Grant facing forward. Legend: GENERAL U.S. GRANT 1868.
Reverse: Two branches and four stars. Legend: I PROPOSE TO FIGHT IT OUT ON THIS LINE IF IT TAKES ALL SUMMER.
This presidential campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1864. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign badges.
Obverse: Bust of George B. McClellan facing left. The legend reads: GEORGE B. McCLELLAN.
Reverse: Image of an eagle with shield, clutching arrows and an olive branch in its talons. The legend reads: THE UNION MUST AND SHALL BE PRESERVED.
This medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1861. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer and is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign medals.
Obverse: Bust of George McClellan facing left. The legend reads: MAJOR GENERAL Geo B. McCLELLAN WAR OF 1861.
This medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1861. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer and is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and campaign medals. This medal has a hole at the top so the medal could be worn on an article of clothing.
Obverse: Bust of George McClellan facing left. Legend reads: MAJOR GENERAL GEO. B. McCLELLAN/War OF 1861.
This medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut in the 1860s. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and medals. Sigel was a German officer who immigrated to the United States and served as a Colonel and Major General of the 3rd Missouri Infantry during the Civil War.
Obverse: Bust of Franz Sigel facing forward. The legend reads: MAJ. GEN. FRANZ SIGEL/ MISSOURI. VIRGINIA.
This medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1861. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer that is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including buttons, daguerreotype mats, and medals.
Obverse: Image of a soldier wearing a shirt with stars and stripes. The legend around the rim reads: I AM READY 1861.
Reverse: 35 stars encircle the rim. The legend reads: THE UNION MUST & SHALL BE PRESERVED.
The James R. Barker was built in 1976 by the American Shipbuilding Co. at Lorain, OH for the Interlake Steamship Co. It was named after the head of the Moore-McCormack Steamship Company, which owned Interlake. Costing over $43 million, Barker was the third 1000-footer to sail the Great Lakes, and the first built entirely on the Lakes. These big bulk coal and ore carriers were constructed to fit the largest locks connecting the Great Lakes.
Barker's two big 8,000-hp engines turn two 17-1/2-foot propellers, pushing the vessel at a speed of 15.75 knots (18 mph). The ship can transport 59,000 tons of iron ore pellets or 52,000 tons of coal. The self-unloading rig has a 250-foot-long boom that can unload 10,000 tons of ore or 6,000 net tons of coal per hour. By contrast, Interlake’s first bulk carrier, the 1874 wooden-hulled steamer V.H. Ketchum, could carry only 1,700 tons of ore and took nearly twelve days to unload using manual wheelbarrows.
display surplus cedar floats donated by Columbia Net Floats Mill
Columbia River Maritime Museum
maker
Columbia Net Floats Mill
ID Number
2005.0150.01
accession number
2005.0150
catalog number
2005.0150.01
Description
This simple object packs a lot of meaning for certain residents of the lower Columbia River near Astoria, Oregon. It is a cedar net float, made about 1955, for use on a gill net, the preferred gear of commercial salmon fishermen in the area. While this float was never used for that purpose, it remained in Astoria where, some fifty years later, it was fashioned into this object commemorating the fishery’s former significance.
The original float was made at the Columbia Net Floats Mill, which operated in Astoria from 1952 to 1959. According to mill worker and fisherman Cecil Moberg, “There were three steps in the process to make floats. The bolts of cedar were cut into six inch blocks by a twenty-four inch cutoff saw. The next machine was a ram device, which pushed the blocks through a round die. A hole was drilled through the center of the block by a belt driven wood lathe. The blocks were then put on a high speed lathe and were hand turned in three motions: one sweep to the right, one to the left and one finishing sweep over the whole float, giving them a smooth finish.”
Moberg estimated the mill produced about three million floats in seven years of operation. Considering that an average Columbia River gillnet was about 1500 feet long and had about 500 floats, it is not hard to imagine a need for millions of floats among local gill netters.
By the time the mill closed, fishermen had begun using plastic floats. The surplus cedar floats were eventually given to the Columbia River Maritime Museum’s Auxiliary. Members of that group, including donor Frankye D. Thompson, were inspired to create souvenir items to call attention to Astoria’s past. They cut the floats in half and affixed the flat side with images from the fishery’s heyday. The photo on this float shows the fleet of sailing gill net boats around the turn of the 20th century. Called the “Butterfly Fleet” by Astorians, the small, sprit-rigged vessels are emblematic of the town’s fishing heritage. A piece of lead and lead line decorate the float, and historical information provided by Cecil Moberg is provided on a piece of paper rolled to fit inside the hole where the float would have been strung on the float line.
This shallow, metal pan was used for freezing processed fish aboard the factory trawler Alaska Ocean. Operating in the North Pacific and the Bering Sea, the Alaska Ocean is one vessel in the fleet that catches and processes pollock, hake, and whiting.
In the factory the fish are gutted and filleted by German-made filleting machines, which can be calibrated to remove the bones and skin according to a customer’s preference. Onboard engineers adjust the angles of the knives within a quarter of a millimeter to provide a product with a small amount of fat, or no fat at all, depending on the customer’s specifications.
After the initial filleting, workers in the factory load pans like this with fish fillets, fish roe, or minced fish. A conveyor belt carries the filled pans to other workers who load them into plate freezers. After about two hours, when the freezing is complete, the pans are unloaded from the freezer, and the blocks of frozen fish are removed and packed for shipment. The packed blocks of product are stacked in the ship’s large freezer hold until they can be offloaded ashore.
The Alaska Ocean carries two sizes of pans, a block pan like this and a slightly larger size for surimi, a type of fish paste used in making imitation crabmeat. The vessel carries a total of 2800 pans, 1400 of each size. The factory has 16 plate freezers aboard, 8 for single pans and 8 for doubles. A single-pan plate freezer can hold 102 surimi pans and 119 block pans at a time.
The wax lining in this pan facilitates removing the frozen product. This one is marked “M” for mince, a ground fish product used in making fish sticks and fish fingers.
Electricity pioneer Lewis Latimer drew this component of an arc lamp, an early type of electric light, for the U.S. Electric Lighting Company in 1880.
The son of escaped slaves and a Civil War veteran at age sixteen, Latimer trained himself as a draftsman. His technical and artistic skills earned him jobs with Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, among others. An inventor in his own right, Latimer received numerous patents and was a renowned industry expert on incandescent lighting.
Mrs. Elizabeth Lord Lakeman, who was born 1767 in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and died 1862 in Hallowell, Maine used this pillow, pattern and bobbins to make bobbin lace most of her life. Mrs. Lakeman most likely made Ipswich lace in the late 1780's and 1790's during the peak of the Ipswich lace industry. The pillow is stuffed with sea-grass or straw and the parchment pattern has holes pricked for the lace. The bobbins are whittled from bamboo, other reeds, or wood. The current pattern and lace on the pillow are from around 1860.
Even whalemen with little or no artistic talent could carve highly detailed scenes, through use of the pinprick technique. In this method, a picture was cut from a contemporary magazine and then pasted or dampened to stick to the polished surface of a sperm whale's tooth. A sharp pin was then pushed through the lines of the image, which was then removed. This left lines of dots; when these were connected with engraved lines, they formed a copy of the original picture. Most commonly, lamp black (soot) was then rubbed into the engraved lines to make them stand out from the background of the tooth, although colored pigments like those on this tooth also could be applied for variety. The high fashion of this lady's garments bracket a date just a few years after the end of the Civil War.
Scrimshaw known to have been made specifically for men is comparatively rare. This unfinished tooth was hollowed out at the back to carry a gentleman’s pocket watch inside, perhaps set on a wardrobe, a bureau or a dressing table overnight.
Patriotic imagery was very popular on American scrimshaw. At the top is a large eagle in flight clutching arrows and an olive branch; the hole for the watch is framed by a simple scalloped line. The space at the bottom was probably reserved for the owner’s initials or possibly a date, and the two holes were likely drilled for ivory buttons. The piece was unfinished when it was donated in 1875 by J. H. Clark of Newport, R.I.
During World War I, machine guns were heavy, crew-served weapons. Their operation required several soldiers. Even so-called light machine guns could not easily be handled by single soldiers. To meet the need for an individual rapid-fire weapon, several inventors devised submachine guns. Light enough for one-man use, the new weapons were nicknamed "trench brooms" because they swept the trenches clear of enemy troops. The Thompson submachine gun was the handwork of John Taliaferro Thompson (West Point Class of 1882). It saw only limited wartime use, but the "Tommy gun" in the hands of police and gangsters achieved notoriety as "the gun that made the twenties roar."
This celluloid matchbox cover is likely a piece of British propaganda from WWI. It depicts Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, Secretary of State for War in England during the First World War. The piece is "In Memorium" and gives his birth and death dates ("Born June 24th, 1850, Drowned June 5th, 1916") and states "He Did His Duty."
Kitchener was the face on the original "Your Country Needs You" recruiting poster, featuring his mustachioed face staring directly at the reader and his finger pointing straight out of the page. It has been endlessly imitated and parodied, the most famous result perhaps being the recruiting poster for the U.S. Army featuring Uncle Sam above the statement "I want YOU for U.S. Army!"
This presidential campaign medal was made by the Scovill Manufacturing Company of Waterbury, Connecticut around 1892. The Scovill Company was established in 1802 as a button manufacturer and is still in business today. Scovill was an early industrial American innovator, adapting armory manufacturing processes to mass-produce a variety of consumer goods including campaign medals.
Obverse: Image of White House with forward facing busts of Benjamin Harrison and Levi Morton above it. Legend: REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEES 1892.
Reverse: Image of Christopher Columbus landing in America, set inside a globe. Legend: LANDING OF COLUMBUS IN AMERICA OCTOBER 12th 1492./PAT’D DEC. 1. 1891.
Text and photograph from Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War, Vol. II. Negative by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, text and positive by Alexander Gardner.
This property, recently, and for many years, better known as Furt's Mill, is situated just below Bolling's Dam, on the Appomattox River, near Campbell's Bridge. It is one of the several large establishments which the city of Petersburg boasts for the manufacture of flour. At the height of the grinding season, we are informed, it is capable of turning out about three hundred barrels daily.
The dam constitutes the terminus of tide-water on this stream, and, with its surroundings, is the subject of one of "Shaw's Illustrations of American Scenery," published in New York, on a large scale, upwards of forty years ago.
The Mill, we further learn, was originally built in seventeen hundred and seventy-three by Mr. Bolling.