{"id":3972,"date":"2013-08-15T16:02:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T16:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/?p=3972"},"modified":"2013-08-15T16:02:52","modified_gmt":"2013-08-15T16:02:52","slug":"a-letter-from-thomas-a-edison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2013\/08\/15\/a-letter-from-thomas-a-edison\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter from Thomas A. Edison"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_3971\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2013\/08\/dickinson_box_1_edison.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3971\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3971\" alt=\"Letter from Thomas A. Edison to E.E. Dickinson &amp; Co. of Essex, Connecticut, written on March 16, 1916, about a recommendation for Mr. V.L. King for work at the company.  E.E. Dickinson Co. Records, Archives &amp; Special Collections, University of Connecticut Libraries.\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2013\/08\/dickinson_box_1_edison.jpg\" width=\"540\" height=\"616\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2013\/08\/dickinson_box_1_edison.jpg 540w, https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/files\/2013\/08\/dickinson_box_1_edison-262x300.jpg 262w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3971\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Letter from Thomas A. Edison to E.E. Dickinson &amp; Co. of Essex, Connecticut.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Recently a researcher visited our reading room to look at the E. E. Dickinson Co. records and brought this letter to our attention.\u00a0 Written on March 16, 1916, from Orange, New Jersey, it is a letter signed by inventor Thomas A. Edison about his recommendation of Mr. V.L. King, who was seeking employment at the E.E. Dickinson Company, a maker of witch hazel and birch oil in Durham and Essex, Connecticut.<\/p>\n<p>The E.E. Dickinson Company was established\u00a0by Alvin Whittemore, who owned a drug store in Essex.\u00a0 By 1870, partners of Whittemore consolidated under the control of Rev. Thomas Dickinson and his family, including his son E.E. Dickinson, held the company as a family business until the 1980s.\u00a0 By the 1920s the company produced half of all witch hazel produced in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Archivists and historians value\u00a0primary sources for\u00a0their content and context &#8212; how they\u00a0contribute to our understanding of historical events or a historical time.\u00a0 The value of a letter just because it has a\u00a0famous person&#8217;s signature doesn&#8217;t usually fit in this category.\u00a0 It\u00a0has a different sort of value, one where\u00a0anything that attaches us to a famous person\u00a0is automatically valuable. In any event, we are happy to know about this letter in our collection and hope you enjoy it too.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently a researcher visited our reading room to look at the E. E. Dickinson Co. records and brought this letter to our attention.\u00a0 Written on March 16, 1916, from Orange, New Jersey, it is a letter signed by inventor Thomas &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/2013\/08\/15\/a-letter-from-thomas-a-edison\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[22,170,169],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NKyO-124","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3972"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3974,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3972\/revisions\/3974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lib.uconn.edu\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}