Glimpse Through a Tiny Window

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

This little pair popped up in an online auction just a couple weeks ago.  I threw in a low bid and, because I didn’t read the description very carefully (alcohol may have been involved with my shopping experience), I brought them home.

We’ll call the top one “bone,” because once this virus thing peters out you can bet pinheaded bureaucrats will be back out in force, looking to string up anyone who looks like they’ve been hunting elephants lately.  First, it really is bone, not ivory, and whatever poor creature’s innards were used, it happened nearly two centuries ago . . .

“Mabie’s Patent / Oct. 3 1854.”  I have a couple other bone Mabie Todds, all identical to this one and all in better shape than this one.  I’ve carefully posed it for these pictures so that the cracks in the barrel are on the other side.

That part I knew, even as I sat crosseyed with a dram in one hand and my eBay app in the other.  It was the other one that was my real target in this auction.  It has a very clear and to me very interesting imprint:

“Newton Kurtz & Co.” mid-barrel, and “C.Pat 51" near the top.  The “C. Pat” imprint is a reference to Nelson Goodyear’s patent for hard rubber – called “Caoutchouc or India-Rubber” in his 1851 patent for the composition and method of manufacturing the stuff (that story is at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2018/03/c-pat.html).

However, it was Newton Kurtz & Co. that captured my attention.  The firm fits into the century-long story of the evolution of one New York manufacturing house, which began with Albert Bagley in the 1840s and culminated with the establishment of Edward Todd & Co. in 1871 (that story began at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2018/03/from-bagley-through-todd-part-one.html and was later reworked for The Pennant).  C.F. Newton & Co. was dissolved at the end of 1864, and Newton Kurtz & Co., a partnership consisting of Charles F. Newton, the colorful Keller Kurtz, and Joseph Moneghan, was formed effective January 1, 1865.

However, Newton had been in the business many years, having been associated with Albert Bagley and carrying on Bagley’s business after he left the firm in 1856.  Newton retired from the firm effective May 1, 1867; the remaining partners stayed in business as Kurtz & Moneghan, which was succeeded by Edward Todd & Co. in 1870.

That means pencils marked Newton Kurtz & Co. were made during a very narrow period, between January 1, 1865 and May 1, 1867, which explains why I’ve only found one other so marked:

If my Newton Kurtz pencil looks like that bone Mabie Todd pencil, you’re right.  The New York houses had a backroom deal to share technology with each other, reducing the sorts of competition they found counterproductive.  Similarly, the combo is also Mabie Todd design, based on that same October 3, 1854 patent.

Sadly, I didn’t see in the auction listing that the pins are broken on the nib slider, and the nib has long since gone missing – that’s why this pair came to me so cheap.  Ah well, I won’t complain about finding a second example of a Newton Kurtz, and one of these days I’ll learn how to repair these sliders.

Maybe even I’ll find a nib for it!

From Bagley through Todd - Part Two

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

Note: the first installment in this series was posted at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2018/03/with-couple-twists.html.

On April 19, 1856, Albert G. Bagley, the gold pen and pencil manufacturer who was one of the pioneers in the industry through the 1840s, retired and headed west to St. Louis, leaving Henry Harrison Houghton and Charles F. Newton behind to continue the business he had created, under the name H.H. Houghton & Co.  There would be several other partnerships before Edward Todd appeared on the scene in 1870.

H.H. Houghton & Co. advertised heavily in the New-York Tribune at the end of 1856:

Unfortunately, Houghton died suddenly at the age of 36 on October 27, 1857:

Charles F. Newton continue the business himself for a short time thereafter.  He ran identical advertisements through the 1857 Christmas season, changing only the first line to indicate that C.F. Newton is the successor to Bagley, Houghton & Co.

At some point between 1855 and 1860, a man by the name of Keller Kurtz became a traveling salesman for Newton – or possibly for Houghton or Bagley.  Kurtz was a Pennsylvanian who had opened a “Book, Stationery and Notion Store” in Gettysburg in 1847, which he later renamed the “Keller Kurtz Literary Emporium”:

The “celebrated cheap store of Keller Kurtz” had been selling “Bagley’s unequalled gold pens” since the early 1850s:

Kurtz closed his shop in 1855, selling off all the fixtures and squaring away his debts by December 17, 1855:

He also sold his interest in a “boot, shoe, hat and cap” partnership known as Cobean and Paxton at the same time.  By January, 1860, Kurtz was a full time representative for C.F. Newton, when on January 10, 1860, he narrowly survived a brutal robbery in his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee:

The thief stole a few items at gunpoint, leaving Kurtz tied up in his room, but the perpetrator missed about $2,000 worth of writing instruments in Kurtz’ trunk.  The violent attack made national news, including in Kurtz’ hometown press:

Meanwhile, another character came within Newton’s orbit: James P. Byrne.  After the outbreak of the American Civil War, Byrne began selling “Byrne’s Army and Navy Writing Case,” a writers kit including pens, pencils, ink and paper.  According to this advertisement in the October 29, 1861 edition of the New York Tribune, orders were addressed to J.P. Byrne at 1 Maiden Lane.

What’s interesting about this advertisement is that while the address is the same as Newton’s, and as David Moak noted in Mabie in America the firm of C.F. Newton & Co. was listed as early as 1859 at that address in the New York City Directories, there’s no indication here that Byrne was part of the “& Co.”  I believe published accounts of the existence of a firm by that name was Newton referring to himself in the “royal We,” since Newton still appeared to be acting all on his own at 1 Maiden Lane at the end of 1859, as this advertisement from the December 8, 1859 issue of the New York Tribune indicates:

The earliest reference I could find to the formal organization of C.F. Newton & Co. was on January 4, 1861, when a copartnership notice was published in the New York Tribune naming Newton, James P. Byrne and Joseph Moneghan as partners effective January 1, 1861:

On January 1, 1864, Keller Kurtz officially became a partner in C.F. Newton & Co.:

Byrne left at some point during 1864, moving to Chicago to become a partner in Kearney & Co., a publisher, bookseller and stationer in that city.  Byrne is described as having been “for many years a member of the firm of C. F. Newton & Co., of New York,” but we know the longest he could have been associated with Charles F. Newton was five years – and judging from his side business at 1 Maiden Lane selling Army and Navy writing sets, it looks like his connections with Newton prior to 1864 could best be described as fluid.

In light of Byrne’s departure, at the end of 1864, Newton, Kurtz and Monaghan dissolved C.F. Newton & Co., simultaneously forming a new partnership effective January 1, 1865 named Newton, Kurtz & Co.:

Charles F. Newton retired from the firm on May 1, 1867, leaving the remaining partners to recast their partnership under the name of Kurtz & Monaghan:

And at this point – finally – we reach the part of the story that sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place: attempting to learn exactly when Edward Todd came into the picture.

The next chapter is posted at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2018/03/from-bagley-through-todd-part-three.html.