Inscribed on the Tablets of Love and Memory

This was a satisfying find. It give me the opportunity to tell two stories – one is about pencils, and the other is something I need to get off my chest.

On the cap is something I have waited for some time to see:

“Franklin” and “Patented Feb. 19, 1924.” The reference is to Lawrence T.  McNary’s patent number 1,484,180, applied for on October 11, 1921 and assigned to the Rex Manufacturing Company of Providence, Rhode Island:

Rex is an ongoing fascination of mine, a company I’ve often referred to as “the biggest pencil manufacturer you’ve never heard of.” Dozens of different pen companies sourced their matching pencils from Rex in the 1920s until 1930 or so, when the Parker Pen Company presumably won a patent infringement case against Rex over Parker’s patent for its familiar washer clip. See “My Working Theory” (December 24, 2016: Volume 4, page 298).

This new example of the Franklin shut down that last one percent of doubt that I have had about these:

All of my other ringtop examples have Franklin stamps on their caps too, but they lack McNary’s patent date.

As for the side clip example, it is marked Franklin on the clip, but the cap is entirely unmarked.

These other examples certainly look like McNary patent pencils, and they appear identical to the Rex-made pencils made under other brand names, such as Supremacy, John Holland, and the like. I always wondered whether Franklin pencils without the McNary patent date had the same works inside – now we know that at least my newest example does. Maybe those other examples were made before McNary’s patent issued, leaving no reference at all to any pending patent application in lieu of  “Pat. App. For.” 

I have also suspected that ”Franklin,” like the Webster (early on) and “Ye Wm. Penn,” was another name under which Rex manufactured pencils on its own account. That part was just a theory, but I think it gained traction with this next find.

I felt a little guilty bringing this one home, because my friend John Lincoln has an affinity for the Lincoln brand of pens and pencils for obvious reasons. When this set appeared in an online auction, the seller did not describe it very well, listing it as a Franklin set rather than a Lincoln. The angel on one of my shoulders told me I should tip John off about it and step aside, but that angel was not very persuasive.

The little guy on my other shoulder was quick to point out that I didn’t have an example of a Rex patent pencil marked for Lincoln, and I’m a bigger Rex freak than John is a Lincoln freak . . . ok, maybe not bigger, but at least as big.

Besides, there was something else about this set that made it even more desirable to a Rex fanatic than to a Lincoln logger. The reason this set was listed as a Franklin wasn’t because the seller had mixed up his founding fathers with his emancipators – it’s because of the box in which the set resides, emblazoned with a faded gold foil name: “Franklin” in script lettering.

Might this be a Lincoln set in the wrong box? No, I told myself (I was still trying to convince myself that I was a more worthy caretaker for this than my brother John). I am one of perhaps ten people on the planet that would latch onto the notion that both the Franklin and the Lincoln were Rex Manufacturing Company brands, and the chances of an online seller adding a bit of NOS goodness to a pen and pencil by housing these Lincolns in a random box that just happens to be marked “Franklin” would be an extraordinary coincidence. 

All of the Rex-made Franklins I have seen are the earlier McNary variety – too small for this box, which was made to fit these later 1920s editions with the “four horsemen” patents on the cap.

This is the first Lincoln I’ve seen with those “four horsemen” patents. Unfortunately, my seminal article concerning the four Rex patents, including the reason why I think of them as riding into the apocalypse, was wiped by the Great Google Cluster... ok, Clusterfudge of 2018. It lives on in print form in Volume 2 - see “Prequel: Let’s Make that Birth, Death and Transfiguration” (March 20, 2013: Volume 2, page 102). 

I have only found two Lincoln pencils in any configuration:

That short metal one is earlier, like the Franklin pencil that started this exercise, and it is also marked with McNary’s 1924 patent date:

That's the first of the two stories concerning the Franklin. This second story, regarding a different sort of Franklin, is one that keeps me awake at nights sometimes. It concerns the Independent Book Publishers Association’s Benjamin Franklin Book Awards – in which I did not place as a finalist this year with Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry. This isn't sour grapes because I lost . . . it is about how I lost.

The Benjamin Franklin Book Awards have been around since 1985, and it has been historically one of the most respected awards programs for independent books. It is unique in that all entrants, winners and losers, receive unfiltered judge’s comments on their books. I first entered the Benjamin Franklin Awards for the 2020 season with A Century of Autopoint; I only entered for the feedback I would receive, so that I could write even better books.

I did not win, but the book was well received by the judges and the comments provided many useful suggestions. I did not enter Volumes 6 and 7 of the blog series, even though they “fit” – sort of – into the competition's Craft, Hobby, Home & Garden category. I suspected my frequent tangents and less formal writing style in the blog series might not be as well suited to the awards as a formal monograph, and cost was also an issue. The Benjamin Franklins are among the most expensive award programs, since entrants are required to pay for an IBPA membership in addition to entry fees and the cost of several books. I did not think it a wise investment. 

A Field Guide to Sheaffer's Pencils, however, was a different story. I incorporated all of the judge’s comments from the Autopoint book, entered it for the 2024 awards, and this time – the book was named a finalist. I was thrilled.

The Benjamin Franklins are structured like the Academy Awards: three finalists are announced, and the winner is unveiled at the awards ceremony, so Janet and I flew to Denver, Colorado in April, 2024 to attend. Janet and I had never been to Denver before, and our visit provided me the opportunity to finally meet my friend Matt McColm in person. We met for dinner the day before the ceremony. 

I am being truthful when I say being a finalist was reward enough, and all we expected from the awards ceremony was a nice dinner, some hobnobbing with other independent authors, and a stroll down the red carpet. We had no delusions that my niche book would win, and even though the organizers recommended that all finalists have prepared acceptance remarks, I did not even bother to do so. Predictably, my dark horse did not finish first.

The Benjamin Franklin Awards are held in conjunction with the IBPA’s annual conference, and the membership meeting was held later in the same ballroom. Around the perimeter of the room, vendors had set up booths to promote their printing, editing, and other publishing services. Since I didn’t have time to browse during the awards ceremony, I stopped back later to snoop around a bit during the IBPA’s annual meeting.

As I chatted with a few vendors, the IBPA membership erupted into applause and cheers with a big announcement: the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards would henceforth be called the IBPA Book Awards. Why? Because Ben Franklin owned slaves.

Yes, Franklin did own slaves early in life – and he also ran advertisements for the slave trade in his newspapers. By the late 1750s, however, long before Thomas Jefferson pronounced that all men are created equal, Franklin had become an ardent Abolitionist. He served as president of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and his final public act was to petition Congress to end slavery. After his death, more than 20,000 people, many of whom were African American, came together to mourn the loss of their brother and ally in the fight against racial injustice. A memorial of his funeral stands at the site of the President’s House, a block from Independence Hall in downtown Philadelphia.

Alas . . . redemption is not permitted by the IBPA, which trivializes Franklin’s struggle for freedom on the IBPA’s website as merely a “mixed history.” The IBPA once adopted Franklin’s name in honor of his contributions to publishing, to fighting for all our freedom, and to his commitment to doing what was right as a human being. Now that same organization has canceled him. 

The sanctimonious virtue signaling is served with a side of arrogance at the IBPA website, which states in its FAQ section about the name change, “You can continue calling it the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award. You can continue using the Gold and Silver seals on your book covers.”

Why, that’s mighty damned big of you, I thought as I read that one.

Now back to that membership meeting in Denver, where the IBPA’s next order of business was to announce the addition of several new categories in the IBPA Book Awards for various racial, gender, and other special interest groups. Entries in these categories are limited to authors and publishers who have the correct skin color, gender identification or other identity politics group – rather than on the content of their character. It is probably best that the awards no longer bear the name of Benjamin Franklin, since this is so opposed to what Franklin believed and fought for.

Of course, judging based on the color of your skin rather than the content of your work also rules out Martin Luther King Jr. as a new namesake. 

Do I care whether the IBPA adds new categories? No. It's their competition. However, while the IBPA giveth to some, the IBPA taketh away from others. Having too many categories is what make a book competition look like a pay-to-play scam, so with the addition of these new categories, the IBPA eliminated several content-based ones – including the Crafts & Hobbies category. I would now be forced to compete in the General Nonfiction and History categories. If my last horse was a dark one, this one would be even darker.

I tried anyway. I knew there was no chance a book about pencils could win, but this time -- before the finalists were even announced, I prepared an acceptance speech I knew I would never have the opportunity to deliver. Here is what I wrote:

“Standing here is one of the proudest moments of my life. I hope this is something people will remember about me long after I’m gone, rather than the mistakes I've made in my life. I am not perfect. None of us are.

“Back home, I am a member of my local Elks Lodge. When one of our brethren passes away, we conduct a memorial service, the script for which has been unchanged for more than a century. One line from that service is something I carry with me everywhere I go: ‘Let his faults be written in the sand, and his virtues inscribed on the tablets of love and memory.'

“The hope for redemption, moral or spiritual, is all that drives us to right our wrongs, correct our mistakes, and improve ourselves. It takes grace and humility to strive for redemption, and it takes the same amount of grace and humility to accept that struggle and extend forgiveness. That is how we make ourselves better, and that is how we allow others to make themselves better.

“That is why, both as a historian and a human being, I have always extended that courtesy to Benjamin Franklin.” 

At least I felt better writing that. My book was not named a finalist, and when I received my feedback from the judges, most deducted points because my book didn’t fit neatly into any of the remaining categories. That alone was enough to knock me out of contention, and that's fair enough. It’s their competition, and nothing says the IBPA owes me a category in which I can compete.

Now, however, I am receiving incessant emails from the IBPA asking me to renew my membership and enter more books in their new and improved awards program. As Ron White would say, I have the right to remain silent but I lack the ability.

I suppose I should be grateful that one judge actually came out and said it: my books will never be judged purely on content, due to “this concerned judge’s desire to speak to inclusivity.”

I hold out hope that the organization I once respected may one day regain its senses, preferably through logic and reason but more likely through the harsh economic reality of declining membership. I am confident that as the IBPA continues down this path, others will also recognize the futility of attempting to swim in the IBPA’s exclusionary pond.

Otherwise, maybe I’ll just enter my next book about antique pencils in the IBPA’s freshly minted “Neurodivergent Communities” category.

After all, I am a little bit crazy.

The "Common Scold"

This is the last installment in a three-part series about John Foley, the New York "gold pen man." The first installment is posted here.

Democracy often needs people and personalities who fit more comfortably on the battlefield for freedom than they would at cocktail parties. It is difficult to imagine Patrick Henry exclaiming “Give me Liberty or give me death,” then calming down enough to add “and pass the cheese dip, please.”

John Foley, from all indications, was that very sort of character. Foley ventured into politics to play a significant role in toppling Boss Tweed’s corrupt Tammany Ring because he wasn’t afraid of a fight; by 1875, that fight was over, but Foley wasn’t out of fight.

For a time, John Foley appeared to settle comfortably back into his gold pen business, setting up shop at 2 Astor House, New York. 

Astor House had been one of New York’s premier hotels, built by John Jacob Astor and opened in 1836. By 1876, the aging hotel’s glamour had faded somewhat, and portions of the building were being carved out and rented by various merchants. This image, from Wikipedia, is attributed to circa 1905: 

Foley’s self-published 1875 “History of Foley’s Gold Pens,” as discussed yesterday, doesn’t contain much history specific to John Foley, other than his summary of the Tammany Hall affair. It does, however, contain extensive catalog images of John Foley’s products. No “Madeleine” pencils are shown, but there is a page showing hard rubber combination dip pens and pencils made pursuant to John Mabie’s October 3, 1854 patent, like the example I acquired from Scott Jones.

Foley’s shop in Astor House was likely more showroom than factory, and while the catalog pages all show holders marked with Foley’s name, all of these penholders and pencil cases were probably sourced from other New York manufacturers, like the Mabie Todd & Co. combination holders. The only items made in-house by Foley were his nibs, perhaps on-site, but he might have had a small manufacturing site elsewhere. 

We do know that in 1876, John Foley purchased property at Bainbridge Street and Lewis Avenue in Brooklyn, because he was mixed up in a mortgage dispute that resulted in a mandamus action to correct the records, as reported in the Brooklyn Eagle on May 18, 1876:

Tracking John Foley’s activities in New York newspapers is made difficult by the fact that Foley never used a middle initial in his advertisements nor throughout the press reports concerning the Tammany Hall affair. There were many other people named John Foley in New York, including lumbermen, engineers, attorneys, thugs in the crime pages, and even murderers, most of whose names included a middle initial. Reports concerning Foley "the gold pen man" best pinpoint those reports concerning our man, but I still think the one in this litigation is our guy: it’s a John Foley, in court, asking for an extraordinary remedy for someone to be “mandamused” (that turn of phrase made me chuckle).

Foley’s fortunes began to turn in 1879, when his wealthy wife died and left her fortune to their children rather than to her husband. On February 24, 1880, John Foley advertised his residence on East 73rd Street for rent in the New York Tribune, and again in early 1881; on October 3, 1881 the New York Times reported that a fire caused $1,000 in damage to the property – a much larger sum than it sounds, adjusting for inflation in the 150 years since. Perhaps in order to recoup his losses, Foley advertised more heavily soon after the fire, and his advertisements specify that he had diversified into manufacturing “Foley’s Patent Stylographic Pen or Ink Pencil.”

John Foley never patented a stylographic pen, according to all my research that went into writing American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910, and I have no evidence regarding what patents, if any, he licensed. All that is certain is that he did not acquire rights from the MacKinnon Pen Company, one of the most prolific stylographic pen manufacturers at the time. We know this because MacKinnon sued Foley for patent infringement in 1882. After a trial, Foley won the case as reported in the New York Tribune on February 25, 1882; a more detailed report followed in the Tribune on March 3, which said that while MacKinnon’s attorney’s called 12 witnesses, Foley alone testified in his defense. According to the report, Foley’s “prompt and frank statement” was all that it took to convince judge and jury to find in his favor.

Foley’s fame and influence was going to his head as his money troubles continued to mount. On February 28, 1883, the New York Times reported that legislation that had been introduced to pay John Foley for his services as Supervisor during his fight with the Tweed organization. He had done a great service and dedicated most of his life to taking Tweed down, but in the process he was never paid for the work that he did.

In 1885, one of Foley’s traveling salesman, Jerome B. Shaw, was arrested and faced charges of embezzling from Foley. The report published in the New York Times on February 13, 1885 indicated that the authorities were holding Shaw on just two instances of theft, “but the complainant asserts that at least 100 similar complaints could be made against him if necessary.”

The Sun’s coverage of the incident published the same day added some context to Foley’s allegations against Shaw - the salesman already had an active case pending against John Foley for libel at the time the allegations were made. 

No report details what became of either case, suggesting both Shaw’s case and the charges of embezzlement were dismissed, leaving Foley’s reputation somewhat tarnished in the process. Things got worse in 1888: on January 23, 1888, the New York Evening World published a news story regarding an unusual dispute between John Foley and a tenant. Foley had sublet part of his venerable Astor House location to a “ticket scalper,” then padlocked a portion of the area he had subleased. After the tenant’s clerk removed the lock to retrieve his belongings, John Foley had the clerk arrested and charged with malicious mischief.

In the MacKinnon case six years earlier, all the court needed was John Foley’s word and sterling reputation; this time was much different. Even though “Foley said twenty words to [his tenant’s] one,” the case was dismissed. In fact, the Judge reprimanded Foley for his outrageous behavior and threatened to fine him for contempt.

Foley was aggrieved yet again in May 1888, and the New York Tribune reported on “John Foley’s Peculiar Actions” on May 11, 1888. Foley was becoming well known for his bizarre attempts to seek the imprisonment of anybody whom he believed had wronged him, and in this case he believed a man named Clarence Foster had stolen a small amount from him. The police had arrested Foster but released him due to a lack of evidence, so Foley found out who was on the sitting grand jury and visited the foreman at his home in a misguided attempt to persuade him to begin an investigation.

Denied justice again, Foley burst into the office of the acting district attorney to demand that a case be opened - after being turned away, he came back a second time and became so agitated that an officer was called to remove him from the premises. Shortly after, one of John Foley’s sons appeared at the District Attorney’s office to ask whether the subpoena he had received to testify was genuine - police confirmed that the subpoena was a forgery, and Foley’s son said he thought he had seen his father writing it.

That same month, the Evening World reported on May 22, 1888 that a man named Michael Foley had been arrested for burglary on Staten Island. Upon his arrest, Michael claimed that he was an outcast son of John Foley the gold pen man - left to live the life of a tramp on the streets. Mr. Foley, the article noted, was not at his store and could not be reached for comment. 

The Foley family was imploding. John had served as executor of his wife’s estate since her passing in 1879, leaving her estate to their children. In the nine years since, John had never accounted to the courts or to his children with respect to how her assets were being administered. Tensions in the Foley family reached a breaking point in 1888: one of John Foley’s sons, Daniel L. Foley, left his father’s employ and founded D.L. Foley & Co. Daniel’s story is amply covered by David Nishimura’s article posted here. 

Another of John’s sons, John Foley Jr., also began his own gold pen business in 1888, but his story was far messier. John Jr. had been employed by his father at 2 Astor House, Broadway, where Foley had been operating since his glory days as an outspoken reformer. However, in May of 1885 the Astors raised John Foley’s rent, and Foley was forced to relocate to 18 John Street, New York. After the move, John Jr., began asking his father questions about how he was handling his mother’s estate, since he had yet to see a penny of his inheritance. Rather than answering his son’s questions, John Sr. fired the 21-year-old on the spot. 

Junior can’t be blamed for what he did next. He secured financial backing from friends, leased his father’s old shop space at 2 Astor House, and hung out a shingle selling pens as John Foley Jr. John Jr. enjoyed immediate and substantial success, and his proud father promptly sued him in an attempt to restrain his son from selling gold pens under the name “Foley.”

John Foley, once the toast of the town for taking down Boss Tweed, and the man whose gravitas in the MacKinnon patent fight was enough to carry the day singlehandedly, was reduced to being referred to as “that man of many litigations” in the report of the trial, published in the Evening World on October 15, 1888.

John Foley Jr. won the case, but that didn’t stop John Sr. from publishing notices in several newspapers to “warn” the public that “TWO concerns, presumably unable to sell pens of their own manufacture, are making Pens claimed by them to be FOLEY’S GOLD PENS,” that he is engaged in litigation to stop this “FRAUD and PIRACY,” and calling on the public to “AID THE CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND FAIR DEALING” by withholding payment to those who sold them.

John Jr. can therefore not be blamed for what he did next . . . again. On November 14, 1888, the Brooklyn Daily Times reported that John Jr. sued his father for mishandling assets of his mother’s estate after it was clear that his father had sold one of his mother’s properties to one of his clerks for a nominal sum, then bought it back from him. The judge set aside all of the fraudulent dealings.

John Sr. was becoming increasingly desperate and sought outside investors to remain in business. On January 19, 1889, the New York Times reported that Foley had gone into business with Samuel R. Mann to form the Foley Gold Pen Company. Mann was affiliated with the Rockford Watch Company; other directors were Frank Bowman, Dr. J. Blake White, and Thomas Bishop, according to the New York Tribune on January 18, 1889.

The Foley Gold Pen Company may never have gotten off the ground, since the only time the name appeared in newspapers was in these two reports of the company’s formation. In April, 1889, John Jr. closed the net further, taking matters into his own hands and filing a partition action to force the sale of  some of his mother’s properties. The foreclosure sale was set for April 18, 1889, according to the sale notice published in the Brooklyn Eagle on April 3, 1889.

Neither father nor son backed down in this battle of wills. On July 14, 1890, John Sr. published notice in the New York Times that he had relocated – of all places – to 7 Astor House, with an added jab that “IMITATION PENS bearing my name are sold in my former store in the Astor House block.”

John Sr. would be in court again in 1891, this time as the star witness for the defense after John Jr. sued Samuel Bennett & Co. Bennett had refused to pay for nibs they had received, claiming they were not genuine “John Foley pens.” Despite father’s testimony that his son’s nibs were nothing but an inferior copy of the genuine article, John Jr. won.

Foley remained at 7 Astor House, lobbing spitwads at his son, through at least 1892. By the time the 1894 New York City Directory was published, he had relocated to 183 Broadway:

John Foley remained in business at the Broadway location until August 1898, when Foley sold his business to Joseph R. Jackson, Jr.; however, the story does not end there. The details of the transaction were reported in The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review on April 26, 1899: Jackson had purchased the business, including the storefront at 187 Broadway (note: at some point John Foley may have moved next door from 183 Broadway) and the factory leased at 5 and 7 Dey Street, New York. The purchase price was $15,000 – $4,000 up front, with a mortgage for $11,000 securing the balance payable to Foley’s new wife, Elma. Foley agreed to a 10-year noncompete clause, and he and Elma continued to work at the Dey Street factory.

After the sale was completed, Jackson learned that John Foley had grossly overstated the value of his machinery, the amount of his annual sales, and the quality of his reputation. Jackson sued Foley for fraud, seeking the return of his down payment and a declaration that the mortgage he had given to Foley’s wife be declared void. 

After a three-day trial, Judge Keogh granted judgment in Jackson’s favor, awarding him $4,098 in damages against John Foley and unwinding the transaction. On July 29, 1899, the New York Tribune reported that the Sheriff had executed on Jackson’s judgment, selling off all of the office furniture and stock of gold pens at 5 and 7 Dey Street. “[A]t one time [Foley] was a leader in the trade, but in the last ten years business has decreased and he has been in considerable family litigation,” the report reads. The sale realized only $600 to be applied to Jackson’s judgment, so on November 14, 1899 the New York Times reported that a receiver had been appointed to liquidate whatever remained of John Foley’s business.

Foley fought his cause against Jackson to the end, but the judgment against him was affirmed on appeal; the decision was reported in the New York Tribune on July 19, 1900. He died on August 24, 1903, and obituaries published across the country lionized him for his singlehanded fight against Boss Tweed’s corruption.

It was John Foley’s struggle against public corruption rather than his reputation as the “gold pen man” that would become his legacy. He had pursued justice “with such vigor that his opponents called him a common scold,” but by the end of his life John Foley had nobody left in his life but opponents, including his own family. Obituaries reported that John Foley was survived by his wife Elma and by the eight children he had with his first wife; none of these children were identified by name, so whether Michael Foley was acknowledged as one of John Foley’s sons was never answered. 

The manner in which all of Foley’s other relationships had collapsed by the end of his life gives the pencil that inspired this series of articles even greater meaning:

John Foley’s tender memorialization of his daughter Madeleine’s name is a solitary and poignant reminder that through all of his struggles, maybe just one of his children was still by his side at the end.

At least, that’s how I prefer to look at it.

Citizen Foley

Note: this is the second installment in a three-part series. Part one, introducing a couple of recent finds bearing the name "John Foley," was posted here.

As I started writing yesterday’s story concerning my recent John Foley finds, I noticed that my 2017 article on the subject just introduced a happy, horsey pencil without presenting any of the history of John Foley’s gold pens. Usually that’s something I’ll include, but at the time I was finalizing details in preparation for publishing Volume 5 - I had time and space enough to introduce the pencil, but not enough time or space to introduce the man behind it.

I planned to rectify that omission in yesterday’s piece, but as soon as I started looking into John Foley’s story I knew it was just too much for one article. I hope you are well rested after reading yesterday’s introduction . . . this one is a doozy.  

According to John Foley’s obituary, he was born in 1831 in Ireland.  Over at her Ink Flexibilities blog, April did a nice job researching Foley’s early life: Foley began working at the age of 14 (1845 or so) as an apprentice for the pioneering New York gold penmaker Levi Brown. April say that John Foley started his own shop in 1848.

Editions of the New York City Directory from 1844 through 1852 list neither Levi Brown nor John Foley, and it is not until the 1853-1854 edition that John Foley turns up, in the gold pen business at 167 Broadway and his residence at 244 Third Avenue:

The earliest trade announcements I could find for Foley’s new gold pen business appeared at the end of 1853: this one was published in the New York Daily Herald on December 29, 1853. 

Foley’s obituary provides that his gold pen business “in the course of time, made him comparatively wealthy,” and that assertion is borne out through a lavishly illustrated “History of Foley’s Gold Pens” published in 1875 and widely available in digital form on the internet. It has also been republished in print form (David Nishimura advertises copies on his website, vintagepens.com).

The copy available online, which is a digitized copy of the copy now in the Library of Congress, even includes the author’s handwritten and signed presentation:

This 1875 piece includes images of John Foley products, pictures of various stages of the nibmaking process, and it claims that it was established in 1848 and was “the oldest gold pen house in America.”  Although the title is “History of Foley’s Gold Pens,” that history is a very rudimentary and general history of the penmaking trade, without specifically discussing the John Foley house. One page includes Levi Brown and John Foley on a list of gold pen manufacturers in 1849 New York, even though I was unable to corroborate either’s operations from city directories.

The only page that directly addresses John Foley and his influence is this one, and it doesn’t talk about his contributions to the gold pen industry:

A few years before Foley’s book was published, in 1869 he was elected to the New York County’s Board of Supervisors at the height of “Boss” William Tweed’s corrupt government, remembered today as Tammany Hall. Foley worked diligently to dismantle Tweed’s government, and in 1870 he ran for the position of Supervisor, placing third in the election results with 11,309 votes behind Walter Roche (63,690 votes) and New York Police Commissioner Henry Smith (34,593).

After it was revealed that Tweed’s associates had stuffed the ballot box, Roche’s election was overturned. Henry Smith’s votes were a different matter; while the evidence did not support a finding that his votes were also manipulated, Smith was clearly Tweed’s second choice as well. However, a recent New York state law had made it illegal for a person serving as police commissioner to also serve a city supervisor; therefore, any votes for a Police Commissioner Smith were void.

Foley, who had garnered only ten percent of the total vote, demanded appointment by Tweed as the winner; Tweed refused, and Foley sued. Details of the hearing were published in the New York Tribune on April 4, 1870.

The Tweed organization sprang into action and attempted to rush a bill through the New York legislature legalizing Smith’s election, but his operatives were unable to get the bill pushed through before Judge Ingraham made his decision – such as it was. Foley was entitled to appointment, the judge ruled, but”under the circumstances,” he refused to grant Foley an order compelling his appointment. The New York Times published a summary of the decision on May 11, 1870:

Foley was wronged, but he was also a sore loser. Tweed’s organization had suggested he should run for the position of City Alderman – likely a “keep your friends close but be sure they will always be outvoted” maneuver – but Foley very publicly refused, saying he had no confidence that Tweed’s cronies wouldn’t stuff the ballot box again. See the New York Sun on May 14, 1870.

Foley’s fortunes were soon reversed, and on May 27, 1870, he was sworn into office as Supervisor according to the New York Herald.   

That was only Foley’s first skirmish with Tammany Hall. In 1871, Foley learned about a Tweed scheme to profit from the sale of public transit bonds. He revealed the details of this massive theft of some fifty million dollars in a letter published in several New York newspapers, including the Brooklyn Union, on August 21, 1871.

Foley took a dramatic step to put an end to the fraud by filing a lawsuit to enjoin the collection of taxes and the sale of bonds. The move was reported throughout the state: in Buffalo, New York, the Buffalo Daily Republic reported on the injunction proceedings on September 8, 1871:

The injunction was granted, and Tweed’s racket quickly began to unravel. The Mayor resigned and was soon followed by many other of his co-conspirators, including Tweed himself. Those of the “Tammany Ring” who remained were swept out of office in the 1871 election, and Tweed himself was arrested and convicted of fraud in 1872.

Citizen Foley was the perfect combination of man and moment, a relentless gadfly who stood up alone against a corrupt machine and triumphed. While his self-published 1875 history is self-laudatory, Foley’s fame was well-earned, and once the dust settled he was hailed as the Cincinnatus who had beaten his swords back into gold pens. On Christmas Day in 1875, The New York Times reveled in John Foley’s dual fame as both gold pen maker and “the citizen who obtained that celebrated injunction . . . to be gazed upon admiringly by an astounded public.” 

It wouldn’t last. All of Foley’s personality traits that had made his efforts against Tammany Hall a success would resurface later in his life, with catastrophic consequences.

Part three in this series, "The Common Scold," is posted here.