Original autograph business letter written December 28, 1843, from Memphis, Tennessee, addressed to the famed Collins Manufacturing Company of Hartford, Connecticut, one of the most celebrated edge tool and axe manufacturers in American history. Accompanied by its original stampless folded cover bearing a bold blue Memphis "DEC 30" circular datestamp and manuscript rate marking.
This letter documents an early commercial transaction between Memphis merchant Frederick Henry (F.H.) Cossitt and the renowned Collins Manufacturing Company during America's westward expansion, when Collins axes, hatchets, and edge tools were indispensable to frontier settlement, logging, farming, and industry.
The writer encloses a draft to satisfy a note due the following month, asks that the note be forwarded to New York, mentions an upcoming visit to Hartford, and politely disputes a recent charge, noting that the company had billed him approximately six dollars higher than expected. The correspondence offers an excellent glimpse into interstate mercantile credit and business practices in the 1840s.
Memphis Tenn Dec'r 28th 1843
"Above you will find my Draft on Messrs. Greenway & Henry Smith for $101.90, the amount of my note due you the 17th next month.
Please send the note to New York with the draft... When I visit Hartford I will settle in some way satisfactory to both of us.
The $30 you charged me are about $6 too high, though I expected them at former rates.
Very Respectfully,
Yours,
F. H. Cossitt"
Collins Manufacturing Company was among the most famous American manufacturers of axes and edge tools during the nineteenth century. Founded by Samuel W. Collins in Canton, Connecticut, the company developed an international reputation for producing premium-quality axes, machetes, hatchets, and agricultural tools that were exported throughout North and South America. Original correspondence addressed directly to Collins is far scarcer than surviving tools and is highly desirable to collectors of American industrial history.
The writer, Frederick Henry Cossitt (1811–1887), was one of Memphis's most prominent early merchants. A Connecticut native, he established a highly successful wholesale dry goods business in Memphis during the city's explosive commercial growth in the 1840s before later relocating to New York to pursue banking and insurance interests. Although he left Memphis, he never forgot the city where he built his fortune. Following his death in 1887, his daughters fulfilled his wish to endow a free public library by donating $50,000 toward what became the Cossitt Library, opened in 1893 as Memphis's first public library.
Also mentioned are Messrs. Greenway & Henry Smith, the New York financial intermediaries upon whom Cossitt drew his draft, illustrating the extensive commercial network connecting Memphis, New York, and Connecticut during the antebellum period.
An outstanding piece combining Collins Axe Company history, early Memphis, Tennessee commerce, a scarce blue Memphis postal cancel on a stampless cover, and the signature of one of the city's most influential nineteenth-century businessmen.