Butler And Carpenter Correspondence

The Butler and Carpenter correspondence from August 19, 1862 to July 12, 1875 is now up on the American Revenue Association website. It consists of either 12 pdfs that are easy to dig around in (sorry about grammar)or two large pdfs, better for searching. And yes, the files are searchable in Adobe Reader, at least. A few pages at the beginning were not clear enough to be made searchable,and any where there were typewriter overstrikes aren't either, but the vast majority should be.

A big thanks goes to Mark Banchik for scanning more than 5,000 pages of his typed facsimile of the correspondence.

Please let me know if you find any serious problems in the way the files are put up. Thank you.

Bob H.

Thanks Bob. Glad to see you here.
Bart

Can you post a link to it?

https://www.revenuer.org/butler-and...archives.asp

Don

Thanks. I should have posted that.

hats off and kudos to all who had a hand in this project. I am enjoying the reading and learning along the way. it's too bad the incoming correspondence was not saved as well.

Forgive me while I air a pet peeve. I mean no disrespect, but what is the significance of the Butler and Carpenter correspondence? Who are Butler and Carpenter and why should anyone care what they corresponded about?

I Googled them and looked at the American Revenue Association website and found no explanation. I find it frustrating when experts assume everyone knows what they are talking about.

It would be a huge service to the non-experts in the collecting community to add a brief sentence fragment providing some context and relevance: "The Bulter and Carpenter correspondence, regarding XYZ, is now up ...."

The 2014 Scott Specialized U.S. Catalogue begins the section on Revenue Stamps with this sentence;

"The Commissioner of Internal Revenue advertised for bids for revenue stamps in August 1862, and the contract was awarded to Butler and Carpenter of Philadelphia."

Phil,

Okay, I can add a word or two. But unless I had posted the announcement here, you or anyone else who did not know who Butler an Carpenter were to start with would never have any reason to find the correspondence, I suspect. So it never occurred to any of us to be more accommodating.

I also suspect that there are ARA members who couldn't tell you who Butler and Carpenter were, though they heard of them somewhere, so they might appreciate a word as well. I'll do it in the Blog announcement for now.

Does anyone know anything about Butler & Carpenter's prior history? Is there a good reference for printers of this era?

I have perused a few years of the correspondence and it is instructive and entertaining. Jos. Carpenter is referenced as one of the principals but I think it's possible it was his father who was a partner in Toppan, Carpenter, Casilear. It would be interesting to know if B&C did any other government work at the time other than Revenues and M&M. They certainly had their troubles!

Thx,
Charlie B.

This is a wonderful asset to students of the Civil War revenues. Thanks to Mark and Bob for making this available!
John B

There seems to be a little more available info about Joseph Carpenter than John Butler. According to "The Engraver's Line" by Gene Hessler, Carpenter was born in 1820 and died in 1894. He joined Toppan, Carpenter & Co. in 1860 (he was not the founding Carpenter), but worked independently in 1861, then formed Butler & Carpenter in 1862. John Butler died in 1868, and Carpenter changed the business name to "Joseph R. Carpenter" -- it looks like that occurred around Nov. 30, 1869, which is when Lamasure began using it in correspondence.

nadir1969, Carpenter did do other work for the U.S. Treasury. The company printed the backs of the 5th issue 50¢ fractional currency -- you'll see their imprint at the bottom. Butler & Carpenter also submitted essays in 1863 for $10, $20, and $50 National Bank Notes (no examples survive), but the designs were not selected.