PBA Galleries

The weights and measures notebook of William Horace Newton, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War with three later manuscript letters and a wedding certificate.

• Horace Newton's Book. Rutland, MA 1809.
• The San Jose wedding certificate of Dr. Andrew Cory of San Jose and Albertina A French of Santa Clara, 1861 with related letter and note.
• Manuscript pay voucher signed by John Austin Wharton. On the recto, dated August 21, 1836, is written "This may certify that John Claton [sic] worked on the Tamaulipas Schooner getting out goods five day imployed by John A Wharton under my direction, Lieut. Summers Galveston," and on the verso Wharton, then serving as Texas secretary of war, has written "The within named John Clayton was employed as stated & is justly entitled to compensation, Velasco, Sep 4 1836. John A. Wharton." Wharton arrived in Texas around 1833, and was an early activist in the movely for Texas independence. He fought with distinction at the Battle of San Jacinto. He was serving in the Texan Congress when he succumbed to fever and died in 1838, just 32 years of age.
• Autograph Document, signed by Henry Hopkins Sibley and W.E. Jones, being a contract regarding the Sibley Tent. 30 lines, in ink, on 12½x8 sheet of lined legal paper. Signed by H.H. Sibley and W.E. Jones, and witnessed by C.S. Briggs. Handwritten contract, apparently entirely in Sibley's hand, in regard to "the improved conical tent patented in the U.S. Patent Office April 22nd 1856," in which they were in partnership, with reference to adding another partner, one W.H. Barry, Captain in the U.S. Army. H.H. Sibley, 1816-1886, soldier, Indian fighter, and soon to be Confederate general, graduated from West Point in 1838, and served extensively on the frontier. The Handbook of Texas relates that "from 1850 to 1854 Sibley and his company were stationed on the Texas frontier—at Fort Graham, Fort Croghan, Phantom Hill on the Clear Fork of the Brazos, and at Fort Belknap, where he conceived the idea of the Sibley Tent after visiting a Comanche village. The Sibley tent, derived from a Comanche style, was conical, with a center pole affixed to a tripod at the bottom. Within it a fire could be lit, and smoke would escape through a hole in the top. The tent was spacious and comfortable in cold weather." The tent was to prove quite successful, but Sibley would realize little profit from it - he resigned his commission in 1861 to join the Confederate forces, and the U.S. Army denied his claims for the $5 royalty promised him for each Sibley tent unit supplied to the Army. During the Civil War he led the ill-fated Confederate invasion of New Mexico. W.E. "Grumble" Jones, the other principal in the agreement, served in the U.S. Army until resigned in 1857, then joined the C.S.A. in 1861, killed in 1864 at Piedmont.
• Autograph Letter, signed by Stephen Powers, to James Logan, on the back of a letter sent to Powers from R.C. Trumble, responding to an inquiry Powers made for Logan about land claims. Stephen Powers, 1814-1882, a lawyer, diplomat and judge, who settled in Brownsville in 1849 after serving at Matamoros, Tamaulipas, as a member of the United States Military Commission for the Government of Occupied Territory, and there founded a law firm and played a key role in merging civil and common law in the establishment of land titles in the disputed area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. The present exchange reflects those duties, and enquiries made of R.C. Trimble, surveyor of Starr County, who responds that "I have located & surveyed the claims in question... I can forward the field notes to Austin with the claims attached in the proper way...if he will arrange to transmit the fees as agreed on by his his [sic] brother for locating, surveying etc..."