Manuscript map of 21 named properties in Sherburn, New York, with Autograph Note Signed, in pencil, to James Coolidge. Sherburn, undated, ca. 1831-33
- SIGNED
Single sheet measuring 12 x 15 ½ inches. Some chips and tears, repaired with archival tape, with no significant loss of text.
1833 Maynard's Earliest known manuscript – hand-drawn map and letter - by the Dentist who would become the leading gun inventor of the Civil War.
The note reads: "I can do nothing toward finishing the map until I have the distances which I have marked...If you can ascertain these distances, I think I can get along. P.S. When you have marked the distances on the lines, hand the sheet to Father, and he will send to bring it to me…Put the distances down in chains and links...The scale I use is set for that way of measuring…"
Ten years before the Civil War, Maynard, then a popular Washington, D.C. dentist, invented the breech-loading gun known as the Maynard Carbine, which would be used by thousands of Union and Confederate Cavalry soldiers. This map, drawn 20 years before, as a 19- or 20-year-old West Point dropout, may be the earliest known example of his youthful talents. (The Maynard Papers at the Library of Congress apparently date from 1836, after he had relocated to Washington.)
When young Maynard drew this map of the properties adjacent to the farm of his father, a New York state legislator and County Sheriff, he had just quit West Point where he had found the drill too strenuous for his "delicate health". Returning to his home in Sherburn to begin the self-study of surveying, civil engineering, drawing, architecture and anatomy - all in preparation for his chosen career of Dentistry – he began to design and forge his own dental instruments, personally welding iron and steel at a local blacksmith's shop, some of his inventions accepted as brilliant innovations in Dental instrumentation of the time. After briefly practicing Dentistry in Utica, in 1835, he moved permanently to Washington, D.C., where, in addition to his dental practice, he displayed skill in wood engraving, wood carving, clay modeling, painting and architectural drawing (which "ranked with the best efforts of the most accomplished experts.") Working for a time in Europe as "Imperial Court Dentist" to the Czar of Russia, he returned to Washington to care for the teeth of an exclusive clientele that included several Presidents, being renowned in the capital as the first American Dentist to fill teeth with gold foil. But all this was prelude to the firearms invention that made him world famous among military professionals.
In 1845 he patented a system of priming consisting of a coiled, tape-like paper strip containing fifty fulminate caps spaced at equal distances apart, and a mechanism which automatically fed the tape, a cap at a time, from the recess of the gun in which it was protected, into position for firing. The Maynard tape primer, as it was called, was adopted by the federal government and generally used by the governments of Europe. In 1851 he patented an improvement in breech-loading rifles here which, with subsequent improvements made by him in the succeeding fourteen years, brought about the general adoption of the Maynard rifle by governments and sportsmen throughout the world. Prior to 1886 he patented also a number of minor improvements in firearms, including a method of converting muzzle-loaders into breech-loaders; a method of joining two rifle or shotgun barrels to permit a longitudinal expansion or contraction; and a device to indicate the number of cartridges in a magazine of a repeating firearm.
Dictionary of American Biography, vol. VI, pp., 457-458
1833 Maynard's Earliest known manuscript – hand-drawn map and letter - by the Dentist who would become the leading gun inventor of the Civil War.
The note reads: "I can do nothing toward finishing the map until I have the distances which I have marked...If you can ascertain these distances, I think I can get along. P.S. When you have marked the distances on the lines, hand the sheet to Father, and he will send to bring it to me…Put the distances down in chains and links...The scale I use is set for that way of measuring…"
Ten years before the Civil War, Maynard, then a popular Washington, D.C. dentist, invented the breech-loading gun known as the Maynard Carbine, which would be used by thousands of Union and Confederate Cavalry soldiers. This map, drawn 20 years before, as a 19- or 20-year-old West Point dropout, may be the earliest known example of his youthful talents. (The Maynard Papers at the Library of Congress apparently date from 1836, after he had relocated to Washington.)
When young Maynard drew this map of the properties adjacent to the farm of his father, a New York state legislator and County Sheriff, he had just quit West Point where he had found the drill too strenuous for his "delicate health". Returning to his home in Sherburn to begin the self-study of surveying, civil engineering, drawing, architecture and anatomy - all in preparation for his chosen career of Dentistry – he began to design and forge his own dental instruments, personally welding iron and steel at a local blacksmith's shop, some of his inventions accepted as brilliant innovations in Dental instrumentation of the time. After briefly practicing Dentistry in Utica, in 1835, he moved permanently to Washington, D.C., where, in addition to his dental practice, he displayed skill in wood engraving, wood carving, clay modeling, painting and architectural drawing (which "ranked with the best efforts of the most accomplished experts.") Working for a time in Europe as "Imperial Court Dentist" to the Czar of Russia, he returned to Washington to care for the teeth of an exclusive clientele that included several Presidents, being renowned in the capital as the first American Dentist to fill teeth with gold foil. But all this was prelude to the firearms invention that made him world famous among military professionals.
In 1845 he patented a system of priming consisting of a coiled, tape-like paper strip containing fifty fulminate caps spaced at equal distances apart, and a mechanism which automatically fed the tape, a cap at a time, from the recess of the gun in which it was protected, into position for firing. The Maynard tape primer, as it was called, was adopted by the federal government and generally used by the governments of Europe. In 1851 he patented an improvement in breech-loading rifles here which, with subsequent improvements made by him in the succeeding fourteen years, brought about the general adoption of the Maynard rifle by governments and sportsmen throughout the world. Prior to 1886 he patented also a number of minor improvements in firearms, including a method of converting muzzle-loaders into breech-loaders; a method of joining two rifle or shotgun barrels to permit a longitudinal expansion or contraction; and a device to indicate the number of cartridges in a magazine of a repeating firearm.
Dictionary of American Biography, vol. VI, pp., 457-458