ALS in pencil, signed “Love from your constant lover, TAE,” two pages both sides, 5.5 x 8.5, no date but circa August 1901. Handwritten letter to his second wife Mina Miller, here called "Billy," about a strenuous field trip to Ontario to explore nickel reserves, involving an honorary reception by the city of Sudbury. Edison had developed an improved nickel-iron battery for automotive use, and traveled to Sudbury—a world leader in nickel mining—in search of raw materials as he began to scale his manufacturing operations. In part: "John writes you today & I assume tells you all about the trip in the woods—as I do not know what he told you I will recite all the events after you left. After the boys came from the Laboratory we took a carriage and 6 of us went out on the upper Wanatapae road to the Credyman mine...The mine is about 10 or 12 miles NE from Sudbury.
It has been cleared & exposed so we had a good chance to see the whole of the surface and the amount of nickel ore exposed. We also took along our magnetic needles and made a rough survey of the mine...This gave us lots of information which will be good for future use...Right near the mine we came onto a typical Canadian Lumber Camp. There was 5 low log cabins and 3 log stables, the latter containing about 30 horses...The strangest thing was that they had a railroad, a narrow gauge with regular steel rail, Locomotives & logging cars...The Municipality of Sudbury gave me an address, which was read by the mayor...after it was over I asked several of the city fathers to come down stairs and have some lemonade, there were seven or eight and all took whisky instead of lemonade...
We left Monday morning for Worthington...at this point we were to leave the Railroad & start south into the country which is very heavily wooded...we could only find swamp water which had the color of tea, this we boiled before drinking. We slept on the ground with a little hay upon which we laid our blankets. Towards morning it got very cold and a heavy fog settled down...we cooked breakfast & started out early for a lake to the south, the swamps, rocks, & fallen timber made progress very slow and very exhausting...I sprained my ankle slightly but the next morning it was ok. The guide preceded us and cut with an axe a bare spot on both sides of trees about 20 ft apart, we followed these spots very readily—it's called 'Blasing a trail.' We came to a pretty fine lake & made camp...The last 2 days I have been in camp, the boys have been out hunting corners & yesterday for the 1st time tried a survey with their needles. Today is Sunday & we keep it holy, tomorrow I am going out with the boys & try a new plan to surveying from Diorite to Huronian instead of surveyors posts which it's impossible to find." In fine condition, with a few small edge chips and tears.
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