Solomon Henkel to Thomas Jefferson, 5 July 1817
From Solomon Henkel
New Market Shenandoah County virginia July 5th 1817.
Respected Friend Thomas Jefferson
By Mr Thomas Tausy I Send you a glass tumbler full of Hony which I obtained from my Bees according to the Plan laid down by Mr Morgan of Prince Town of New Jersy. Finding the Methode so pleasing a one I thought it my duty to publish the Success I have had with it which I did as you will find in the gazette printed at Winchester accompaning this glass out of that publication you will find how I have managed the Boxes &c. Knowing you to be a Friend to all usefull improvements and Scients I have (by the request of Mr Tausy) taken the Liberty to Send you a present as above in hopes you will comunicate the Improvement to your Neighbours. (If you think it worthy of comunicating). Should you have discovered a better Plan then this or Some additional Improvements I would receive them with Pleasure as Some Gentlemen have requested me to have handbills Struck which will give a full account of the Management of Bees &c which I could have done at my printing office.
Solomon Henkel.—
RC (MHi); endorsed by TJ as received 5 Oct. 1817 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosed in Alexander Garrett to TJ, 5 Oct. 1817.
Solomon Henkel (1777–1847), physician, pharmacist, and printer, studied medicine in Philadelphia before returning to Virginia in 1793 and later opening a drugstore in New Market. He expanded his business to sell books, and in 1806 his family started a prolific printing business in New Market that specialized in German-language and Lutheran texts and operated a weekly German newspaper. Henkel took over the press in 1814. He served as postmaster of New Market, 1801–14, and he practiced medicine in addition to his work as a printer (Charles W. Cassell, William J. Finck, and Elon O. Henkel, eds., History of The Lutheran Church in Virginia and East Tennessee [1930], 14, 309–12; Albert Sydney Edmonds, “The Henkels, Early Printers in New Market, Virginia, with a Bibliography,” , 2d ser., 18 [1938]: 174–95; , 2:1122; , 173; DNA: RG 29, CS, Shenandoah Co., 1810–40; American Medical Reporter 1 [1818]: 398–9; Cultivator 8 [1841]: 97; American Farmer, and Spirit of the Agricultural Journals of the Day, new ser., 6 [1844]: 109; ViU: Henkel-Miller Family Papers; Vi: Henkel Family Papers; Shenandoah Co. Will Book, Y:184–9; gravestone in Emmanuel Lutheran Church Cemetery, New Market).
Henkel’s enclosed piece from an unidentified issue of the Winchester gazette was reprinted in the Alexandria Gazette & Daily Advertiser, 19 July 1817. It included instructions from an encyclopedia article written by George Morgan of Princeton, New Jersey, on how to extract honey from a hive without harming the bees, along with Henkel’s 6 June 1816 covering letter and his own observations on the method (Anthony F. M. Willich, The Domestic Encyclopædia; or, A Dictionary of Facts, and Useful Knowledge, ed. James Mease [Philadelphia, 1803–04], 1:239–40).
Index Entries
- agriculture; beekeeping search
- beekeeping; methods of search
- food; honey search
- Henkel, Solomon; as beekeeper search
- Henkel, Solomon; identified search
- Henkel, Solomon; letter from search
- honey search
- Morgan, George; and beekeeping search
- newspapers; Winchester Gazette search
- Tausy, Thomas; delivers goods search
- Winchester, Va.; newspapers in search
- Winchester Gazette (newspaper); sent to TJ search