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Several pieces of Talk [talc] 5 inches long 3 1/2 broad found in a quarry of that fossil in a mountain seventy miles from Portsmouth in New Hampshire

Object Status:

Unlocated

Accession Date:

May 1781

Primary Source Reference:

Du Simitière Memorandum Books, Library of Congress, fol. 59r

Additional Source Text:

"And of which window lights are made, both in that State [&] in the next of Vermont."

Notes:

Talc is a clay mineral, composed of hydrated magnesium silicate. "Before glass became relatively cheap, the material used to make windows was often described as talc, though this was probably more often mica, a group of more complex silicates." Royal Society of Chemistry / https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/talc-magnesium-silicate/3010344…

The donor, John Sullivan (1740-1795), was an Irish-American general in the Revolutionary War, a delegate in the Continental Congress, Governor of New Hampshire, and a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire. As a major general in the Continental Army, he commanded the Sullivan Expedition in 1779, a scorched earth campaign against the Iroquois towns that had taken up arms against the American revolutionaries.