Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
June 30, 1817
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 87
Notes:
Glauber salt is mirabilite today (sodium sulfate decahydrate).
Mammoth Cave, one is one of few prominent localites of this mineral, is now a national park in central Kentucky. Since the 1972 unification of Mammoth Cave with the even-longer system under Flint Ridge to the north, the official name of the system has been the Mammoth–Flint Ridge Cave System. Mammoth Cave is the world's longest known cave system with more than 400 miles (640 km) of surveyed passageways. . . . Mammoth Cave's saltpeter reserves became significant due to the Jefferson Embargo Act of 1807 which prohibited all foreign trade. The blockade starved the American military of saltpeter and therefore gunpowder. As a result, the domestic price of saltpeter rose and production based on nitrates extracted from caves such as Mammoth Cave became more lucrative.
The donor may have been John Finney McClenachan (1744-1825), who served in the Chester County (Pa.) militia during the Revolution and later moved to Kentucky.
