Chronicles of the Commercial Visible, Part IV of VI
- Feb 8
- 10 min read
The New Directors
In Parts I - III of Chronicles of the Commercial Visible, we were introduced to the Commercial Visible typewriter, evolved with her as she gained new attachments and entered the market as the new Model 6, learned of Uhlig and Baldwin, her inventor and first directors, and discovered various companies associated with her manufacture and sale. In Part IV of the story, we will take some time to learn about the background of her two new directors, Carlton C. W. Peck, and Alex M. Fiske, and will learn when they became acquainted with the Commercial Visible typewriter. With an understanding of their backgrounds we will understand how they influenced the story of the Commercial Visible typewriter.
Carlton Cornelius Washington Peck
Here on the cusp of 1902, we take a pause from the life of the Commercial Visible typewriter to explore the life of the machine’s new directors, Carlton C. W. Peck and Alex M. Fiske. We begin with the new inventor, Carlton Cornelius Washington Peck, who was born on October 2, 1863, in Meriden, Connecticut, to a carriage maker named Alden Peck and his wife, Elizabeth W. Stewart (US Census, 1910b; MA State Vital, 1902; RI Vital Records, 1937; Price, Lee & Co., 1887). Carlton grew up at 62 Wall Street, Meriden, CT, with a brother named Charles A. Peck, and two sisters who were to become known as Mrs. C. W. Dunham and Mrs. W. S. Hallock (“Mortuary Record”, 1893). In August 1886, around Carlton’s 21st birthday, his parents transferred real estate on Wall Street in Meriden, likely the family house, to Chas A. and Carlton C. W. Peck (“Real Estate Transfers”, 1886). At that time, the brothers were working on the property as printers (Price, Lee & Co., 1887), and the following year, the papers announced that the Peck Brothers had moved their printing business to the old Press Recorder building on South Colony St., also in Meriden (“Of Local Interest”, 1887).
In August 1888, the Peck Brothers and Levi F. Eaton’s Illustrating and Engraving Co. businesses consolidated to form the Eaton & Peck Company, an engraving, printing, and publishing business (“Eaton & Peck”, 1888; “Meriden Business Matters”, 1888). Each man held a third of the shares in the company. Levi Eaton was named president, while Charles Peck was named secretary and treasurer (Rockey, 1892). The stated business of the company included “dealing in and manufacturing stationary goods of all kinds, [including] . . . rubber stamps and seals, [and] engraving dies . . .” (“Articles of Association”, 1888, p. 8). Carlton's former experience in printing, experience in manufacturing engraving dies and other such metal work, and experience dealing in stationery goods all contributed to the skills he would have used in the world of typewriter manufacturing and sales. Perhaps he learned caution as well from these former experiences. In December 1889, the year the company took over the old Railway Signal Building factory, one of their employees, W. E. Giles, crushed his hand in the grippers of the printing press, and four fingers had to be amputated (Rockey, 1892; “W. P. Hall”, 1937; “State Items”, 1889).
On April 10, 1891, the engraving company issued a petition to change their name from Eaton & Peck to The Meriden Gravure Company (“Notice”, 1891; “Superior Court”, 1891). This change was likely due to a change in management. Levi Eaton received a job offer in Detroit, MI, and had already left town by the time the papers announced his leaving the company on May 1, 1891 (“L. F. Eaton”, 1891). It seems that his departure was not the only change either. After a brief hiccup in January 1892, where the company was unable to deliver on an order for the town newspaper (“The Reason Why”, 1892), an article published by the company in March of that same year indicated that J. F. Allen was the acting “practical business head” and treasurer of the company (“Meriden Gravure Co.”, 1892). We find later that he took on the role of superintendent of the factory. This means that Charles A. Peck had been displaced, an interesting coincidence even if the two events were not related. Although neither held director offices following this change, the Peck brothers remained connected with the company (“Located in New York”, 1894).
Superintendent Allen had his own share of issues while in office, including an inevitable factory fire which broke out in October 1893. It seems the matter was resolved since Allen showed his appreciation to the firemen who assisted by gifting them boxes of cigars (“Firemen Will Smoke”, 1893). The next month, the Peck brothers’ father, Alden Peck, passed away (“Mortuary Record”, 1893), and the following year the Peck brothers seemed to have had enough. On May 1, 1894, the papers announced that “The Peck Brothers, who have been connected with the Meriden Gravure company for some time, are now located in New York City, where they are dealing in type writing machines” (“Located in New York”, 1894, p. 7). More specifically, in 1895, Carlton Peck was listed as the proprietor of the Union Square Typewriter Exchange at 10 East 14th, New York City (Trow Directory, 1895a). For reference, 1894 was also the year that William Bell Baldwin moved away from carpets and towards typewriters, and became associated with the Universal Typewriter Company.
10 East 14th, New York City
The building at 10 East 14th had a history of its own. If you are interested in a full account, I recommend the Village Preservation website at https://www.villagepreservation.org/ which contains an article about this building and others around Greenwich Village. From that site, I learned that this building also happened to be home to the New York City Woman Suffrage League, which was one of the leading groups in the woman’s suffrage movement at the turn of the 20th century (Winchell, 2019). According to the blog, the building had been re-built in 1879 following a collapse that occurred while it was being renovated. Around that time, fashion giant W. Jennings Demorest had started buying land along East 14th and turned the area into a high-end shopping district. By 1894, he had purchased No. 10. It was in 1894 that the Woman Suffrage League moved into the building, seeing an advantage in housing their headquarters in the middle of the shopping district to better connect with wealthy women who could support the movement.
This building also had a potentially hidden advantage for the movement. Demorest, the owner of the building, had run on the Prohibitionist Party ticket as Mayor of New York City in 1892. It just so happened that the Prohibitionist Party had its roots in the temperance movement, and that movement was closely linked to the woman suffrage movement. It was through the temperance movement that the well known Susan B. Anthony was able to start agitating for woman suffrage (“Susan B. Anthony”, n.d.), and one of the leaders in the suffrage movement, Mary Seymour Howell, who was from New York and gave a “monster suffrage petition” to the New York state constitutional convention in 1894, also did a lot of work for the temperance movement in the 1870-1880s (“Mary Seymour Howell”, 2025). Perhaps there was a reason that the women of the suffrage movement in New York were able to secure such a prime spot for their headquarters?
But what does all this have to do with one of the directors of our little Commercial Visible typewriter? Although a nice coincidence, it is not related to the fact that typewriters were one of the early freedom symbols for women. (It is well established that the typewriter enabled women to independently enter the workforce as typists). Going back to 1888, you may have noticed that, while Charles Peck was named secretary and treasurer of Eaton & Peck Company, his brother Carlton did not hold an office in the company. Instead, Carlton was working on a political campaign. Carlton C. W. Peck was nominated for the Prohibitionist party in Connecticut in 1889 as an Auditor, and in 1890 - 1891 as the Town Clerk (“The Prohibitionists”, 1889; “Prohibition Town”, 1890; “Prohibition Ticket”, 1891). For context, this was only one year before Mr. Demorest ran for the same party in New York City as Mayor. When the Peck brothers moved to New York in 1895, it is possible that they connected with Demorest, which may have led to Carlotn’s position with the Union Square Typewriter Exchange, which happened to have been housed in Mr. Demorest’s building, along with the New York City Woman Suffrage League. . . . Well, even if these correlations are a bit of a stretch to consider causation, it is without a doubt that Carlton Peck moved into a place that matched his political views quite nicely.
By 1896, Carlton had his own office at 99 Nassau, New York (Trow Directory, 1896), where he was listed as manager. This was the same year that he signed and submitted a patent for a way to double space and backspace while using the “Brooks” typewriter. U. S. Patent 580,117 had been granted on April 6, 1897, and was assigned to Wyckoff, Seamans & Benedict of Ilion, NY (Peck, 1897), the firm that formed the famous Remington Standard Typewriter Company. As an aside, that patent was associated with US Patent 572,289, invented by Byron A. Brooks of Brooklyn, NY, which had also been assigned to Wyckoff, Seamans, & Benedict, and which was also related to the double space mechanism on the “Brooks” Typewriter (Brooks, 1896). It seems that Peck had been writing patents based on other typewriter inventions for a while. For those unfamiliar, Byron A. Brooks was also an influential typewriter inventor whose inventions included the People’s typewriter, a way to have upper and lower case letters on a typewriter, and the design of the Remington model 2 (Messenger, 2011a).
This early connection with typewriter geniuses was not exclusive to Brooks. In 1897, Peck was an agent for the well-known Daugherty Typewriter Company (S. S. McClure Co., 1897), and in 1898, he was dealing in typewriters at a new address, 320 Broadway, New York (Trow Directory, 1898), which was located along what typewriter historian Michael A. Brown called “typewriter row”. It’s worth it to note that the same building housed the Franklin typewriter company in 1899, and Yost in 1900-1901 (Brown, 2003). While Carlton’s work life had him rubbing shoulders with typewriter giants, his personal life was flourishing as well. In 1901, Carlton either owned two residences, or had moved from New York to Rutherford, NJ; he was previously listed as living at 86 Sterling Place, New York (Lain & Healy, 1898). Then, on December 3, 1902, Carlton married a stenographer from Newark named Caroline Grace Richards (MA State Vital, 1902).
It is here that we are brought back to the main line of our story. As you may recall, it was in 1901 that Peck had helped to incorporate the Visible Typewriters Company with a new partner, Alex M. Fiske.
Alexander Mott Fiske
Alexander Mott Fiske was born on August 1, 1862, in New Hackensack, New York (US Passport Applications, 1902; US Passport Applications, 1909; US Census, 1910a). He started his career in sales for machinery companies specializing in printing equipment. Like Peck, it seems Fiske also had a good foundation for his future in typewriter manufacturing. While in his mid-20s, from around 1887 to 1889, Fiske worked as a traveling representative for Whitlock Machine Works, the manufacturers of Improved Cylinder Presses and Champion Paper Cutters (Cameron, 1887; “Trade News”, 1891). The company’s main offices were located in Birmingham, CT. Then, from about 1889 to 1890, he worked for the Campbell Press Company at 102 Chambers, New York, while living in Plainfield, NJ (“Trade News”, 1891; Trow City Directory, 1887; Trow City Directory, 1888; Trow City Directory, 1890).
In 1891, Fiske went into business with G. Edward Osborn and with him formed G. Edw. Osborn & Co., the successors to George E. Ives, formerly located at 379 State St., in New Haven, CT (“Trade News”, 1891). According to the announcement, Mr. Osborn had been the secretary of the Whitlock Machine Works, which is where the two men must have forged a partnership. They took over all machinery and tooling of the former George E. Ives company, and continued to sell the company’s merchandise, such as the Elm City card cutter, counting machine, and bronzing pad. They also decided to move the offices from 379 to 393 State St. (“Trade News”, 1891). That same year they were found on vacation together on a “two day pleasure voyage” in Connecticut on a sloop yacht named the Clarence (Stricken, 1891). Unfortunately their trip was cut short when their traveling companion and friend, George Stratton of Seymour, CT, became sick, “raged”, fell, cut himself, and was finally taken back to Mr. Osbourne’s house to heal. This trip, which looked more like pleasure than business, suggests that Osborn and Fiske may have been friends as well as partners.
In the five years that followed, not much could be found on the whereabouts of Alex Fiske, until 1896, when we found him in New York with a house at 100 W. 67th, and an office at 132 Nassau (Trow Directory, 1896). That street should sound familiar; Carlton Peck coincidentally owned an office at 99 Nassau that same year. It is hard to tell exactly why Alex Fiske moved back home, but we do know that on November 9, 1897, he and Jennie Lawrence Ryder, born February 21, 1871, were married in New York, their shared native state (US Census, 1910a; NY City Marriage, 1897; US Passport Applications, 1909; NY Passenger, 1927).
The following year, Alex was listed as one of the incorporators of The Atlantic Paper Company of Jersey City, NJ, and had moved again to 129 W. 61st (Trow Directory, 1898). Atlantic Paper Company had been incorporated to manufacture and sell paper and paper boards. The other incorporators were Jackson Orr, Robert Orr, and John W. Abbott of Jersey City (“New Corporations”, 1898). Come 1899, Alex had once again moved his residential location to 842 Lexington Ave. (Trow Directory, 1900; US Passport Applications, 1902). Throughout his personal moves, Alex maintained what seems to have been his personal office at 132 Nassau, and in 1900, as you may recall, he had started to focus on the typewriter industry, selling the Index Visible typewriter out of that very office.
Which brings us back to 1901, when Mr. Fiske was treasurer of the Visible Typewriters Company, and was selling the Commercial Visible and Index Visible typewriters.
In Part IV of Chronicles of the Commercial Visible we were introduced to two new players in the life of the Commercial Visible, Carlton C. W. Peck and Alex M. Fiske. We explored their backgrounds to provide hints into where these men came from and why they may have wanted to take part in the story of the Commercial Visible typewriter. In Part V, we will continue with the story of the typewriter, picking back up in 1902, where we find her feathered trails approaching their tips.
References
Due to the length of the reference list for this six part series, it has been posted separately. Please see the article titled "Chronicles of the Commercial Visible, References" for a complete list of all sources you will encounter in the text, and from which the pictures were pulled.
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