The Boston Card Manufactory
Orin W. Fiske was born in 1814 in Wales, Hampden County, Massachusetts. His great-grandfather had moved to Wales from Connecticut and owned a tavern and a large farm. When the Revolutionary War began, he was a lieutenant of a company of minute men, which marched to the Lexington alarm, and was afterward a captain in the Continental army. Two of his sons (age 14 and 16) were at the battle of Yorktown when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to end the war.
Orin would carry on this military tradition by serving in the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Division of the Massachusett Militia. He would obtain the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Information does not survive about what Orin did early in life but he must have moved around a lot. In 1835 the twenty-one year old Orin married the sixteen year old Hannah Marilla Tucker in the town of Pepperell on the other side of the state. They soon after moved to the little town of Dedham a few miles southwest of Boston. By 1850 he and his brother William manufactured playing cards in the old Silk factory near the railway station. The factory was run by steam instead of water. (See the Daniel Mann page for his Dedham connection)
Orin would carry on this military tradition by serving in the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Division of the Massachusett Militia. He would obtain the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Information does not survive about what Orin did early in life but he must have moved around a lot. In 1835 the twenty-one year old Orin married the sixteen year old Hannah Marilla Tucker in the town of Pepperell on the other side of the state. They soon after moved to the little town of Dedham a few miles southwest of Boston. By 1850 he and his brother William manufactured playing cards in the old Silk factory near the railway station. The factory was run by steam instead of water. (See the Daniel Mann page for his Dedham connection)
The building in Dedham where Orin made his playing cards
In 1850 Orin entered his playing cards in the Exhibitions and Fairs of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association. His division was called PRINTER'S AND BOOKBINDER'S MATERIALS. His entry was through Jones & Wheelwright a paper warehouse in Boston. The Judges declared his entry as "a fair article". The next year Jones & Wheelwright were selling the cards.
Fisk or Fiske? The spelling varies
The Fiskes took over the old Thomas Crehore playing card factory that burned in 1846 and hired his workers. This COULD BE the reason a mysterious deck appears about that time.
Same Crehore design, but with a spelling mistake. Did Fiske do that after he took over the factory ?
Later in 1851 William T. Fiske & Company now had an office in Boston besides Dedham.
In 1854 Orin Fiske had a patent accepted. It was No 11,313 for an "Improvement in Machinery for Making Pasteboard". His patent states "I claim the combination and arrangement of the cylindric paste brushes with three rolls or beams of paper and compressing and draft rolls whereby the two cylindric brushes are made to apply at one operation the paste to the underside of the upper strip of paper the two sides of the middle strip and the upper side of the lower strip all as set forth. The object of this invention is to apply paste to three rolls of paper at one and the same time and to bring and compress them together forming pasteboard".
He was also now listed in the Boston City Directory as "Fiske, Orin W & Jenks S. H . Card Manufacturers at 6 Water Street". The Massachusetts Business Directory also listed William as "W T Fiske Dedham playing cards".
By 1856 this ad appears in a Boston newspaper;
Who was the Boston Card Manufactory? It appears it is William T. Fiske. Why? Because of this rare deck is listed in the "Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards";
U9a BOSTON CARD FACTORY (Caleb Bartlett), New York, c1830. An almost identical U9 Ace with the same initialed courts, allowing us to positively identify the maker.
William T Fiske's Deck Wrapper and Ace of Spades
Caleb Bartlett's Ace of Spades
How did the Fiskes get the right to make the Bartlett cards? At this time I do not know the answer. George Cook did not have any obvious connections to Boston. Smith Ely had some due to his grandfather's leather business. Or did the Fiskes know about the Bartlett cards coming to an end? Maybe sometime in the future more information will be uncovered. At least we know more now than we did.