It is significant to note that Burnap made instruments of varying quality. For instance, he charged three different prices for his surveyor's compasses. The highest-priced compasses cost £6; they were made of brass, and were of the more elaborate conventional type used by surveyors. A few examples that appeared in his records cost £4; these also were made of brass, but probably were of a simpler form. Several entries list surveying compasses priced at £2 and £2/8. One of these was made for Capt. Solomon Dewie (1750-1813) in September 1790 for £2/8. At the same time, Burnap charged him £0/1/6 for touching the needle of another compass.[120] The entries in Burnap's account books do not state that these inexpensive compasses were constructed of wood, but it seems to be sufficiently conclusive that they were.
Gurdon Huntington
Gurdon Huntington (1763-1804) was not primarily a maker of scientific instruments, but he was established as a goldsmith and clockmaker. He was born in Windham, Connecticut, on April 30, 1763, the son of Hezekiah and Submit (Murdock) Huntington.[121]
Figure 64.—Entry in the manuscript ledgers of Daniel Burnap (1759-1838) of East Windsor and Coventry, Connecticut, for sale of surveying compass in 1790. Reproduced from the Burnap shop records in the collection of Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford.
The Huntington family was one of the most important in Connecticut colonial history. Gurdon's father, Hezekiah, was in service during the Revolutionary War, going to Boston as a major with the first troops raised in Connecticut. When in Boston he witnessed the miserable condition of the arms then in the hands of the soldiers. Major Huntington went immediately to Philadelphia, where Congress was in session, and proposed to the Congress that he would return to his home in Windham and that there he would open a manufactory for repairing muskets and other arms. He claimed to have been the first man to have made a gun in the Colonies.
Gurdon was too young to have served in the Revolution, but he undoubtedly worked in his father's gun manufactory as a boy. In due course he learned the trades of goldsmith and clockmaker and established his own shop in Windham, which, according to an advertisement (fig. 65) in The Connecticut Gazette of June 11, 1784, was "a few rods north of Major Ebenezer Backus' store."
On Christmas Day, 1785, Gurdon was married in New London to Temperance Williams of Groton. In 1789 their first child, Marvin, was born, and in October of the same year the Huntingtons moved from Windham to Walpole, New Hampshire. No reason can be found for the move, other than the possibility that Gurdon might have anticipated greater opportunity in the new community. There he applied himself to his trade as goldsmith and clockmaker, but apparently he was not very successful. His family grew, and by the time of his death there were eight children. Possibly in an effort to supplement his income, Huntington served as postmaster of the community. In about 1797, seven or eight years after he had moved to Walpole, his father and mother joined him there, and it is believed that Major Hezekiah may have worked as a gunsmith during that period. Eventually the senior Huntington returned to Windham, Connecticut, where he died in 1807.[122]
Meanwhile Gurdon Huntington struggled on until his death on July 26, 1804. He died insolvent, which created a considerable problem in view of the large family he left behind him. Huntington's estate was administered by Asa Sibley, a clockmaker in Walpole. Sibley had moved to Walpole from his home in Woodstock, Connecticut, in the 1790's and he remained there until 1808, when he again returned to Woodstock. Gurdon Huntington's widow removed to Bloomfield, Ohio, with her children, and she died there on May 25, 1823. Most of her children settled in Bloomfield, but several of them moved to New Hartford, New York.
