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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;riff, post: 3973617, member: 36853&quot;]The back reads Scovil Leavenworth. Leavenworth was Scovill&#039;s business partner. from Scovill&#039;s site </p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;From the founding date recognized by the company, Scovill began business in 1802 in what was most likely a small wooden shed hidden behind a house in Waterbury, Connecticut. Its origins were steeped in the much-vaunted tradition of New England entrepreneurship, although the exact details of its first decade of business were murky at best, clouded by the passage of time and the modest origins from which it sprang. A handful of businessmen were affiliated with the company at its outset, when the business was known as Abel Porter &amp; Company, including its namesake, the self-proclaimed &quot;first Gilt Button Maker in the United States.&quot; Abel Porter, whose tenure with the company lasted less than a decade, was joined in 1808 by David Hayden, a button maker from Attleborough, Massachusetts, who stayed with the company through its first meaningful transition in 1811. In 1811, the cadre of Abel Porter &amp; Company directors went their separate ways to pursue other interests, giving way to a new triumvirate of leaders. Hayden was one of the trio, a &quot;second partner,&quot; whose prominence on some undetermined level fell short of a new arrival in 1811, Dr. Frederick Leavenworth. Leavenworth, who according to contemporary reports was &quot;possessed of a quick insight into men and things,&quot; breathed new life into the company and offered himself as its leader. Although Leavenworth asserted his seniority in both the name of the new business and his rank within it, the true leader of the company was its third partner, James Mitchell Lamson Scovill. Together, the three formed Leavenworth, Hayden &amp; Scovill, the successor to Abel Porter &amp; Company.</p><p><br /></p><p>Prior to the arrival of new blood in 1811, the company made buttons with pewter, a material most likely obtained by melting down old kitchen utensils, but soon the switch was made to buttons made out of brass. Waterbury, the company&#039;s home town for nearly two centuries, was regarded as the brass center of the United States, and Scovill, as one of the primary brass producers in the region. With the metal, Scovill manufactured a wide range of products, including buttons, hinges, and many other commodities at its metal castings operation. In the beginning, however, the company&#039;s production capabilities were decidedly meager. For nearly a decade, the company used horses to power its small &quot;flatting&quot; rolls, but when Leavenworth and Scovill arrived they invested several thousand dollars in a new production facility to manufacture one of the commodities the company made from brass. The new button shop, built in 1812, helped accommodate the surge in demand for buttons ushered in by the War of 1812. Leavenworth, Hayden &amp; Scovill supplied pewter shank buttons for naval forces during the war, as well as buttons for the U.S. Army, Artillery, and Rifleman, beginning a long tradition of supplying the federal government with military buttons for every war from 1812 to the end of the 20th century.&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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