Inventor John L. Graves Fishing Rod Patent

United States patent issued to Sunderland native John Long Graves. Graves was living at 45 Maple Street in Springfield Ma. when he was granted this patent was 1875. The patent is for "improvement in fishing rods".
In 1900 John Long Graves had built and donated the building which housed the Sunderland library until 2003.

United States patent office.

June 22, 1875.

Print on paper with cloth ribbon.

Boston Journal of Commerce
Dear sir Accept the warm congratulations of the Boston journal of commerce, for the great victory you have gained in carrying away the very highest award at the exposition. It is a victory worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to you if instant + proper use be made of it. To receive such a commendation where the compitition was more than the world has ever seen, cannot be but highly appreciated by you. Your victory is complete, and I am preparing an article on you to take up about a fourth of over long collums in which your triumph is made the subject of the whole article. If you have any special points you wish me to touch upon don't fail to say so in your reply. Will you take a hundred copies of the paper @.10 to cover our costs? It will be the best card you ever had and will cost you little or nothing. The article is headed Highest Medal Exhibitors, in very large bold type. Our circulation 93,000 and will go over the whole world. Please answer without delay stating if you will take 100 copies so I may know weather to publish it or not. Direct to this office in Philadelphia.
Very truly yours
A. Watson Atwood