WHO ARE WE?
The People Who Helped Reshape the Museum.
We did not find, nor were we likely to have found, a single individual who had detailed knowledge in each category of objects found in our museum’s collection. The following is a general list of those categories and information about the advisors.
JAY BOERI
Director, Chair of the Trustees of this Museum and Principal Writer of this Story.
Hartland, Vermont
Jay (John) Boeri is a jack-of-all trades engineer, planner, US patent holder, historian, and a Mr. Fix-it type.
"In the mid 1980’s I found myself building a small commercial hydro-electric plant on the foundations of saw and grist mills first built in 1767 in the town where I live. A few descendants of the three families who operated these mills over a period of 170 years were still alive and eager to talk. They mostly told me of their families’ calamitous stories of flood and fire, toil and trouble. But each person had the same ending comment, “You should have been here yesterday. Battison was here.” "Who?" I inquired. I finally met the man poking around my mill. He said he wanted to do the same at his own mill and was looking for help - volunteer help. Being curious, I enlisted, and over the next 30 years one thing has led to another."
Joan Combie and Edwin in 1981
JOAN COMBIE
Museum Trustee and its Vice Chair
Her parents were Edwin’s close friends. She now plays a similar and supportive role, transcribing the diaries, sometimes reading about herself.
BARBARA RHOAD
Museum Trustee and its Secretary
A life-long resident of Windsor, Vermont and Edwin’s nearby neighbor, she is known throughout the area as Ms. Windsor History. She is an important part of our museum and volunteers at the Windsor Historical Society and the Vermont Constitution House. Although an octogenarian, she dutifully mows its lawn and tends its garden.
RAY PORTER
Watch Collection Advisor
"Nearly 30 years ago, I met Edwin Battison. A mutual friend told Ed about a Pitkin watch I had recently acquired, and Mr. Battison wanted to see it. He invited me into his home where he examined the H.&J.F. Pitkin movement and we "talked watches" for a while. He asked for a lift to the town of Alstead, NH to retrieve his Volkswagen pickup truck from the mechanic. I later learned that Mr. Battison rarely allowed folks in his home, especially strangers. With only about a half-dozen original Pitkin watches known to exist, having one in your pocket will unlock the door of any serious collector of American pocket watches.
I have been repairing watches from about the age of 12 when I fixed my Dad`s Westclox dollar watch that my mother had accidentally laundered. After graduating from high school, I went to work for a local jeweler as a watchmaker. For more than forty years I have been involved in the watch world, and have operated my own business for the past 25 years, buying, restoring and selling vintage pocket and wrist watches. Like Mr. Battison, I am fascinated with the history and mechanics of Early American pocket watches.
For the past ten years, I have worked with Jay Boeri at Mr. Battison`s Franklin Museum of Nature and the Human Spirit as their pocket watch consultant."
STEVE SANBORN
Clock Collection Advisor
He grew up in Winchester, MA, where at the age of 10 began visiting a local jeweler - watch and clock repairman to pursue his fascination with clocks. Eventually, the old man took Steve on as an apprentice, and when he passed away, left his tools and supplies to his young apprentice; thus the repair business took off at age 14. Steve worked at various clock repair shops in New Hampshire during and after his college years at New England College, where he received a business degree. His new career after graduation as a loan officer at a commercial bank was cut short. Many bank customers were bringing clocks to be repaired, so Steve left the bank in 1976 to start his full-time repair business in Hillsboro and Sunapee, NH. His wife, Debbie worked with him in the business beginning in the early 1980's.
Steve retired in 2013 and has been a member of the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors for 60 years, having been named an old timer in 2001, and a Fellow in 2018. He has repaired clocks for private collectors, individuals, the State of NH, museums and historical societies. During the last 10 years he has inventoried and repaired many clocks at the Franklin Museum of Nature and the Human Spirit. Steve has lectured about antique clocks, conducted numerous workshops, and currently teaches at the school that he founded, affectionately known as "Tick Tock Tech."
Steve never met Edwin, but throughout his career one of his main reference books was “American Clocks” by Edwin Battison.
WILLIAM JOHNSON
Machine Tools and Machinery Advisor
"I have worked in and for museums and private collectors in what is broadly called Industrial Archeology for over 30 years. My first encounter with Ed Battison was indirect. I was hired to help renovate a mid-19th. century cotton mill that had been abandoned and partially collapsed in Carolina, Rhode Island. I began removing machines from the rubble but found that the machine shop was nearly empty. When I asked the owner what had become of the machines, he said that a Mr. Battison of Windsor, Vermont had gotten them years ago.
In years since, both at Slater Mill Historic Site in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and buying machinery for the upcoming Ogawa/Sankyo Metal-Working Museum to be opened near Tokyo, I have frequently encountered places where Ed got there first. People throughout New England have told me of Ed's passion and determination to acquire the widest variety of machine tools, accessories, literature, and more. I never consulted for him at the American Precision Museum but for the last 6 years have done so for the Franklin Museum of Nature and the Human Spirit, working with Jay Boeri.
As a side note, while acting as machinery curator at Slater Mill, I discovered Ed had lent an early gear cutter (probably from a R.I. mill) to the working machine shop exhibit at the Wilkinson Mill."
PETER LEVESQUE
General Collection Advisor
"I first met Ed Battison over 50 years ago when I was a young lad. My parents had known him all of their lives. I remember well when he acquired the Robins and Lawrence Armory building in Windsor and I spent countless hours there exploring and marveling at all of the things that he was bringing into that building.
In later years after the museum had been established, I frequently visited him in his office for many insightful exchanges of ideas and history. I spent a lot of time in those days exploring the back roads and I knew where certain relics were located, often to his great interest. We managed to do a fair amount of horse trading over the years, but he would never tip his hand and was a very formidable and challenging person to barter with.
In later years I visited him often in his retirement, although he never really did seem to slow down that much until the very end. For about the last 16 years I have helped Jay Boeri at the Franklin Museum with inventorying the trove of artifacts and paper."
DON BOURDON
Stanley Steamers and Locomobiles Advisor
Don Bourdon is a life-long Stanley Steamer car owner, a top to bottom Stanley restorer, steam boiler maker, and Stanley car meet organizer. He is the Franklin Museum’s guide to rebuilding its three steamers and sorting a large quantity of spare parts. In the 1940s, Don’s father Paul, while driving his steamer on an ancient, one lane Vermont road, came around a blind corner and for the first time met Edwin Battison coming in the other direction in his Stanley.
TERRY TYLER & BILL STEWART
Firearms Collection Advisors
Our firearms collection nicely dovetails in quality and numbers with that of APM. We suggest you visit their webpage (www.americanprecision.org) to see the other firearms and gun making tools that Edwin acquired, including those donated by his friend Maxfield Parrish Jr.
Terry Tyler, author of Vermont’s Gunsmiths and Gunmakers to 1900, helped catalog the Franklin Museum of Nature and the Human Spirit’s early American firearms collection. Most of Mr. Tyler’s collection was sold to the Shelburne Museum and is now on permanent exhibition. He dedicated his book to three-gun experts, one of them Edwin Battison.
Bill Stewart is a New Hampshire gun collector, in the process of writing a book on that state’s early gunsmiths. Bill too was of great help cataloging the museum’s collection.
JAY BOERI, SON ANDREW BOERI, and PETER LEVESQUE
Barometers, Thermometers, Scientific Instruments, Patent and Machine Models, Compasses, Levels and Antique Hand Tools.
And
Books, Manuscripts, Day and Ledger Books, Correspondence, Early Catalogs and Periodicals, Biographical Material, Maps, Lithographs, Daguerreotypes, Tintypes, Glass Plate Negatives, Film, Slides and Prints.
Arranged and partly inventoried by Jay Boeri, Peter Levesque and Andrew Boeri. My son Andrew did the first sorting of hundreds of boxes of Edwin’s unorganized papers and books. It was a monumental task, but one that found many hidden treasures concealed in unexpected places.
An Acknowledgement
Mary Ann Johnson
Edwin taught night classes at the University of Pennsylvania and Mary Ann was one of his students. She later moved to Windsor and was a great help to him in the early days of the APM and later looked after him. At some point she passed the baton on to me. She told me of the time Edwin took his night class on a field trip to a casting foundry on a day they were pouring man-hole covers. Edwin described in such great detail the intricacies of the operation that everyone just wanted it to end. So, as she said, to this day she can’t drive over a manhole cover without thinking of Edwin.