Four Morris Shipping Dates Found!

[Kathryn Klos]

The attached image is the invoice for four Morris canoes shipped to Kennedy Bros. in Minneapolis in 1911. The table (in the KnowledgeBase) that MGC devised, based on a couple known ship-dates, appears to be spot-on!

Morris canoes 8435 and 8307 are Model A, Type 1, original color light C.P. Green, and were shipped April 27, 1911.

Morris canoes 7974 and 7969, also Model A (no color mentioned) shipped April 28, 1911; 7974 returned to the factory May 16th.

This invoice was found among a heap of Morris bills and receipts that I am going through... interesting stuff, if you enjoy handsome antique ephemera that might hold clues-- and want to know where Morris got their tacks and paint. Don't worry-- I will share all the important news. This stuff belongs to all of us.

I love serendipity, and need to share the second-most important part of this message. One of the Morris canoes Denis and I owned-- the one I used for the YouTube video demonstrating aspects of the Morris canoe-- is Morris 8435. How amazing is that?

 

[pklonowski]

WOW!!! That is all WAY too cool! Looking forward to the journal article already!

 

[Kathryn Klos]

Yeah, I suppose I should do a journal article on this. I don't think the table of dates/serial numbers has been run in the journal, and since this information supports it, now might be the time.

I should add that Kennedy Bros. is a sporting goods store-- one of Morris's dealers.

 

[tnyankee]

Kathy,

That is so cool!

Adam

 

[Treewater]

Thank you Kathy,
MGC and you did good work and prove just how much forensic work can be done with just a few threads and a some common sense deductions. Sherlock Holmes would be proud.

 

[MGC]

Thank you Kathy,
you did good work and prove just how much forensic work can be done with just a few threads and a some common sense deductions.

Kathy....wow, that's cool. Thanks for keeping after this.
The other one that I was really interested in verifying (a lot of assumptions are tied to it) is the Mystic SN that you had logged in your data. In a sense this helps confirm that.

 

[jchu]

Very cool, so my 8392 is right in the group. It has a date.
Good work Kathryn.

 

[Treewater]

Just a suggestion...somehow amend the 09-19-2011 thread to reflect this new information. I'm not the only person who analyses the data to find the basic assumptions and bench marks. It would appear that a tiny adjustment in years might be made. Minor compared to the big picture.
Again, really good work. Our image of our world today is based on our understanding of the past. Thank you.
Tim

 

[Kathryn Klos]

Hi Tim,

I'll attach here the serial number chart that appears in the KnowledgeBase. The four serial numbers I found fit into the 1911 time-frame. Does this chart need tweaking?

Thought I'd write-up something for the journal and include the chart, but if it needs a bit of adjustment, let me know. Several versions have appeared here in the forums... and canoes-- especially those at transition-points-- could be off by a year or so.

Kathy

 

[MGC]

Kathy,

I would say that there is really no cause to revise the table at this point. These SN's fall into the range assigned to the 1911 period. They do suggest that there could be a small shift in the construct from 1910 and 11 but I think the revision that was done last December is still consistent with the information that has been available until now. That said, if anyone feels a pressing need to constantly tweak what is so clearly a totally hypothetical attempt to bracket the Morris builds into quasi plausible form I will be more than willing to send them my spreadsheet so that they can improve on it. The related discussion is in the Morris Knowledge Base

 

[Treewater]

I'm not a spread sheet user in the modern sense. I still use graph paper. But this Morris stuff seems to be a riddle people like to solve if only to establish the pedigree of their family fleet. I have always liked these types of puzzles since they also give us a historical picture of people and places of the past. So just my cursory look brings me to this:
April 28th, 1911 was a Friday, the last business or shipping day of the month unless they had Saturday service. The four canoes shipped the 27th and 28th of April numbered 7969, 7974, 8307, & 8435. That is a spread of 466 canoe numbers. Did the shop keep 466 canoes on hand? Likely not but # 7969 was hanging around unsold so it found a home that day. The top number 8435 is more likely to be a current canoe, on the floor very recently and not in storage. If we assume 937 serial numbers were assigned in 1911, and that the most recent canoe finished on April 28th was #8435 then the first number of the year, January 1, 1911, would be around 8080 and the last, December 31, 1911, about 9017. I created my own graph paper for this so it is a rough estimate but again, I think I can say we are closing in. Obviously this matter of build dates and shipping dates complicates things. Still, serial numbers do tell the sequence of building even if it did sit unsold for several months.
Again, I am not finding fault and applaud the work done. It's just as new info becomes available we can fine tune the whole thing.

 

[Kathryn Klos]

What I like best in this research is learning about the people and places of the past, just as you said, Tim. Figuring-in probable business practices is important in this case, because the Morris brothers didn't keep journals of their daily life (that we know of). So we have to assume some things based on common sense. I like your thoughts here.