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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
WASHINGTON 25, D. C.

September 27, 1962

Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence A. Fleischman
c/o Archives of American Art
5200 Woodward Avenue
Detroit 2, Michigan

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Fleischman:

I want to thank you on behalf of my wife and myself for the splendid hospitality you extended to us and the "Boston group" on the occasion of the recent conference at the Archives of American Art. When friendliness and enthusiasm are combined with superb taste and imagination, one lacks for nothing, and none of us went away "hungry."

I am enclosing several pamphlets and booklets, most of them published by the Smithsonian, which I thought might interest your son, Arthur, and perhaps encourage him in his archeological investigations. The Smithsonian has done very little about the archeology of the Ohio Valley, hence, most of the things I am sending deal with our work in the Missouri Valley. But, in addition, I am sending a study by Webb and Baby of The Adena People which may interest Arthur. I have included some publications of my own, some bearing on the Indian which you might be interested in, as well as two studies by Jack Ewers, now Assistant Director of the Museum of History and Technology, on George Catlin and Charles Bird King, and a study of Seth Eastman by John Francis McDermott. Arthur might also be interested in the book Indian Life in the Upper Great Lakes, 11,000 B. C. - A. D. 1800, by George I. Quimby, a curator at the Chicago Museum of Natural History.

I have consulted with various people in our Division of Cultural History and elsewhere concerning the small cases in your possession, with political legends celebrating the candidacy of Henry Clay, etc. I finally discovered in my own division, in the American Costume Collection, among the accessories, an almost identical case, of roughly the same period, composed of black lacquered sides with gold decorative motifs, and inner pressed paper leather-appearing expansion jacket or envelope. Both case and inner jacket are open at one end. The use is unmistakable for the word "Segars" is contained within the decorative border on one side, and a lady dressed in what looked like Turkish costume is portrayed on the other. The measurements of the case are 5-3/8 inches high, 2-3/4 inches wide, while the insert, which slips out, is 4-5/8 inches in length.