The Winterthur Library

The Joseph Downs Collection of Manuscripts and Printed Ephemera

Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum

5105 Kennett Pike, Winterthur, Delaware  19735

Telephone: 302-888-4600 or 800-448-3883

 

 

OVERVIEW OF THE COLLECTION

 

Creator:         Byard, John Kenneth, 1886-1959                                          

Title:               Papers

Dates:             1928-1961, 1969-1975 (bulk 1945-1960)

Call No.:         Col. 740

Acc. No.:        04x134

Quantity:        6 cu. ft. (14 boxes, one volume)

Location:        27 D-F 1

 

 

 

BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

 

John Kenneth Byard was a lawyer and an antiques collector and dealer from Norwalk, Connecticut.  Originally from upstate New York, he graduated from Williams College and Columbia University School of Law.  During the 1930s, he purchased an old house, mill, and other structures along the Silvermine River outside Norwalk and opened the Silvermine Tavern and Galleries.  The complex included a restaurant, a small inn, an antiques shop, and a barn which had been converted to an apartment with an artist’s studio.  Byard collected and sold early American furniture and other items of decorative arts.  Chief among his clients were Henry and Helen Flynt, who restored Deerfield, Massachusetts, Ellerton and Edith Jette of Waterville, Maine, and Electra Havemeyer and Watson Webb, who began Shelburne Museum in Vermont.  Byard died in 1959, leaving his widow, Dorothy Randolph Byard.  Part of his collection was auctioned by Parke-Bernet in March 1960.

 

Gates Moore, a cabinetmaker, accompanied Mr. Byard on buying trips.  Moore would vet the furniture, and Byard would negotiate the price.   Later, Moore made and sold reproduction lighting fixtures, a business probably carried out on the Silvermine Tavern property.  First I. M. Weiss and then the Whitman family continued to run the Silvermine Tavern as a restaurant and inn until 2009.   (In 2014, a developer announced plans to reopen the restaurant and a small inn.)

 

 

SCOPE AND CONTENT

 

The collection is a mixture of personal papers relating to Kenneth and Dorothy Byard and business records of the Silvermine Tavern and Galleries.  Business papers include records of sales of antiques, which frequently describe the piece being sold as well as the price and name of the purchaser; correspondence with Electra Webb; other business correspondence; store inventories; payroll records, including those of restaurant and inn employees; balance sheets; insurance policies; and records relating to losses in a fire.  Personal records include a list of items donated to the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association in 1955; income tax reports; real estate records, including accounts of a dispute with one of Byard’s neighbors; and checks and deposit slips, some of which might actually be business related.  As well, there is one folder relating to Gates Moore’s lighting fixture business; it includes correspondence and a few designs for fixtures.

           

 

ORGANIZATION

 

The files are arranged in alphabetical order.  No attempt has been made to separate personal from business papers.

 

 

PROVENANCE

 

Gift of Patricia Moore, Norwalk, Connecticut.

           

 

RELATED MATERIAL

 

The Parke-Bernet auction catalog of Mr. Byard’s collection of early Americana, dated March 3-5, 1960, is held by the Printed Books and Periodicals division of the Winterthur Library.

 

 

ACCESS POINTS

 

People:

            Flynt, Henry N., 1893-1970.

            Moore, Gates.

            Webb, Electra Havemeyer.

 

Topics:

            Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association.

            Silvermine Tavern and Galleries.

Antique dealers – Connecticut – Norwalk.

            Antiques.

            Lighting, Architectural and decorative.

            Antiques – Reproduction.

            Inventories, Retail – Connecticut – Norwalk.

 

 

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE COLLECTION

 

Location: 27 D-F 1

 

Box 1:

 

Folder 1:          Apartment rentals

 

Folder 2:          Balance sheets and audit records, 1928-1933

 

Folder 3:          Bills, 1950s

 

Folder 4:          Byard, John Kenneth – estate of

 

Folder 5:          Byard: correspondence with CPA firm

 

Folder 6:          Byard: correspondence with Tompkins, Robert S.

 

Folder 7:          Byard-Hoelscher dispute

 

 

Box 2:

 

Folders 1-3:     Byard: income tax reports, 1946-1958          

 

Folder 4:          Byard: investments

 

Folder 5:          Correspondence

 

Folder 6:          Correspondence – chiefly about deliveries

 

 

Box 3:

 

Folders 1-2:     Dealers’ exemption from sales tax certificates          

 

Folders 3-5:     Insurance bills, 1944-1961

 

 

Box 4:

 

Folder 1:          Insurance policies – miscellaneous companies

 

Folder 2:          Insurance records – Aetna Insurance Group

 

Folder 3:          Insurance records - Norwalk Insurance Agency

 

Folder 4:          List of items presented to Pocumtuck Valley Historical Society [i.e. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association] for furnishing room in Frary House, Deerfield, Mass., June 21, 1955

 

Folder 5:          Miscellaneous items (includes an ad from Antiques, Oct. 1957, and some undated photographs of items offered for sale)

 

Folder 6:          Moore, Gates - Lighting Fixtures, 1969-1975

 

Folder 7:          Moore, Kenneth Gates – real estate records

 

Folder 8:          Payroll records

 

 

Box 5:

 

Folder 1:          Payroll records: Brooks, Suzanne

 

Folder 2:          Payroll records: Donovan, Angela

 

Folder 3:          Payroll records: other employees

 

Folder 4:          Payroll records: Schultze, Arthur P.

 

Folder 5:          Payroll records: Towart, Helen

 

Folder 6:          Real estate ad for Silvermine property

 

Folder 7:          Real estate correspondence

 

Folder 8:          Real estate – miscellaneous records

 

Folder 9:          Real estate tax bills

 

 

Box 6:

 

Folder 1:          Sales book (for antiques business?) and expense record

 

Folder 2:          Sales records, 1957 and earlier and no date [see also the volume on the shelf]

 

Folders 3-4:     Sales records, 1958    

 

Folder 5-7:      Sales records, 1959

 

 

Box 7:

 

Folder 1:          Sales records, 1960

 

Folder 2:          Sales tax number and other information from state government

 

Folder 3:          Sawyer, William H. - correspondence

 

Folder 4:          Shipping receipts

 

Folder 5:          Silvermine Tavern corporation records

 

Folder 6:          Silvermine Tavern corporation stock book

 

Folder 7:          Silvermine Tavern fire loss, 1946

 

Folder 8:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – balance sheets, 1944-1958

 

 

Box 8:

 

Folder 1:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – income tax reports, federal and state, 1952-1958

 

Folder 2:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1945

 

Folder 3:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1946

 

Folder 4:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1947

           

Folder 5:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1948

 

Folder 6:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – antiques inventory for tavern – primitives and weathervanes, January 1948

 

Folder 7:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1949

 

 

Box 9:

 

Folder 1:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1950

 

Folders 2-3:     Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1951

 

Folders 4-5:     Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1952

 

Folders 6-7:     Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1953

 

Folder 8:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1954

 

Folder 9:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory of shop, 1954-1956

 

Folder 10:        Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1955

 

Folders 11-12: Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1956

 

 

Box 10:

 

Folder 1:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1956

 

Folder 2:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1956-1957

 

Folder 3:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1957

 

Folder 4:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1958

 

Folder 5:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1959

 

Folder 6:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory, 1960

 

Folder 7:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory – items sent to Parke-Bernet auction, 1960

 

Folder 8:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory – Mary Johnson’s Yesteryear Furniture

 

Folder 9:          Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – inventory - miscellaneous

 

Folder 10:        Silvermine Tavern and Galleries – miscellaneous data

 

 

Box 11:

 

Folder 1:          Webb, Mrs. J. Watson – Shelburne Museum, 1949-1954

 

Folder 2:          Wiese, Ignatius M. – adjustments, data, etc.

                                    [Wiese is how the name is spelled on these documents; however, other sources spell the name as Weiss, and indicate that Mr. Weiss bought the property in 1947, running both the antiques and the restaurant business.  Mr. Weiss sold the tavern to Frank Whitman in 1955.  Decline in business starting in 2008 led to closure in 2009.]

 

Folder 3:          Wiese, Ignatius M. – mortgage payments

 

 

Box 12:

 

Folders 1-5:     Byard, J.K. – checks, 1945-1953

 

 

Box 13:

 

Folders 1-5:     Byard, J.K. – checks, 1953-1958

 

 

Box 14:

 

Folder 1:          Bank statements, 1958           

 

Folder 2:          Bank statements, 1959

 

Folder 3:          Deposit slips, 1958-1960

 

Folder 4:          Other bank slips

 

 

Volume on shelf:

 

Sales records, 1948-1956