A New Crane Celebrity A-Lister

Some time ago, I introduced you to some of Crane's A-List customers. No, not that list. I'm not going to play that silly "look which celebrity buys my stationery" game.

The quest for American independence is another matter, as well as a source of great pride for Crane. These guys were just regular folks in 18th-century America; customers of Crane's Liberty Paper Mill. Today, they are icons of American history.

One of those customers, who is far from iconic but deserves a much higher historical profile, is Colonel Thomas Conant. Here is one of his accounts with the Liberty Paper Mill:

No surprise, the ledger entry gives us no clue as to his place in history. But the account of "Paul Revere's Ride" by David Hackett Fischer, (Oxford University Press, 1994) certainly does:

Paul Revere recalled:

"I agreed with a Colonel Conant and some other gentlemen, that if the British went out by water, we would shew two lanthorns in the North Church steeple, and if by land, one, as a signal...."

What more can you say?