Photograph as originally submitted to this page in the Historical Marker Database www.HMdb.org. Click on photo to resize in browser. Scroll down to see metadata.

Photographer: J. J. Prats
Taken: August 13, 2022
Caption: Harman Blennerhassett’s Telescope
Additional Description: At the Blennerhassett Museum in Parkersburg proper. The museum card reads,

After buying it in London in 1796, Blennerhassett soon begins using this telescope at his Blennerhassett Island estate where he settled in 1798. He set it up on a specially-built viewing platform atop the roof of his mansion’s center section, the highest place on the island where it could be carried.

When Harman and his family fled downriver in December 1806, due to his involvement in Aaron Burr’s mysterious western expedition, the telescope had to be left behind. It soon was sold, for a fraction of its worth, at one of the 1807 public auctions that dispersed the wealthy Irishman’s property.

The telescope disappeared for nearly a century until surfacing in New York in 1902, when it was donated to the Buffalo History Museum. In 2016 that institution generously sold this rarest of Blennerhassett relics to the Friends of Blennerhassett so it could be exhibited in this museum for the public’s enjoyment and eduction.

Submitted: August 21, 2022, by J. J. Prats of Powell, Ohio.
Database Locator Identification Number: p673814
File Size: 8.070 Megabytes

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