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MIDDLETOWN , Connecticut. - Captain Gale GOODWIN (1785-1810, calligrapher). 
A 13-leaf calligraphic manuscript by Gale Goodwin, modelled in part on ‘Bowles’s New and Complete Alphabets … by Joseph Champion’. Middletown, Connecticut: [undated, but circa 1800-1809]. Oblong folio (7 ¾ x 12 7/8in; 197 x 327mm). 13 leaves, manuscript on rectos only (versos blank), numbered from 1-13 in upper outer corner. 6 written in red and black ink, 7 in black only. (Ink stain to upper outer corner of each leaf, generally slight but more serious to leaves 7 and 8, light surface soiling and smudging to first leaf, a few small tears). Stitched (remnants of grey sugar-paper wrappers visible, but basically lacking).

A spectacular achievement by Gale Goodwin of Middletown, Connecticut – despite the admirable level of competence, this is probably a student / schoolboy project.
Gale Goodwin was born in prosperous Middletown, Ct., in July 1785. Information about his life is sparse: he married Clarissa Wetmore on 26 October 1808. Their daughter Emily Gale Goodwin was born the following Fall, but then, tragically, Captain Goodwin was lost at sea during a heavy gale in Long Island Sound on 15 January 1810. Captain Goodwin’s family had roots going back to the pilgrims, and Clarissa’s family was very influential in Middletown: her father was Deacon Oliver Wetmore (1752-1798), and her grand-father was Judge Seth Wetmore (1700-1778) who was the original owner of the ‘Wetmore House’ or ‘Oak Hill’ as it was known at the time – the ‘parlor’ from the house is now in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, the house itself is on the historic register.
Given the Goodwin family’s apparent status within the Middletown community, Gale would have been expected to ‘write a good hand’. What is unexpected and a delight is that he clearly excelled at penmanship. The letter forms and flourishes are almost uniformly excellent, but his spelling and level of concentration do let him down on occasion: for this reason I suspect that this was a project that he completed in his ‘teens, so, sometime between 1795 (see below) and about 1805. The sea and maritime trade were the key to Middletown’s prosperity, and at about the time that this work was being completed it would seem that Goodwin took up his main career and went to sea: I suggest this as I assume that even a well-connected young man would have been expected to spend some years at sea before he was allowed to embark on a career as Captain of his own vessel?
Back to the present work: Goodwin seems to have been working from a post-April 1795 edition of Joseph Champion’s much re-published work as the starting point for this work. The first nine leaves are direct (if slightly simplified) copies of Champion’s work. The no-earlier-than date is based on the dedication to the Princess of Wales: the future George IV and Princess Charlotte married in April 1795. The remaining 4 leaves include maxims and sayings in prose and verse which go back quite a bit further: the majority and possibly all of them seem to have been drawn from George Shelley’s “Sentences and maxims divine, moral, and historical, in prose and verse …  put into Alphabetical Order for the Use of Writing-Schools, &c.” (London: 1712 [1st ed.], 1730 [2nd ed.], 1752 [3rd ed.]). I have only been able to access a copy of the 1752 edition, which does not include Powell’s letter to Shelley (the final leaf here) – it maybe that this was only included in the earlier editions?