[stumpstalker]

Miscellany, here; but I was curious about the “Agency” reference on the invoice.

J. F. Schmelzer and Sons was an agency of a gunpowder company built up and owned for many years by Colonel Augustus George Hazard, located in an industrial village of Enfield, Connecticut. At some point that section of town was named Hazardville.

So, despite the inherent risks of explosion in manufacturing gunpowder, the naming of the company was not a matter of flippancy.

Hazard was born and raised in Rhode Island and Connecticut had strong business ties with the South, where he worked for a spell when a young man. That may account for the title “Colonel”, since I am not aware of the gunpowder mogul having had any military experience. (You might say the counterpart to such an honorific in the North in the 19th Century was the title “Uncle”, as in “Uncle Dan” Lefever; trap-shooter “Uncle Bob” Elliott (see Drew’s link above) or even “Uncle Ed” Jenks, on whose old farmstead my brother now lives in Maine.)

Visitors to Hazard’s mansion in Enfield included Daniel Webster, Sam Colt and Jefferson Davis.

Explosions at the mill were expected. Large stone blast walls were erected so that when one building blew up it would not destroy another. Plus, the buildings were designed to be easily put back together.

The Colonel died in 1868; the concern was later owned by DuPont and a major explosion destroyed much of the plant in 1913, ending production.
(source info: The Enfield Historical Society.)