eBay Tuesday: Oliver Dimon And The "Hair-Erecting Bill"

Some things never change. Oliver Dimon's reaction to an unexpected bill 173 years ago is probably about the same as anyone getting such a piece of mail today.

The three-page letter from Dimon to Robbins Kellogg in May of 1841 is being offered by user GenStore. Strangely, the letter to Kellogg abruptly segues into one from Dimon to his sister. 

The portion written to Kellogg is fairly humorous, as Dimon recalls the jolt he experienced when he got a letter from Kellogg letting him know about an unsettled loan between them. Dimon writes back that he was unaware of any such debt, then says, "It has just popped into my head, how it has happened & I shall readily convince you I believe that by a funny mistake you have frightened me with this big bill & have made yourself so much richer than you are."

Dimon goes on to cipher our how the exchange of money between himself, Kellogg, and a third person (a Mr. Hotchkin) apparently left Kellogg thinking Dimon owed him $100. "If it was not past the 1st of April I should think that you had given me a right good April fool, for it frightened my hair straight up to see an account unsettled between you & me of $100 in your favor," Dimon writes. "My teeth fairly chattered at first, thinking that it might be so & adding it to the $200 due Mr. Hotchkin."

Dimon was a Fairfield native, born there in 1819. This letter would have been written a year after he earned his degree from Williams College, which would explain why he was corresponding with Kellogg, a well-known lawyer from the nearby town of West Stockbridge. Dimon also references Theodore, likely an older brother, since a Theodore Dimon was born in 1816 and references how John Hotchkin was the principal of an academy in Lenox, Mass. where he was "fitted for college."

Dimon also expresses surprise that Kellogg says Theodore's account is unsettled, commenting, "I know nothing of his affairs, but decency requires so strongly that what he owes you should have been paid so long ago, that I was hardly less surprised at learning that it was not paid than at my own hair-erecting bill."
This is the point where Dimon abruptly changes to a letter to his sister, discussing a recent national day of fasting and prayer ordered by President John Tyler upon the death of President William Henry Harrison shortly into his term. "Did the world ever before present the spectacle of half a continent 3,000 miles by 2,000 voluntarily employing a day to worship God?" he ponders.

Kellogg would die at the age of 60 just six months after Dimon sent his letter. Dimon studied law and theology in New England after his time at Williams, but went west to work in Keosaugua, Iowa in 1853. He returned only a couple of years later, in poor health, to visit the coast and died in New London in 1856 at the age of 36.

Dimon apparently left enough of a presence on those around him to keep his name alive. Hiram Farnsworth, a classmate at Williams, named his son after Dimon but the infant would pass away a few weeks before his first birthday. It's unclear whether he had any relation to the Robbins Kellogg family, but Oliver Dimon Kellogg would be born in 1878 and served as a prominent mathematician at the Coast Guard Academy during World War I.

The letter, which includes the envelope, is described as being in very good condition and measuring seven and a half by nine and a half inches. The asking price is $9, and the auction ends at about 6:46 p.m. on Wednesday. 

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