It Began With A Letter

On March 28th 2025 I went to an estate sale in San Francisco in search of items for my shop. At first it seemed like this would be like any other estate sale, I found fun clothing items and some interesting knickknacks. However one item in particular caught my eye. On a table upstairs, I passed by a letter. What first piqued my interest was the beautiful header of the letter, and specifically the name “Thomas Edison” and word “Laboratory”. As I kept reading on the words “cells” & “cigarettes” also stood out to me. My partner Thomas Perkins Jr. is proteomics scientist and though I was not sure if the letter was real, I purchased it as a gift for him.

When I arrived home I was showing my partner the items I had gotten at the estate sale, and at the end I presented him with this letter. As soon as it touched his hands he was instantly changed. Never had I seen his eyes so big, and he said to me ”this could be real”! We then searched online for copies or records of this letter and found only one website that showed a picture of this letter. That website was the Tobacco Free World Alliance (ToFWA). This alliance was between Korea and Poland and was started to try and end the use of cigarettes in both countries. The letter I found was used by them in court cases to try and change laws around cigarette use. Though they seem to have ceased operations around 2011, they were able to make some change and decrease smoking habits in their countries.

My partner Thomas is not one to do light research and stop there, he wanted to know more, and he wanted to know if this letter was a mass produced copy or a real letter. Thus we launched into an investigation that would take us from California, to Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, and even Japan! We have now worked with The Henry Ford Museum, The Rutgers Edison Papers, UCSF Library, The Smithsonian, The Edison Birthplace, Thomas Edison National Historical Park & more!

I invite you to continue reading this blog to learn more about our historical research journey and find out, is it real or not?

This is a photograph of Thomas Edison, John Burroughs, and Henry Ford at Edison’s Winter Estate in Florida in 1914.