CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND
At the close of the chapter on “Early American Mechanics” we referred
to the spread of machinery building northward from Rhode Island to the
Merrimac Valley and central Massachusetts. This by no means implies
that all the northern shops were started by Rhode Island mechanics, but
their influence is so strong as to be clearly seen; and here, as in
Rhode Island, the early shops were closely identified with the textile
industry.
One of the first and most influential of these was the Amoskeag
Manufacturing Company. The beginnings of the Amoskeag Company were
made by a Benjamin Pritchard, of New Ipswich, N. H., who built a small
textile mill at Amoskeag Village, then Goffstown, in 1809. In 1822 it
was bought by Olney Robinson, from whom, that same year, Samuel Slater
received a letter asking for a loan of $3000. This was accompanied
by a magnificent salmon as a sample of the products of Amoskeag.
Slater, with the instincts of a good sportsman and a careful business
man, went there to investigate, with the result that he bought the
property, which then consisted of a water power, a two-story wooden
mill and two or three small tenements. Larned Pitcher soon joined him,
and in 1825 four other partners were taken in, Willard Sayles, Lyman
Tiffany, Oliver Dean and Ira Gay. Three of the partners were Pawtucket
men--Slater, Pitcher and Gay. Slater and Gay were very influential in
the early history of the company. The business grew rapidly and in 1841
they formed the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, which has had a long
and successful career. Their charter was broad, and they extended their
operations until they included textile mills, extensive improvements
of the water powers on the Merrimac, the founding of the city of
Manchester, and the operation of a large machine shop.
The last, which interests us most, was started about 1840. At first
it was used only for building and repairing textile machinery, but
before very long it was actively engaged in the manufacture of steam
boilers, locomotives, steam fire engines, turbine wheels and machine
tools. It comprised two three-story shops, each nearly 400 feet long,
with foundries and forge shops, and employed in all 700 men--a large
plant for seventy-five years ago. William A. Burke, its first head,
left in 1845 to organize the Lowell Machine Shop, which built textile
and paper machinery and locomotives, and did general millwright work.
One of the workmen who helped install the machinery in the Amoskeag
shop was William B. Bement. He remained there for two years as foreman
and contractor, and in 1845 joined Burke at Lowell. O. W. Bayley, who
succeeded Burke as head of the Amoskeag shop, left in 1855 and founded
the Manchester Locomotive Works.
Ira Gay came to New Hampshire from Pawtucket in 1824. Besides the
Nashua Manufacturing Company and the Nashua Iron & Steel Works, he and
his brother, Ziba Gay, founded (about 1830) the Gay & Silver Company,
later the North Chelmsford Machine & Supply Company referred to in a
previous chapter. Frederick W. Howe, who did such important work with
Robbins & Lawrence, the Providence Tool Company, and Brown & Sharpe,
learned his trade in the Gay & Silver shop.
It has been claimed that the shop of Gage, Warner & Whitney,
established by John H. Gage at Nashua in 1837, was the first one
devoted exclusively to the manufacture of machine tools. If this
is true, it does not involve as high a degree of specialization as
would seem, for Bishop in 1860 says: “Their manufactures include
iron planers of all sizes, engine lathes, from the smallest watch
maker’s up to a size suitable for turning locomotive driving wheels
six or eight feet in diameter, hand lathes of all sizes, chucking
lathes of all dimensions, with sliding bed, bolt cutting machines for
rapidly transforming any part of a plain bolt into a nice, evenly
threaded screw, upright and swing drills, boring machines for shaping
the interior of steam cylinders, or other bores of large diameter,
slabbers of all kinds, gear-cutting engines of all sizes for shaping
and smoothing the teeth of gear wheels with perfect accuracy, power
punching machines of various sizes, etc.”[196] In 1852 they began
building steam engines. With all this formidable list, it seems never
to have been a very large shop.
[196] “History of American Manufactures,” Vol. III, p. 451.
In 1825 the improvement of the water power at what is now Lowell
was begun. Almost at the very beginning of this development work,
a large machine shop was built and placed under the charge of Paul
Moody, who was regarded as one of the foremost mechanics of his day
and was an expert in cotton machinery. This shop was retained by the
Water Power Company for nearly twenty years, when it was sold (1845)
and reorganized as the Lowell Machine Shop under Burke’s leadership.
It employed at times one thousand men, and became one of the most
important shops in the whole Merrimac Valley. James B. Francis, the
great hydraulic engineer, began his life work as a draftsman here in
1833; and later Bement became its chief draftsman, leaving it to go to
Philadelphia.
From 1820 to 1840, other shops sprang up in the Merrimac Valley, such
as C. M. Marvel & Company, of Lowell, the Lawrence Machine Shop, and
the Essex Machine Shop, where Amos Whitney, of Pratt & Whitney, learned
his trade, almost all of them building textile machinery, as well as
machine tools. The output of these shops showed little specialization.
They built almost anything which they could sell.
Of the Massachusetts towns, Worcester and Fitchburg seem to have been
the first to develop successful shops producing machine tools only. In
Worcester also the machinery trade had its beginning in the manufacture
of textile machinery; in fact, Worcester antedates even Pawtucket in
its attempts at cotton spinning, but these at first were unsuccessful.
Practically all the early water privileges in and about the town, not
used for sawmills, were used for textile mills. Prior to 1810 there
was a small clock shop, some paper mills, and a few other enterprises,
but they could hardly be dignified as factories. One of these was the
old shop where Thomas Blanchard invented his copying lathe for turning
irregular forms.
An Abraham Lincoln operated a mill and a forge with a trip hammer as
early as 1795. Here, in quarters rented from Lincoln, Earle & Williams
started, about 1810, the first machine shop in the city. The town grew
slowly and its interests were largely local. It was not until 1820 that
Worcester took first rank even among the towns in the county. There was
quite an excitement over the discovery of coal in 1823. It was found,
however, to be so poor, that, as someone put it at the time, “there was
a ---- sight more coal after burning it than there was before.” The
Providence & Worcester canal was opened in 1828, but its usefulness
for navigation was greatly limited by the many power privileges along
its route. Its traffic was never large and it went out of business
in 1848. It served, however, to hasten the building of the Boston
& Worcester Railroad, which was built by Boston capital to deflect
the trade of the central Massachusetts towns from Providence to that
city. It opened in 1835; and in 1836 there were listed in Worcester
“seven machinery works,” one wire mill and one iron foundry. Most of
the earlier tool builders were trained in the small textile-machinery
shops which had sprung up after 1810, such as Washburn & Goddard’s,
Goulding’s, Phelps & Bickford’s, White & Boyden’s. The rapid
development of railroads created a demand for machine tools which the
Worcester mechanics were quick to recognize, as had Nasmyth and Roberts
in England.
Thomas Blanchard, who was born near Worcester, is one of the
picturesque and attractive figures in our mechanical history. He was
a shy, timid boy, who stammered badly, and was considered “backward.”
The ingenious tinkerer, laughed at by all, first secured his standing
by devising an apple-parer which made a hit, social and mechanical. At
eighteen he began building a tack machine and worked six years on it
before he considered it finished. The essentials of its design have
been little changed since. It made over two hundred tacks a minute
and its product was more uniform and better than the hand-made tacks.
Blanchard sold the patent for it for $5000, a large price for those
days, but only a fraction of its real value.
A few years later, about 1818, he invented the lathe for turning
irregular forms which is associated with his name. It was first built
for turning gun-stocks at the Springfield Armory, and the original
machine (Fig. 29) is still preserved there in the museum. Blanchard
worked at the Armory for several years as an expert designer and
invented or improved about a dozen machines for the manufacture of
firearms, chiefly mortising and turning machines.
He was a fertile inventor and worked in many lines besides tool
building. His principal income came from royalties on his “copying”
lathe. Many stories are told of his ingenuity and homely wit. In his
later life he was a patent expert. His keen mechanical intuitions, his
wide and varied experience and unswerving honesty, gave weight to his
opinions, and his old age was spent in comfortable circumstances. He
died in 1864.
In 1823 William A. Wheeler came to Worcester, and two years later he
was operating a foundry. He did some machine work, and had the first
steam engine and the first boring machine in Worcester, and also an
iron planer “weighing 150 lb., 4 ft. long and 20 in. wide,” the first
one, it is said, in the state. Beginning with three or four hands, this
foundry employed at times two hundred men. Its long career closed in
the summer of 1914.
Samuel Flagg moved to Worcester from West Boylston in 1839, to be near
the Wheeler foundry from which he got his castings. “Uncle Sammy Flagg”
was the first man in Worcester to devote himself entirely to tool
building, and is considered the father of the industry there. He made
hand and engine lathes in rented quarters in the old Court Mills, which
has been called the cradle of the Worcester tool building industry.
His first lathes were light and crude, with a wooden bed, wrought-iron
strips for ways, chain-operated carriage, and cast gears, as cut gears
were unheard of in the city at that time.
His first competitor, Pierson Cowie, began making chain planers about
1845. After a few years he sold his business to Woodburn, Light &
Company, which in a few years became Wood, Light & Company, one of the
best known of the older firms. About the same time S. C. Coombs began
making lathes and planers. Flagg meantime had organized the firm of
Samuel Flagg & Company, which included two of his former apprentices,
L. W. Pond (whose portrait appears in Fig. 46) and E. H. Bellows.
Pond later bought out Flagg and Bellows and developed the business
greatly. It was incorporated as the Pond Machine Tool Company, in
1875, specialized in heavy engine lathes, and is now part of the
Niles-Bement-Pond Company. Bellows went into the engine business, and
Flagg started another enterprise, the Machinist Tool Company, which
did not last long. It lasted long enough, however, to build one of the
largest lathes made up to that time, 35 feet long with ways 8 feet wide.
From the old Phelps & Bickford and S. C. Coombs shops came the two
Whitcomb brothers, Carter and Alonzo, who formed the Carter Whitcomb
Company in 1849, which became the Whitcomb Manufacturing Company in
1872. From the Coombs company also came successively Shepard, Lathe &
Company; Lathe, Morse & Company, and the Draper Machine Tool Company.
P. Blaisdell & Company was founded in 1865 by Parritt Blaisdell,
who had been fifteen years with Wood, Light & Company; and S. E.
Hildreth, who had worked for more than twenty years with Flagg and
Pond, became a partner in this firm eight years later. The Whitcomb,
Draper and Blaisdell companies were united in 1905 into the present
Whitcomb-Blaisdell Machine Tool Company. From the old Blaisdell shop
came also J. E. Snyder & Son through Currier & Snyder, who began
building drills in 1833 and were both old workmen at Blaisdell’s. The
original Reed & Prentice Company was started by A. F. Prentice, who
sold a half interest to F. E. Reed in 1875. The Woodward & Powell
Planer Company comes from the Powell Planer Company, incorporated in
1876. This maze of relationships is made clear by reference to the
table given in Fig. 45. The Norton Company comes from F. B. Norton,
who began experimenting on vitrified emery wheels about 1873 and put
them on the market in 1879. At his death the business was incorporated
as the Norton Emery Wheel Company, now the Norton Company. Charles H.
Norton’s work in developing precision grinding has been perhaps the
most distinguished contribution to the later generation of Worcester
mechanics. He began work in the shops of the Seth Thomas Clock Company
at Thomaston, Conn., under his uncle, N. A. Norton, who was master
mechanic there for about forty years. At his uncle’s death, Norton
became master mechanic. He was with the Clock Company about twenty
years in all, most of the time in charge of the design and building of
all their tools, machinery and large tower clocks.
[Illustration:
WILLIAM A. WHEELER, PHELPS & BICKFORD ICHABOD WASHBURN
1823 Textile Machinery Cards and Textile
Foundry--Came from S. C. Coombs Machry.
Brookfield, *2* *3*
Plant closed in 1914
*1* #3#
WASHBURN & HOWARD
Cards, Textile
Machry. and Wire
1820
*4*
#1# #2# #4#
J. A. FAY & SAMUEL FLAGG, S. C. COOMBS WASHBURN &
CO. 1839 & CO. GODDARD
Woodworking First tool- 1845 Textile,
Machry builder in city R. R. Shepard Machry.
Keene, N. H. --came from and Martin and Wire
J. A. Fay and West Boylston Lathe 1822
Edw. Josslyn. to be near *9* *10 11*
1836 Wheeler A. A.
*5* foundry Whitcomb
*6 7* *8*
#11#
PIERSON COWIE #9# C. READ & CO.
THOS. E. About 1845--Made SHEPARD, LATHE Worcester--Screws
DANIELS chain planers & CO. *14*
Woodworking *12* *13*
Machry.
Worcester
*15*
#8# #14#
#7# C. WHITCOMB & CO. AMERICAN SCREW CO.
#15# SAMUEL FLAGG 1849--Carter and Providence, R. I.
E. C. TAINTER & CO. Alonzo Whitcomb
GARDNER CHILDS L. W Pond, *21*
Daniels Planer, E. H. Bellows,
etc. S. E. Hildreth
Worcester Pond bought out
*16* other partners.
1847
*19 20*
#13#
LATHE, MORSE & CO. LORING & A. G. COES
*17* 1836
*18*
#12#
WOODBURN, #17# #18#
LIGHT & CO. DRAPER MACH. Began making
1846 TOOL CO. screw wrenches
*22* *23* 1841
*24*
#5 16#
RICHARDSON, MERRIAM #21#
& CO. WHITCOMB MFG. CO. F. B. NORTON
Worcester. Richardson 1872 Began experiments on
was Josslyn’s nephew. *27* wheels in 1873. Began
Name of J. A. Fay was sale in 1879. Died
sold to Western 1885 and business
agents, about 1862 incorporated 1886
*25* *26*
#22#
#6# WOOD, #10#
Thomson, Skinner of LIGHT & CO. WASHBURN
Co. of Chicopee Parritt & MOEN
Falls, bought out Blaisdell Wire 1850
Flagg’s original *29* *32*
business
*28*
#26#
#28# #20 29# NORTON
NEW HAVEN MFG. P. BLAISDELL A. F. PRENTICE EMERY WHEEL CO.
CO. & CO. Sold half 1886
New Haven, 1865 interest to *33 34*
Conn. P. Blaisdell, F. E. Reed,
S. E. Hildreth, 1875 #33#
Enoch Earle, CHAS. H. NORTON
Currier, Snyder Invented Grinding
*30 31* Machines, Came
from Brown & Sharpe
*37*
#19# #30#
POND MACH. TOOL CURRIER & SNYDER REED & PRENTICE
CO. Both worked for Reed bought whole
1875 Blaisdell. business
1883 in 1877
*35* *36*
#25# #32# #37#
J. A. FAY Moved to POWELL Incorporated NORTON
& CO. Plainfield, PLANER later as GRINDING
Cincinnati, N. J., CO. Washburn & CO.
Ohio, 1888 1887 Moen Grinding
1862 *39* *40* Mfg. Co. Machines
*38* *41* 1900
#39# #36# #24#
EGAN CO. NILES-BEMENT- REED-PRENTICE CO. COES WRENCH CO.
Cincinnati, POND CO. 1888
Ohio, Hamilton, O.--
1873 Philadelphia--
*42* Plainfield
#35# #40#
J. E. SNYDER & SON WOODWARD & POWELL PLANER CO.
#38 42# #23 27 31# #41# #34#
J. A. FAY & WHITCOMB-BLAISDELL AM. STEEL & WIRE CO. NORTON CO.
EGAN CO. MACH. TOOL CO. Worcester Plant-- Emery Wheels,
Cincinnati, Worcester--1905 1899 etc.
Ohio. 1906
1893
FIGURE 45. GENEALOGY OF THE WORCESTER TOOL BUILDERS]
In 1886 Mr. Norton went to the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company
of Providence as assistant to Mr. Parks, their chief engineer. Soon
afterward he became designer and engineer for their work in cylindrical
grinding machinery, remaining in that capacity for four years. In 1890
he went to Detroit with Henry M. Leland and formed a corporation called
the Leland-Falkner-Norton Company, Falkner being a Michigan lumber man.
Associated with them was Charles H. Strellinger, a well-known dealer
in tools and machinery. Six years later Mr. Norton returned to Brown
& Sharpe and was again their engineer of grinding machinery until he
went to Worcester in 1900. The Norton Grinding Company, organized that
year and financed by men connected with the Norton Emery Wheel Company,
have built cylindrical and plain surface grinding machinery designed
by Charles H. Norton, and under his direction have been leaders in
refining and extending the process of precision grinding.
The Norton Company and the Norton Grinding Company should not be
confused. The former make grinding wheels; the latter build grinding
machines. Neither should F. B. Norton, who founded the grinding wheel
industry and who died in 1885, be confused with Charles H. Norton,
who did not come to Worcester until fifteen years later. There is no
connection in their work, and despite the similarity of name, they were
in no way related.
The greatest industry in Worcester is the American Steel and Wire
Company, formerly the Washburn & Moen Company. While it is no longer
associated with tool building, it passed through that phase and traces
back to the textile industry as well. It was founded by Ichabod
Washburn, who started in as a boy in a cotton factory in Kingston, R.
I., during the War of 1812. Making up his mind to become a machinist,
he served an apprenticeship and then worked in Asa Waters’ armory and
with William Hovey, one of the early mechanics in Worcester. About
1820 he began the manufacture of woolen machinery and lead pipe in
partnership first with William Howard and later with Benjamin Goddard.
The enterprise prospered. As he was making cards for cotton and woolen
machinery, he determined to manufacture the necessary wire himself by
a new drawing process. His first experiments were a failure, but by
1830 they were successful enough to justify his undertaking regular
manufacture. He superseded the old methods entirely and built up the
present great business. Goddard retired, and, after various changes in
partnership, Washburn took in his son-in-law, Philip L. Moen, in 1850.
By 1868 the firm employed more than nine hundred men, and wire drawing,
which began as an incident in the manufacture of textile machinery, had
become their sole activity. Today the works employ eight thousand men.
In 1833 Washburn, in order to make an outlet for his wire products,
induced the Read brothers to move to Worcester from Providence and
begin the manufacture of screws. This business was operated separately
under the name of C. Read & Company. Later it was moved back to
Providence, where it developed into the American Screw Company.
Worcester mechanics have made many things besides machine tools; in
small tools and in gun work they have long been successful. The Coes
Wrench Company was started in 1836 by Loring and A. G. Coes, and
began to make the present form of screw wrench in 1841. Asa Waters,
in Millbury near by, was one of the early American gun makers. After
Waters came other gun makers, Ethan Allen, Forehand & Wadsworth,
Harrington & Richardson, and Iver Johnson, who later moved to Fitchburg.
Much of Worcester’s prominence as a manufacturing center is due to the
unusual facilities it offered to mechanics to begin business in a small
way. Nearly every manufacturing enterprise in the city began in small,
rented quarters. There were a number of large buildings which rented
space with power to these small enterprises; one of them, Merrifield’s,
was three stories high, 1100 feet long, and had fifty tenants,
employing two to eight hundred men. Coes, Flagg, Daniels, Wood, Light
& Company, Coombs, Lathe & Morse, Whitcomb, Pond and J. A. Fay, all
began, or at some time operated, in this way. One is struck, in looking
over the old records, with the constant recurrence of certain names, as
the Earles, Goddards, Washburns, and realizes that he is among a race
of mechanics which was certain sooner or later to build up a successful
manufacturing community.
Fitchburg, while not so large or so influential, is almost as old a
tool building community as Worcester. Its history centers about the
Putnam Machine Company which was started by John and Salmon W. Putnam,
who came from a family of mechanics. The latter’s portrait appears in
Fig. 47. They, too, began in cotton manufacturing, John as a contractor
making cotton machine parts, and Salmon as a bobbin boy and later as
an overseer at New Ipswich and Lowell. In 1836 they went to Trenton,
N. J., intending to start a machine shop there, but the panic of 1837
intervened and made it impossible. They had themselves built most of
the machines required; they stored these and found employment until
business conditions improved. Finally, they started in a hired basement
in Ashburnham, Mass., under the name of J. & S. W. Putnam.
A year later they moved to Fitchburg and began repairing cotton
machinery. At first they did their work entirely themselves, but their
business increased rapidly and they soon hired an apprentice. Their
first manufactured product was a gear cutter. This gave them a start
and they soon developed a full line of standard tools. Though he was
the younger brother, S. W. Putnam was the leading spirit. He first
built upright drills with a swinging table so that the work could
be moved about under the drill without unclamping. He designed the
present form of back rest for lathes, and is said to have invented
the universal hanger. The latter invention, however, has been claimed
for several other mechanics in both England and America. In 1849 the
brothers were burned out, without insurance. They repaired their
machinery, built a temporary shed over it, and were at work again in
two weeks. The present company was formed in 1858.
The Putnam company has been influential in other lines than machine
tools. Putnam engines were for many years among the best known in the
country, and the company was also intimately concerned with the early
development of the rock drill, through Charles Burleigh, the head
of their planer department and the inventor of the Burleigh drill.
In fact, the first successful drills, those for the Hoosac tunnel,
together with the compressors, were designed and built in the Putnam
shops. Sylvester Wright, who founded the Fitchburg Machine Works, was
for ten years foreman of their lathe department, and most of the old
mechanics in and about Fitchburg were Putnam men.
Scattered here and there are other companies. At Nashua were Gage,
Warner & Whitney, to which we have referred, and the Flather
Manufacturing Company which was founded by Joseph Flather, an
Englishman, in 1867. The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee Falls
came from the old Ames & Fisher shop at North Chelmsford. This was
started by Nathan P. Ames, Senior, in 1791, who operated a trip hammer
and other machinery, making edged tools and millwork. The shop was
burned in 1810, and he moved to Dedham, Mass., for a year or so, but
returned and resumed his former business on the old site. His sons,
Nathan P., Jr., and James T., learned their trade with their father.
The older brother, Nathan, moved to Chicopee Falls in 1829. James
joined him in 1834. The Ames Manufacturing Company, formed the same
year, lived for sixty years and employed at one time over a thousand
men. From the start they had close relations with the Government and
did an extensive business in all kinds of military supplies, swords,
bayonets, guns, cannon, cavalry goods, etc. They cast bronze statuary,
and the famous doors of the Capitol at Washington were made by them.
They rivaled Robbins & Lawrence in gun machinery and shared with them
the order for the Enfield Armory. This contract alone took three years
to complete. Their gun-stock machinery went to nearly every government
in Europe.
[Illustration: FIGURE 46. LUCIUS W. POND]
[Illustration: FIGURE 47. SALMON W. PUTNAM]
In addition to all this they built the famous Boydon waterwheel, mill
machinery, and a list of standard machine tools quite as catholic as
that of Gage, Warner & Whitney. They did their work well, contributed
material improvements to manufacturing methods and had one of the most
influential shops of their day.
Most of the plants for manufacturing woodworking machinery can be
traced back to a comparatively small area limited approximately by
Fitchburg, Gardner, Keene and Nashua. This section was poor farming
land, rough and heavily wooded, and the ingenuity of its inhabitants
was early directed toward utilizing the timber. Mr. Smith, of the
H. B. Smith Company of Smithville, N. J., came originally from
Woodstock, Vt., and Walter Haywood started at Gardner. J. A. Fay and
Edward Josslyn began manufacturing woodworking machinery as J. A. Fay
& Company at Keene, in 1836. In 1853 they felt the need of better
facilities and purchased Tainter & Childs’ shop at Worcester, which was
manufacturing the Daniels wood planer. Mr. Fay died soon after, and
the business passed through the hands of H. A. Richardson, Josslyn’s
nephew, to Richardson, Merriam & Company. They built up a good business
before the Civil War, and had branch offices in New York, Chicago, and
Cincinnati.
In the early sixties the western agents bought the name of J. A. Fay
& Company and started manufacturing at Cincinnati. Later this was
united with the Egan Company, and the present J. A. Fay & Egan Company
formed. When J. A. Fay & Company was started at Cincinnati, machinery,
superintendent and mechanics were brought from Worcester, and, as the
name implies, the present company was a direct descendant from the old
Worcester and Keene enterprise.
Winchendon, in the center of the district referred to, has long been
known for its woodworking machinery. Baxter D. Whitney began there
before 1840. He died in 1915, aged ninety-eight years, the last of the
early generation of mechanics. For many years he was a leader in the
development of woodworking tools, and the business which he founded is
still in successful operation under the management of his son, William
M. Whitney.
Springfield, although an important manufacturing city, has had few
prominent tool builders. One company, however, the Baush Machine
Tool Company, has built up a wide reputation for drilling machines,
especially large multiple spindle machines.