Identifier: fortyimmortalsof00worc (find matches)
Title: Forty immortals of Worcester & its county. A brief account of those natives or residents who have accomplished something for their community or for the nation
Year: 1920 (1920s)
Authors: Worcester Bank & Trust Company, Worcester, Mass Walton Advertising and Printing Company, Boston
Subjects: Worcester (Mass.) -- Biography Worcester County (Mass.) -- Biography
Publisher: (Boston, Mass. : Walton advertising & printing company)
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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akea successful knitting-machine. The task proved too much for them,and they brought their model to Davis in order to see if he could makeanything of it. That genius expressed some contempt for the knitting-machine, and asked the men why they didnt make a sewing-machine.Elias Howe, Jr., then twenty years old, heard the conversation, and hisactive mind seized on the problem and never rested until he had perfectedthe invention. Elias Howe, Jr., was born in Spencer, Worcester County, Massachusetts,in 1819. His father, a farmer and m.iller, had difficulty in supporting hislarge family. When six years old, Elias worked with his brothers stickingwire teeth into cards used in the manufacture of cotton. Later he helpedon the farm and at his fathers grist mill. During the winter months heattended the district school. When Elias was eleven years old he wasbound to a farmer, but learning that lucrative employment might beobtained in Lowell at the cotton mills, he went there and remained until 51
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FORTY IMMORTALS of WORCESTER & ITS COUNTY the closing of the mills after the crash of 1837. He then went to Cam-bridge and there sought work in a machine-shop. His inventive geniuswas not realized until he overheard the conversation in Ari Daviss shop,where he had obtained work after leaving Cambridge. For a long time he did scarcely more than reflect on the possibilities ofsuch a machine, particularly when looking over heaps of unsewn armyand navy clothing, and in thinking what a pity it was that so muchwork could not be done by machinery. When scarcely twenty-one yearsold, he married, and the burden of a family did not tend to aid the con-summation of the invention he was destined to give the world. Worn with overwork and oppressed by constantly increasing poverty,Elias Howe, Jr., in 1843 began actively to make a model of the sewing-machine. Months were wasted in fruitless toil. By October, 1844, hehad completed a rough model of wood. In the mean time, his fatherhad removed to C

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