Elisha Town

"Elisha Town, an inventor of considerable note, taking out several patents, died Apr, 12, 1844, aged 63, leaving five sons, Snow, Samuel, Benjamin, Barnard, and a physician residing in Marshfield. The first four, whose ages are from 60 to 76, all reside in town, within a few rods of where they were born, each being a few rods from each other."

• The History of the Town of Montpelier, Including that of the Town of East Montpelier, for the First One Hundred and Two Years... by Abby Maria Hemenway, page 529.

"The most useful and promising under­taking, by way of manufactures, was by Sylvanus Baldwin, in the erection of a cotton mill in 1810. From a memorial to Congress in 1832, signed by the distin­guished Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin, it appears that "as early as the year 1810, there were, north of the Potomac, 50 mills for spinning cotton in operation, and 25 more that went into operation the ensuing year. The weaving business had commenced, but was not so far advanced." Baldwin's cotton mill at Montpelier was therefore among the first fifty in the country, and moreover it was among the few that had attained the dignity of weaving cotton yarn into sheet­ings and shirtings. This was 5 years be­fore the first power-loom in America was set in motion, (in 1815,) at Waltham, Mass. Having established this mill, Mr. Baldwin joined with Elisha Town in the invention and construction of a loom for spinning flax and silk by water-power, with a model of which he went to Europe, in the hope of winning a handsome premium offered for such a machine by the first Na­poleon. This enterprise failed through the mischances of war. In Mr. Baldwin's absence, the mill was run successfully by his brother, Hon. Daniel Baldwin, on whose authority this account is given. On the return of the owner, the cotton-mill was sold to David Harrington, and in December, 1813, it was destroyed by fire. The first and the last owner were then crippled in means, and this enterprise was perforce abandoned."

• Source - http://sites.rootsweb.com/~vtwindha/vhg4/0251_montpelier.htm

"In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte published to the world the offer of a reward of a million of francs to any one who should invent and exhibit to the approval of the commissioners to whom it was to be submitted, at his capital, a machine which. should prove successful in spinning flax in the manner of spinning silk and cotton by water power. As soon as this magnificent offer became' known in Montpelier, Mr. Elisha Town a most ingenious inventive Cabinet Maker, who had been doing a small business in that line, in the place, since about 1804, on the suggestion and with the encouragement of Sylvanus Baldwin, who was then erecting a factory to spin cotton where Langdon's mill now stands on the Montpelier side of the river, and who was one of the most scientific mechanics of those times in this section, immediately set his brains to work to achieve the great desideratum; and for the next eighteen months, day and night, waking and dreaming, was Mr. Town's brains engrossed with the important project. Rough model after model was got up, and experiment after experiment made on each, and each successively cast aside as they were found to be failures; yet nothing discouraged he persistently returned to the work of getting up new ones in full confidence in his ability eventually to accomplish the object.

A few years ago the old yellow house, which stood in the place of Timothy Cross' present residence, and which was the dwelling of Sylvanus Baldwin, the consulting friend to whom Mr. Town was in the habit of coming to report progress, show parts of his experimental machinery and take advice—the old yellow house was torn down; when, in the garret, were found sundry curious specimens of parts of this machine, made in the different stages of its perfection, and of so singular a construction as to become a great puzzle to all attempting to conjecture the object of their manufacture, till Mr. Town's connection with the former owner of the house, in the construction of his flax-spinning machine, was recalled. One of these specimens is still preserved by Mr. Cross as a curiosity. It is a delicate steel spring confined to a corresponding slat of iron, opening and shutting like tweezers, which is understood to have been one of a row of the same kind, fixed in the feeder of the machine to seize the harl of the flax and conduct it to the spindle, the great difficulty consisting in making the spindles take, and draw out the flax as they do the more adhesive fibers of cotton.

...

Before dismissing this subject we cannot forbear a passing tribute to the genius of Mr. Elisha Town, the chief inventor of the machine, the history of which we have been giving. Montpelier never produced, and it is doubtful whether the whole state ever produced, a man of a more truly inventive mind. But his book knowledge of mechanics and previous mechanical inventions, was quite limited; and he was known to have studied out principles and spent much time in building machines for their application to inventions, which, though perfectly original in him, were found, at last, to have been long before made and put in operation by others. And although he was continually getting up something new, yet we now find his name coupled with no invention of much importance, except what may attach to his flax spinning machine. Like most men of inventive genius, he was through life emphatically poor, but was ever esteemed, up to the time of his death a few years ago, a most inoffensive and worthy citizen."

• History of the Town of Montpelier by B.P. Thompson, pages 120-121.

For a detailed discussion of Elisha Town's stoves see: http://stovehistory.blogspot.com/2015/08/vermont-stove-inventors-in...

Elisha Town's death record on Ancestry.com contains the following remark: "Settled about 1800 on Town Hill so called from his name."

• Ancestry.com. Vermont, Vital Records, 1720-1908 (database on-line). Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013.