Matthias W. Baldwin

Matthias William Baldwin

• Find A Grave Memorial ID # 21656
• Matthias W. Baldwin's Wikipedia Page
• Matthias Baldwin's Patent for improvements in steam engine cut-off valves
• Baldwin's Patent Model of a Flexible Beam Locomotive
• National Inventors Hall of Fame

Baldwin was an American manufacturer of steam locomotives. He opened his machine shop in 1825. The business grew to become Baldwin Locomotive Works, one of the most prolific and successful locomotive manufacturing firms in America.

Growth and Early Work: 1795–1832

Baldwin was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, the third of five children to a successful carriage builder. His father, William Baldwin, died in 1799.

In 1811 he entered an apprenticeship in Frankford, Pennsylvania, to learn jewelry making; he changed employers in 1817 to work with the company of Fletcher and Gardner in Philadelphia. Two years later, in 1819, he had used his jewelry-making knowledge to devise and patent a method for gold plating which has since become the standard method.

Baldwin moved on from jewelry making to bookbinding and printing. Foreshadowing his later success in the railroad industry, his printing shop in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was powered by a steam engine of his own design. Baldwin's printing business helped to reduce America's reliance on texts printed in Europe.

In 1825, Baldwin partnered with David Mason to open a machine shop in Philadelphia. His shop soon became known as one of the most able shops in the area.

Baldwin married a distant cousin in 1827, Sarah C. Baldwin. Together, they had three children.

Locomotive Building: 1831–1866

Baldwin built his first locomotive in 1831 based on designs first shown at the Rainhill Trials in England. It was a small demonstration engine that was displayed at Peale's Philadelphia City Museum. The engine was strong enough to pull a few cars that carried four passengers each. This locomotive was unusual for the time in that it burned coal, which was available locally, instead of wood.

Baldwin's first railroad commission came in 1832 when his shop was asked to assemble a British-built steam locomotive, named Delaware, for the Newcastle and Frenchtown Railroad. The knowledge he gained through assembling this locomotive and from building his own stationary steam engines was transferred into construction of new locomotives.

Later in 1832, the same year that he assembled Delaware, Baldwin built his first new steam locomotive, Old Ironsides. It was first tested on November 23, 1832. This locomotive was a 2-2-0 (Whyte notation) type, meaning it had one unpowered leading axle and one powered driving axle, but Baldwin soon started building 4-2-0 types that were better suited to early American railroads.

Through the Baldwin Locomotive Works, which he founded soon after building 'Old Ironsides', Baldwin built more than 1,500 steam locomotives before his death in 1866. Zerah Colburn did much to publicise the work of the Baldwin Locomotive Works through his newspaper, the Railroad Advocate.

Philanthropy

Starting in 1824, Baldwin showed a willingness to give to charitable causes. In that year he was a founder of the Franklin Institute for the Betterment of Labour. In 1835 he donated money to form a school for African-American children in Philadelphia, and he was one of the early proponents of allowing black men to vote. His charitable and abolitionist stance, however, led to a boycott of Baldwin locomotives by railroads in the southern United States in the years before the Civil War.

One of his last philanthropic efforts was the donation of 10% of his company's (Baldwin Locomotive Works) income to the Civil War Christian Mission in the early 1860s.

Patents

• U.S. Patent 54 Art of Managing and Supplying Fire for Generating Steam in Locomotive engines. Issued to Matthias W. Baldwin on October 15, 1836. The intention of this new mode of managing the fire is to enable me, at each water station, or any convenient place to have a clear coal fire waiting the arrival of the engine so that the grate or fireplace which has been in use, may be detached or slid out, and that containing the clear fire, made to occupy its place.
• Patent 5789 on Sept. 19,1848: Improvement in Fountain Pen Hollders & Nibs.
• Patent 20,403 on June 1,1858: Attachment for watches to tell time without looking.
• www.American Silversmiths
• The Baldwin Genealogy from 1500-1881, by C.C.Baldwin, Pg. 831-832
• http://rodayinsci.com/B/Baldwin_Matthias/BaldwinMatthias-HAM2.htm

MATTHIAS W 6, William 5, Matthias 4, Jonathan 3, John 2, John 1 (of Milford)
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Matthias Baldwin was born in 1795. At age sixteen, he apprenticed to a jeweler in Frankfort, Pennsylvania, working his way to master jeweler in 1819. Always an innovator, he entered into a partnership with Peter Mason in 1828 to manufacture printing machines. Frustrated by his inability to buy a steam engine powerful enough for his expanding factory, Baldwin designed and built his own. Thus began the career of Matthias Baldwin as a designer and manufacturer of locomotives. His name would become synonymous with some of the most powerful and reliable steam engines ever to grace the iron road.

This early stationary engine was so successful that other businesses contacted him to order their own machines on his design. Baldwin eventually bought out Mason and converted his factory to the production of engines to drive machinery in the manufacturing plants of the East coast. In 1830, curious about the infant railroad industry, the Philadelphia Museum asked him to build a small train to pull two passenger wagons around their building as a demonstration of steam locomotion. Intrigued by the challenge of applying steam power to movement and inspired by sketches of British locomotives, Baldwin obliged with great success. A year later he was approached by the Philadelphia, Germantown, and Norristown Railroad to build a full-size engine to replace the horses drawing carriages on that new line. This locomotive, nicknamed Old Ironsides because of the iron bands around the wooden wheels, ran for the first time on November 24, 1832.

Between 1832 and 1837, Baldwin won contracts for ten more locomotives. He continuously improved the design of his locomotives, replacing the ineffective iron-banded wooden wheels with iron ones, for example. Baldwin’s standing rested on the production of powerful, reliable locomotives, a reputation cemented by the performances of his engines on an early line built by the state of Pennsylvania. When the Lancaster pulled a long train of loaded freight cars up the Philadelphia and Columbia’s longest incline, the company decided to retire its horses in favor of steam-powered locomotives. The new Baldwin Works opened in 1838, produced some 1,500 locomotives before Matthias Baldwin died. Most of these were for the domestic market, but some were exported to foreign countries. Baldwin became the industry standard, supplying engines equally adept at pulling freight as they were passenger cars.

Baldwin garnered a reputation as a reformer and philanthropist. He spoke in favor of a broad franchise at the Pennsylvania constitutional convention of 1837 and helped open a school for black children. Baldwin became so well known as an abolitionist that railroads in the South refused to purchase his engines. Later in life, he was renowned in Philadelphia for donating money for a church building and his activities on behalf of the American Philosophical Society.

Spouse: Sarah Crane Baldwin (1787 - 1883)*

Children:

• Anna Colton Baldwin Clayton (1820 - 1890)*
• Mary Louisa Baldwin (1825 - 1894)*
• Baby Girl Baldwin (1826 - 1826)*
• Cecelia Baldwin Darley (1828 - 1909)*

Burial: Laurel Hill Cemetery Philadelphia Philadelphia County Pennsylvania, USA Plot: Section K, Lots 132-135

Maintained by: Find A Grave Record added: Apr 18, 2001 Find A Grave Memorial# 21656

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