Person:George Wardwell (18)

In Hanover, ME at 1850 census ($175 real estate). Living in Rutland at 1870 & 1880 Census. At 1870, real estate valued at $3000 and personal estate valued at $1000. A member of a citizen's committee who greeted President Benjamin Harrison during his trip to Rutland on 28 August 1891.

"George J. Wardwell, who is ill with stomach trouble at his home on Grove street, is somewhat better. -The Poultney [VT] Journal, 19 April 1895

"Mr. George J. Wardwell, the inventor and founder of the Wardwell mineralogical collection, died in Rutland, Vt., Wednesday. Thirty years ago he invented the famous stone channelling machine used in all marble quarries." -Boston Transcript 19 December 1895

Men of Vermont: An Illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters and Sons of Vermont. BIOGRAPHIES OF VERMONTERS A. D. 1892-93:

Wardwell, George Jeffords,of Rutland, son of Joseph H. and Lydia (Howard) Wardwell, was born in Rumford, Me., Sept. 24, 1827. Mr. Wardwell traces his descent from a family that settled in Salem in the old colonial days. One of the family was executed during the witchcraft delusion in that place, and another was an officer in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary war. Mr. Wardwell's somewhat limited education was received from the public and private schools of Rumford, Me., and a short course of study at Bridgeton academy. At the age of thirteen he was apprenticed to his cousin, who was a general mechanic, and he commenced his career by the manufacture of sleighs in Rumford and vicinity. Later he moved to Lowell, Mass., where he was engaged in constructing looms. He then, in partnership with his brother, took a contract to build forty of these articles, but the brothers had the misfortue to lose their shop and its contents by fire. Still they fulfilled their agreement, and after fitting up a small shop in Hanover, Me., they were employed in the manufacture of sleighs, and sashes and doors for the California market. Here they met with more than one disaster, and in 1852 the partnership was dissolved. After carrying on the business for some time alone, Mr. Wardwell moved to Andover, Me., where he occupied himself in the various vocations of inn-keeper, postmaster, and manufacturer of furniture. Always possessing great mechanical skill, in 1854 he invented and received a patent for the first pegging machine for making boots and shoes, but unfortunately he did not reap the results of his skill, owing to the dishonesty of his partner. After a short sojourn in Hatley, Can., he removed to Moe's River, again forming a partnership for the manufacture of furniture and sleighs, then changed the scene of his labors to Coaticook, P. Q., where he worked at his trade and gave much attention to his various inventions, the principal one of which was a stone channelling machine, for which he secured a patent in 1859. The first one was placed in Sutherland Falls quarry in 1861, where it worked successfully, but owing to the depressed financial condition at that time, he was compelled to give up the development of the machine and continued working at his trade in Canada until 1863, when he obtained a new patent on an improved machine which accomplished the work of fifteen laborers, cut a channel from three to four feet deep, and was employed in the Sutherland Falls quarry for seventeen years. As he was still unable to reap any practical result from his discovery, he continued for some time with the company constructing stone-boats. Soon after he received a contract on somewhat unreasonable terms to build several of these machines for various parties, and subsequently was enabled to dispose of his patent to the Steam Stone Cutter Co., receiving $1,500 in cash and $33,520 in the stock of the corporation, of which he was made superintendent. One of the machines was exhibited at the Paris exposition in 1867 and was sold in France. The same year he parted with his foreign patents to the Steam Stone Cutter Co., for over $17,000 in stock. At this time several parties constructed machines in direct violation of his patent, the validity of which after a tedious litigation was established, and injunctions were issued against the sale and use of the illicit machines. The invention has proved itself of immense practical value, and from calculations made up to 1886, it has been proved that over $7,000,000 have been saved to the stone producers in the working of their quarries. As a testimonial of its worth Mr. Wardwell received a gold medal from the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association in 1865; and its value was recognized by the presentation of a silver medal from the Paris exposition, in 1867; he afterwards received a similar recognition from the Centennial exhibition at Philadelphia. In 1874 he invented and patented two different forms of valveless steam engines, which also received medals at Philadelphia. At present he is the largest stockholder in the Steam Stone Cutter Co., at Rutland, having taken out [p.421] twenty-five patents for the channelling and other machines in this country and Europe. October 4, 1850, Mr. Wardwell was united in marriage to Margaret, daughter of Thomas and Margaret (Dickey) Moore of Hatley, Canada, who departed this life Nov. 10, 1883. She left issue four children, two of whom alone survive: Lizzie Olina (Mrs. Thomas Mound of Rutland), and George Alvin. August 22, 1888, Mr. Wardwell espoused his second wife, Kittie C. E., daughter of Hiram W. and Mary M. (Huntoon) Lincoln of Danby. To them one child has been born: Charles Howard. For nearly thirty years Mr. Wardwell has been a hard and laborious student, a fact to which his large library amply testifies, making a specialty of chemistry and geology. He possesses a very large collection of specimens relating to the latter science, and a well fitted, practical laboratory. He has made several visits to Europe for the purpose of studying the geological formation of the country, especially with reference to quarries. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, being a past eminent commander of Knights Templar, and belonging to the Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. For more than twenty years he has been affiliated with the American and British Association for the Advancement of Science. He is an adherent of the Democratic party; has filled various official positions of trust in Rutland; is the vice-president of the board of trade in that city, and one of the committee of fifteen who framed its charter. He is also a director of the Merchants' National Bank of Rutland, and at the present time president of the board of school commissioners of the city of Rutland. Mr. Wardwell is liberal in his religious views, and has been a generous supporter of the Universalist church. He is eminently a self-made man and possesses great inventive genius, having fully overcome the defects of his early education by a long course of arduous study and able and successful efforts for self-improvement.

History of Rutland, Vermont, D. Mason, 1886 WARDWELL, GEORGE JEFFARDS. The grandfather of the subject of this sketch was Joseph Wardwell and an early resident of Salem, Mass., and later of Rumford, Me. He served as second lieutenant in the Revolutionary army and was one of the original members of the Society of Cincinnati, a mutual benefit organization, formed by officers of the army, with General Washington at the head, who contributed one month's pay each to a fund for the benefit of destitute members. This fund descended to the oldest male heir of each member, and is still in existence. Joseph Wardwell's wife was Sarah Hemingway. They had two sons, Joseph (father of George J.) and Moses. The latter mysteriously disappeared while lying in New Orleans harbor about 1830; he had followed a seafaring life. They had also three daughters, Sarah, Mary and Jane. Sarah married Samuel Bartlett, of Rumford, Me.; Mary married Phineas Stevens of the same place, and Jane died unmarried. Joseph H. Wardwell married Lydia Howard, of Rumford, daughter of Asa Howard, a farmer and blacksmith. They had twelve children, all but two of whom lived to maturity. George J. Wardwell is the fourth son and fifth child in this family, and was born in Rumford September 24, 1827. His father was a mechanic and naturally desired that his sons should learn some trade. George J. was, therefore, apprenticed to his cousin, Jeremiah Wardwell, from the time he was thirteen years old until he was sixteen. Previous to the first named year he had attended the district schools ; but he was not satisfied with his education, and having served his apprenticeship, he worked at making sleighs until he accumulated enough money to enable him to attend two fall terms at a select school and one term at Bridgeton Academy, in Bridgeton, Me. The summer of his seventeenth year he worked in a Boston coach-painting shop, which was followed by one summer in Brookline, Mass., at house painting. When he was nineteen years old he went to Lowell, Mass., and spent two years in building the woodwork of looms for the Middlesex corporation. He then, with his brother Charles, took a contract of the same corporation, covering a certain amount of work. This finished, the brothers entered into a contract to build forty broad looms for weaving shawls. After they had spent two months on this work, their shop was burned, consuming not only their partly finished stock, but their tools also. They, however, made such arrangements as enabled them to properly finish the contract. In the summer of 1850 they gathered a little material and fitted up a small wood-working shop in Hanover, Me., using the water-power on the outlet of Howard's Pond. In the fall of that year they built twenty-five sleighs for the cousin with whom George J. served as apprentice, and in the following summer they filled a contract for sash and doors for the California market. That summer their clam was carried away by a flood and rebuilt by them on a more extensive plan ; but the very next season a still more destructive flood swept away everything they had except the building itself, which was left on a sort of island. In the following year Charles removed to New Hampshire, and George J. carried on the shop another winter. It was then leased and later sold, he removing to Andover, where he kept a hotel until 1854, at the same time carrying on his former business in another shop, building furniture, etc. We now come to a period in his life during which was developed his strongest natural characteristic - inventive genius. This he possesses in a high degree, and, coupled with his natural and acquired taste for mechanics, has enabled him to solve several very difficult and important mechanical problems. While in Andover, in 1854, he invented the first pegging machine for making boots and shoes. It was a very ingenious piece of mechanism, each blow of its hammer piercing the hole in the leather, splitting and driving the peg. It was so cleverly constructed, as to combination of parts, that it could be carried in one's pocket, and yet would peg a woman's shoe, eight pegs to the inch, in a minute and ten seconds. It should have made him wealthy ; but as is too often the case, the man to whom he transferred a half interest for $5oo, being the capitalist, grew rich out of the invention, while the inventor secured little for his labor. In 1855 Mr. Wardwell removed to Hatley township, Stanstead county, Canada, where his wife's relatives lived. There he erected a shop and carried it on two years. He then removed to Moe's River and formed a partnership with a man who owned a water power; they manufactured furniture, sleighs, etc., for eighteen months. Mr. Wardwell then removed to Coaticook, on the line of the Grand Trunk railway, where he made his home until 1865, working at his trade and constantly experimenting on various devices. It was while here that he experimented with a machine for sawing marble, visiting, for the purpose, many quarries, and among them the marble quarries in Rutland. The sawing machine was not successful, and after laying it aside he remained at the quarries three weeks, during which time Charles Sheldon suggested to him that he should turn his attention to a machine that would cut the channels in the rock of the quarries and save the excessive cost and slow progress of hand labor. In a statement by Mr. Wardwell to Congress in 188o, in a fruitless effort to secure a renewal of his original patents, this old process of quarrying is thus described by him : " The process of quarrying consisted in cutting channels by hand labor, longitudinally, and as nearly at right angles with the strata as the workmen could do so ; this was very difficult to accomplish, as it compelled the workman_ to direct his cutting-tool (a round rod of iron with a cutting point at each end, and from six to eight feet long), at right angles with the strataoften lacking ten to twenty degrees of being at right angles. Sometimes channels were cut up and down the face of the strata, the workmen standing on board ladders. The depth of these channels would be equal to the thickness of the marble vein or strata, say three to four feet. 'After these long channels had been cut, and short ones across the ends, the strip of rock thus cut around was " raised " from its bed by means of the " plug and feather," and afterwards broken into short blocks by the same means, after which they were ready to be removed from the quarry. Some of these quarries had been worked down to a depth of ioo feet or more ; and in order that the workmen might see the bottom of his " cut," and deliver his blows with effect, a narrow tin lamp was let down into the channel after it had reached the depth of twenty inches or so. When channels were cut to the depth of four feet, each workman would average to cut about one and one-half foot per day of eleven hours. Each workman was allotted three feet of the length of a channel so that a channel sixty feet long would give employment to twenty men, each working on a section of three feet. Each man was expected to average to cut six inches deep in his section per day, making one and one-half foot per day. The working surface of the quarry consisted of a series of angular ridges, extending lengthwise of the quarry, of various height and thickness. The upper veins were worked to the greatest depth, as they were the first to be quarried and removed -leaving the lower or back veins the most elevated of the working surface. Thus it will appear that the system of working the quarries at West Rutland was not favorable for experimenting with or of working with machinery." It will he readily understood that the devising and perfecting of a machine that would accomplish this class of work rapidly and successfully was no simple problem. But the idea fastened itself in Mr. Wardwell's brain and staid there. In 1859 he constructed a small working model and on that secured his original patent. In the following year he made a large machine at St. Johnsbury, Vt., which was taken to Rutland and set at work on a block of marble furnished by Messrs. Sheldon & Slason. This machine, while it did not work to the satisfaction of the inventor, was still useful in showing him what was lacking in it. It was broken up and sold. In 1861 he built a new machine, radically different from the other and sufficiently smaller to admit of its being worked by and for experimental purposes. This was taken to the Sutherland Falls quarry and placed at work. The inventor might very properly have cried " Eureka!" The correct principle was discovered. The machine was successful, considered as an experiment. It cut a channel about twenty feet long, and twenty inches deep in the solid rock, using bars of steel only one-half inch thick, and cutting a kerf one inch wide. This channel was cut in the center of the machine and between the rails on which it moved ; it could not, therefore, cut close up to the wall of a quarry, nor could the rails be staid together ; these were serious advantages, but the inventor knew they could be obviated. The War of the Rebellion was now inaugurated, and owing to the general depression, the manager of the quarry advised Mr. Wardwell to lay aside his machine until more propitious times. He accordingly returned to Canada and worked at his trade, saving his earnings for future work on his invention. In the spring of 1863 he received letters from H. P. Roberts, manager of the Sutherland Falls quarry, to the effect that business had revived and counseling a renewal of his work. Meanwhile, (luring the winter of 1862-63 he constructed another model with the standards and gang of cutters on the outside of the machine, which allowed it to cut the channels outside of the rails on which it moved and close to the walls of the quarry. With this model he revisited the quarry at Sutherland Falls, and also showed it to Hon. E. M. Madden, president of the marble company, who lived in Middletown, N. Y., and the result was, an arrangement by which a larger machine on the new principle was to be built. On this point Mr. Wardwell says in the statement alluded to: " The cost of constructing this machine was to he borne by the Sutherland Falls Marble Company, while I was to receive $2.50 per day for superintending its construction and the subsequent operating of the same on their quarry to the extent of establishing its practicability for cutting channels in the quarry. The conditions under which this machine was to be constructed and used was - that should it prove a success after a fair trial on the quarry, and should a patent issue on an application which I was to make therefor, I was to give the Sutherland Falls Marble Company the right to said machine, and any number of similar machines, together with such improvements as I might subsequently add thereto. Immediately after making the above arrangement, I returned to Rutland and commenced the construction of a machine (April 23, 1863), which was completed and put to work June 23, and was kept at work nearly all of the time until cold weather. From the time of first starting up until the 22d of September, the machine was operated by myself, during which time I had occasion to make a number of experiments which suggested changes that were made in this machine, and others that I afterwards built." This machine was designed to be driven by a portable engine attached to the rear of the machine by a link and moving with the machine on trucks. It cut in one direction only, and returned to the starting point by a reversal of the feed motion. It was covered in all its parts by patents under date of November, 1863. In practical working the machine was broadly successful, doing the work of about fifteen men and cutting channels three to four feet deep. It was worked at the Sutherland Falls quarries about seventeen years and now stands in the quarry yards at that place. The further development of the machine and its working is best given in Mr. Wardwell's own words. He says: - In the spring of 1864 I again went to Rutland and called upon all the proprietors of quarries in Rutland and neighboring towns. Owing to the quality of marble in different quarries, some of which was hard, with more or less flint, others softer, and the varying dip of the strata or veins in the different quarries, and the manner in which the several quarries were worked, gave rise to much discussion as to the practicability of using a machine on other quarries than the Sutherland Falls, which seemed to be the only one on which my machine could be used. " It was well known to quarrymen that all previous attempts to cut channels by machinery had resulted in utter failure ; and the prevailing opinion was that a machine to be practicable for general use should be one that could be worked on each of their respective quarries, and in conformity with the systems then in use in the different quarries ; that is, if channels were being cut by hand-labor, the ideal machine must be one that could adapt itself to the then existing working surfaces however uneven and rough they might be, and be able to cut channels in the same places on elevated sections of the quarry, as well as on the faces of the dipping strata at different angles, and under the same circumstances as was then being done by the hand process. Another idea had become fixed in the minds of quarrymen, particularly at West Rutland, that was, that channels must be cut through the several veins at whatever angle they might lay in the quarry in order to ' raise' the blocks at the natural cleavage beds with the ' plug and feather;' and that this was the only manner that blocks of marble could be ' raised' safely, and that any other method would entail a loss of a large amount of stock. After the machine at Sutherland Falls had been in use about one year cutting vertical channels cross-wise of the veins, and to greater depths than was formerly done by hand, and the blocks were being successfully 'raised' with the 'plug and feather' where there was no cleavage bed, a change was made in the system of working the quarries at West Rutland by having the uneven working surfaces brought down to level floors. In this manner some of the largest quarries were, in about two years, brought into a condition suitable for using my machines. I spent the early part of the spring of 1864 in trying to dispose of a part of my patent, and in soliciting orders for my machines, and failed to do either. My means being exhausted I was compelled to suspend further efforts for a time, and went to work for the Sutherland Falls Marble Company, building stone boats in the attic of one of their stone sawmills. About midsummer I made a contract with the firm of Sheldon & Slason to construct a machine for them to be used in their quarries at West Rutland. I was to receive one thousand dollars above the cost of making for the right to use said machine ; and in order to close this trade I had to enter into an agreement whereby they might use any number of similar machines, together with such improvements as I might acid thereto, upon the payment of further sums agreed upon at that time, as follows : for the first additional machine, $250.00; second additional machine, $200.00; third additional machine, $150.00; fourth additional machines, $100.00; fifth additional machine, $50.00; and upon the further payment of $50.00 any number of machines more than six. All of these conditions had to be acceded to before I could close a trade for the first machine. A few days after making this trade with Sheldon & Slason I made a similar trade and agreement with the Rutland Marble Company, knowing at the time that the consideration was but a trifle as compared with the profits that would be derived by the companies who were to use them. I believed that if these two companies could be induced to use the machines in their quarries it would enable me to introduce them into general use. Before these two machines were completed I received an order for a second machine for the Sutherland Falls Marble Company, and these machines were completed late in the fall and they were not put in operation until the summer of 1865. " In January, 1865, I sold my entire interest in my patent of November l0th, 1863 (reserving the right to use in the quarries of the Sutherland Falls Marble Company, Rutland Marble Company and Sheldon & Slason), to the Steam Stone-Cutter Company, a corporation organ ized under the laws of the State of New York, with a capital of $300,000 divided into 30,000 shares of $I0 each. For this sale I received $1,500 cash and 3,352 shares of stock in said Company." This machine is now in use in nearly all of the quarries of the country, and on all varieties of stone except granite. Its practical value is almost beyond estimate, and its invention is an achievement of which any man might well be proud. It has been awarded a gold medal from the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association (1865) ; a silver medal, Paris Exposition, 1867, also a medal at the Philadelphia Exposition. The Steam Stone-Cutter Company erected its own shops in Rutland in 1868, and Mr. Wardwell is now one of its largest stockholders. Although the development of this machine occupied many years of his attention, he has found time to devise other valuable machinery. In 1874 he invented and patented two species of valveless steam engines - a horizontal cross-head engine, and an upright oscillating engine, These machines embodied new features, particularly that of simplicity of construction, and were exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, where they received bronze medals. Mr. Wardwell's natural tastes have also led him outside of his chosen occupation, and he studied deeply the sciences of geology and chemistry, and has probably the finest geological collection in the State. The degree of A. M. was conferred on him in 1885 by Middlebury College, and he is a member of both the American and the British Associations for the Advancement of Science. Mr. Wardwell was married on the 4th of October, 1850, to Margaret Moore, of Hatley, Canada. They have had four children, the two eldest of whom were sons and died at the age of five years. The two living are George Alvin, now in Hatley, Canada, and Lizzie O, wife of Thomas Mound, of Rutland. Mrs. Wardwell died November 10, 1883, while on a visit to her friends in Hatley.

1. ↑ Gravestone.
2. ↑ Boston Transcript 19 December 1895.
3.   Patents