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Descendants of Joseph Bemis


      1598. Amasa Bemis7 Howe (Elias6, Fanny5 Bemis, Joshua4, Samuel3, John2, Joseph1)7304 was born 03 Nov 1817 in Spencer, Worcester, Massachusetts7304,7305, and died 1868 in Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts7306. He married Sarah Fry Caldwell 27 Oct 1842 in Monroe, LA. She was born 16 Nov 1820 in Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts, and died 24 Mar 1872.

Notes for Amasa Bemis Howe:
He first settled in Monroe, LA. About 1845 he sold his business in Monroe, and came North to assist his brother, Elias in establishing his original patent of the sewing machine, located in Springfield, Massachusetts. Afterwards he moved to New York City, where later he established the A. B. Howe Sewing Machine business. In 1868 he went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to attend the funeral of his father, and died while there, 15 Jan 1868.

More About Amasa Howe and Sarah Caldwell:
Marriage: 27 Oct 1842, Monroe, LA
     
Children of Amasa Howe and Sarah Caldwell are:
+ 2978 i.   Cornelia Morgan8 Howe, born 29 Aug 1844 in Monroe, LA.
  2979 ii.   Benjamin Porter Howe, born 20 Jul 1846 in Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts; died 14 Dec 1879 in Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts7306. He married Jennie Howe7306 17 Nov 18697307; born 16 Jul 18487307.
  More About Benjamin Howe and Jennie Howe:
Marriage: 17 Nov 18697307



      1599. Elias7 Howe, Jr. (Elias6, Fanny5 Bemis, Joshua4, Samuel3, John2, Joseph1)7308 was born 09 Jul 1819 in Spencer, Worcester, Massachusetts7309, and died 03 Oct 1867 in Brooklyn, N.Y.7310,7311. He married Elizabeth J. Ames7312,7313 03 Mar 1841 in Boston, Mass.7313, daughter of Simon Ames. She was born 18277314, and died 30 Apr 1849 in Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts, aged 31 years, 8 months7314.

Notes for Elias Howe, Jr.:
Descendant of John Howe, of Sudbury, who became a freeman of Massachusetts Bay Colony in May l640 and died at Marlboro in l680. Elias Howe went to school occasionally in the winter time and worked on the farm and in the mills. The machinery of the latter interested him particularly, and he liked nothing better than to tinker with it and make repairs. When he was twelve years old his father could not afford to keep him in clothes any longer and hired him out to a neighboring farmer. Poor health and lameness prevented him from doing heavy farm work, and a year later he returned home to help in the saw and grist-mills. Ambitious to learn more about machinery, he went to Lowell, Mass., in l835 and became an apprentice in an establishment that manufactured cotton machinery. The panic of l837 severed this connection and Howe went to Cambridge, Mass. Here he found work in a machine-shop where he operated a newly invented hemp-carding machine. After a few months he went to Boston and became an apprentice of Ari Davis, a watch-maker primarily, but also a maker of surveying instruments and scientific apparatus for Harvard professors. Davis was an ingenious mechanician and, in spite of his eccentricities, was much consulted by both inventors and capitalists. In this ideal environment, with the finest of mechanical devices upon which to practice, Howe became both skilled and deft as a machinist. One day he overheard Davis suggest to a would-be inventor that he make a sewing machine, and from that moment he brooded over the possiblility of devising a machine which would sew with the same motions as the human hand. In the meantime, Mar. 3, l841, he married Elizabeth J. Ames of Boston. He at length constructed a machine with a double-pointed needle and eye in the middle, but it proved an utter failure. In l844, however, he made another attempt, this time having in mind a lock-stitch and an eye-pointed needled united with a shuttle, an idea derived from the looms he had been familiar with all his life and had helped to make in the factory at Lowell. While the idea in the end proved a good one, he had first to devise a shuttle loaded with a lower thread and the means of throwing the shuttle at the proper intervals through loops of the upper thread. Soon after beginning this second machine, he gave up his nine-dollar-a-week job with Davis in order to devote his whole time to the task he had set himself. His father helped him by boarding him and his family in Cambridge, where he was then living. Howe later prevailed upon a friend, George Fisher, to become his partner, Fisher receiving the Howe family into his home as guests and advancing five hundred dollars toward buying mataerials and tools. Throughout the winter of l844-45 Howe labored steadily at his machine and by April l845 he had completed it to a point where it sewed with evenness and smoothness. In a public demonstration it exceeded in speed five of the swiftest hand sewers, for it could make 250 stitiches a minute. Notwithstanding its success, however Howe met with financial discouragement. In l846 he completed a second machine, and after inducing Fisher to advance the necessary money, he took it to Washington, where he deposited it in the Patent ffice with his application for a patent. This was granted Sept. 10, 1846, patent No. 4750 (House Executive Document 52, 29 Cong., 2 Sess., pp. 125, 308-09). Since he could arouse no interest in his machine in the United States, he decided to offer it in England. Accordingly, in October l846, his brother Amasa went to London with a third machine and succeeded in selling it for 250 pounds to William Thomas, a large manufacturer of corsets, shoes, and umbrellas. This transaction also gave to Thomas the entire rights of the machine for Great Britain. Seeing the possibilities of adapting it to sewing leather, Thomas induced Howe, through his brother, to come to London, and advanced the passage money. After working eight months for fifteen dollars a week, Howe quarreled with Thomas and found himself stranded. By pawning his model and patent papers he raised enough money to send his family home, and a few months later he returned in a sailing vessel, paying his way by cooking for the steerage. He arrived in Cambridge in time to reach the bedside of his dying wife. Meanwhile knowlege of the favor with which his machine had been received in England had reached the United States, and some manufacturers had already begun to make and sell sewing machines like Howe's in design. With a hopeless feeling, at first, he sued these manufacturers for infringement, using money advanced by George W. Bliss who had become his partner through the purchase of Fisher's half interest in the patent. One of the longest fights in American patent law followed, continuing from l849 to l854. With the proceeds of one or two successful suits, Howe made and markedted a number of sewing machines in New York, and thus kept himnself alive. Finallly his patent was declared basic and a judgment for a royalty was granted to him on every machine that infringed his patent (Howe vs. Underwood, 12 Federal Cases, 678). Shortly after this Bliss died and Howe for a nominal sum acquired full ownership of his patent. It expire in l860 but was extended for seven years in March l861, and in these years Howe's royalties often reached $4.00 a week. During the Civil War he organized and equipped an infantry regiment in Connecticut, and though he placed his means at its disposal he served in it as a private. In l865 he organized the Howe Machine Company of Bridgeport, Conn., and the perfectedowe machine which he there produced won the gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of l867. After the death of this first wife, he married again (Howe Genealogies). He died in Brooklyn, N.Y.(Howe's own account of his invention and development of the sewing machine, including the litigation, is printed in Before then. Philip F. Thomas, Commissioner of Patents, in the
Matter of the Application of Elias Howe, Jr., for an Extension of his Sewing
Machine Patent (l860). See also The Howe Exhibition Cat. of Sewing Machines & Cases (l967), issued by the Howe Machine Company; Practical Mag. (London), V l875), 321-24; James Parton, in Atlantic Mo., May l867; Geo. Iles, Leading Am. Inventors (l912); W. B. Kaempffert, A Popular Hist. of Am. Invention (l924), vol. II; E. W. Byrn, The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth Century (l900); J. L. Bishop, A hist. of Am. Manufactures from l608-l860 (l864), vol. II; N. Salamon Hist. of the Sewing Machine from the Year l750; With a Biog. of Elias Howe,Jr.(London, l863). H. M. Towne, Hist. Sketches Relating to Spencer, Mass. Vol. I (l90l); D. W. Howe, Howe Geneals ....John Howe of Sudbury (l929): N.Y. Tribune, Oct. 5, l867.)

Dictionary of American Biography, Edited by Dumas
alone, Vol. IX, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, l932.

Note: Draper's book incorrectly attributes this invention to Elias Howe Senior

"The Bemis History and Genealogy" by Colonel Thomas Waln-Morgan Draper,1900, published San Francisco, California, copies in the Library of Congress

ELIAS HOWE, Inventor of the Sewing Machine

"He almost beggared himself before he discovered where the eye of the needle of the sewing machine should be located. His original idea was to follow the model of the ordinary needle, and have the eye at the heel. It never occurred to him that it should be placed at the point, and he might have failed altogether if he had not dreamed he was building a sewing machine for a savage king in a strange country. Just as in his actual experience he was perplexed about the needle's eye. He thought the king gave him 24 hours in which to complete the machine and make it sew, or suffer death as a punishment. Howe worked and worked, and puzzled, and finally gave it up. Then he thought he was taken out to be executed. He noticed that the warriers carried spears that were pierced near the head. Instantly came the solution, and while the inventor was begging for time he awoke. It was 4 o'clock in the morning. He jumped out of bed, ran to his workshop, and by 9, a needle with an eye at the point had been rudely modeled. After that, it was easy. That is the true story of an important incident in the invention of the sewing machine."

"Howe Genealogies" by Daniel Wait Howe, Revised & Edited by Gilman Bigelow Howe, 1929:

In early life he was employed at home in the making of cards used in the manufacture of cotton cloth, and thus acquired some of the ideas of machinery which he afterwards applied in the invention of the sewing maching. He lived with his father until 1835, when he went to Lowell, Massachusetts, and obtained a situation in a manufactory of cotton machinery, where he stayed for a couple of years, and then went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and got employment in a machine shop. In a few months he went to Boston, and obtained employment in a shop kept by one Ori Davis for the manufacture of nautical and philosophical instruments, and it was while there, that he first conceived the idea of inventing the sewing machine, and he began work upon it about the year 1843. He received some pecuniary assistance from a former school mate, George Fisher, and in 1845 he produced a machine for which he afterwards secured a patent.

He vainly endeavored to interest the tailors of Boston in the invention, but they would have nothing to do with it and becoming discouraged, he took employment for several months as a railroad engineer. In 1847 he and his brother Amasa B. Howe, went to England to endeavor to introduce the invention there. Soon after, his wife and three children joined him in London. While there, he obtained employment in the establishment of William Thomas, who contracted with Elias to adapt his machine to the manufacture of corsets. After a few months, in consequence of some disagreement with his employer he was discharged. This seemed to have been the darkest period of his life; his invention appeared to be a failure, and all his years of labor upon it to have gone for naught. He was out of employment and out of means, his wife was in failing health and he was in a strange land, and far from home and kindred.
By extraordinary exertions and economy, and the hlep of a few friends, he managed to raise money to send his wife and children back to America, and in 1849 he followed, landing in New York with only half a crown in his pocket. He soon found employment in a machine shop, but soon received news that his wife was dying in Cambridge. He was so poor that he was compelled to borrow money to go to Cambride, and was obliged to attend the funeral of his wife in his daily working clothes. Soon after, the news came that all his household goods had been lost in the wreck of the vessel in which they were shipped. He spent several years trying to re-purchase the rights which he had sold in the years of adversity, and in lawsuits with infringers upon his patent.

At last, in 1854, the validity of his patent was established and this was the turning point in his fortunes. He was recognized as the real inventor of the sewing machine, his invention containing the essential features of all other machines, and his income soon reached an enormous sum, it being estimated that at the expiration of his patent, he had realized about $2,000,000. He received many medals and other marks of appreciation of his invention, including a gold medal and a Cross of the Legion of Honor at the Paris Exposition in 1867.

During the Civil War, Mr. Howe was a zealous supporter of the Government, being largely instrumental in recruiting the 17th Regt. Conn. Vols., in which he enlisted as a private, and in which he served until he was compelled to leave the service by reason of failing health. At one time while he was in the service and the government was in financial straits, Mr. Howe advanced the money with which to pay the soldiers of the regiment.

More About Elias Howe, Jr.:
Occupation: Inventor...sewing machine

More About Elias Howe and Elizabeth Ames:
Marriage: 03 Mar 1841, Boston, Mass.7315
     
Children of Elias Howe and Elizabeth Ames are:
+ 2980 i.   Jane Robinson8 Howe, born 22 Apr 1842 in Cambridge, Middlesex, Massachusetts.
  2981 ii.   Simon Ames Howe7316, born 29 Feb 18447316; died 15 Sep 18837316. He married Ella Peak7316.
  2982 iii.   Julia Maria Howe7316, born 27 Jan 18467316; died 21 Mar 18697316. She married Alden B. Stockwell7316.


      1600. Mary7 Howe (Elias6, Fanny5 Bemis, Joshua4, Samuel3, John2, Joseph1)7316 was born 13 Mar 1821 in Spencer, Worcester, Massachusetts7316,7317, and died 18907318. She married Issacher Greene7318.
     
Children of Mary Howe and Issacher Greene are:
  2983 i.   Mary Adalaide8 Howe7318, born 29 Jun 18447318.
  2984 ii.   Elbridge Andrews Howe7318, born 07 Jan 18467318.
  2985 iii.   Albert Taylor Howe7318, born 09 Mar 18497318.


      1602. Eliza7 Howe (Elias6, Fanny5 Bemis, Joshua4, Samuel3, John2, Joseph1)7319 was born 22 Dec 1824 in Spencer, Worcester, Massachusetts7319,7320, and died 27 Oct 18877321. She married Samuel P. Teel7321 26 Nov 18457322.

More About Eliza Howe:
Name 2: Elija Howe7323

More About Samuel Teel and Eliza Howe:
Marriage: 26 Nov 18457324
     
Children of Eliza Howe and Samuel Teel are:
  2986 i.   Edward Augustus8 Teel7324, born 12 Nov 18467324; died in infancy.
  2987 ii.   Edward Augustus Teel7324, born 01 Aug 18507324.
  2988 iii.   Frank Hartean Teel7324, born 25 Jun 18527324.
  2989 iv.   Charles Remick Teel7324, born 10 Sep 18557324.
  2990 v.   Melia Elizabeth Teel7324, born 03 Jan 18587324.
  2991 vi.   Jennie Robinson Teel7324, born 22 Jun 18687324.


      1603. Juliett7 Howe (Elias6, Fanny5 Bemis, Joshua4, Samuel3, John2, Joseph1)7325 was born 20 Nov 1826 in Spencer, Worcester, Massachusetts7326, and died 23 Feb 18797326. She married Hiram Tucker7326 31 Dec 18457326.

More About Juliett Howe:
Name 2: Juliet Howe7327
Name 3: Juliette Howe7328

More About Hiram Tucker:
Occupation: He was the inventor of a process of imitating marble and also of a bronze finish for iron work. He invented and patented a spring bed which was extensively used in the hospitals during the Civil War. 7328

More About Hiram Tucker and Juliett Howe:
Marriage: 31 Dec 18457328
     
Children of Juliett Howe and Hiram Tucker are:
  2992 i.   Horace Howe8 Tucker7328, born 27 Sep 18497328.
  2993 ii.   Hiram Greenwood Tucker7328, born 11 Nov 18517328.
  2994 iii.   Elias Howe Tucker7328, born Sep 18547328.


      1605. Fanny7 Howe (Elias6, Fanny5 Bemis, Joshua4, Samuel3, John2, Joseph1)7328 was born 26 Nov 1831 in Spencer, Worcester, Massachusetts7328. She married (1) Thomas O. Barri7328 03 Jul 18537328. He died 03 Jul 1863 in the battle of Gettysburg7328. She married (2) John W. Barri7328 18 Mar 18697328. He died 13 May 18727328.

Notes for Fanny Howe:
Not listed in [Draper:161]

Notes for Thomas O. Barri:
[Received from John Heseltine, heseltine@gwi.net]

Barri, Thomas Oliver of Cambridge, Mass., 35; c.1826 born in Connecticut; May 1, 1861 1stlt./adjutant, 5th Mass. Infantry Rgt. May 14, 1861 capt., 11th U. S. Infantry Rgt. July 2, 1863 brevet maj., U. S. Army for Gettysburg Pa. July 3, 1863 died in 2nd Division, V Corps hospital of wounds (abdomen) received on July 2 at Gettysburg and buried in the Gettysburg National Cemetery; 1890 widow Frances H. Barri living in Springfield, Mass.
Sources: 1890 U. S. Veterans Census; Massachusetts Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in the Civil War; Register of the Commandery of the State of Massachusetts MOLLUS; Heitman: Register of United States Army 1789-1903; These Honored Dead: The Union Casualties at Gettysburg

More About Thomas O. Barri:
Military service: He was a Captain in the U. S. Infantry in the Civil War and d. 3 Jul 1863 of wounds received the day before in the battle of Gettysburg.7328

More About Thomas Barri and Fanny Howe:
Marriage: 03 Jul 18537328

More About John Barri and Fanny Howe:
Marriage: 18 Mar 18697328
     
Children of Fanny Howe and Thomas Barri are:
+ 2995 i.   John Atherton8 Barri, born 27 Feb 1855.
  2996 ii.   Fanny Curtis Barri7328, born 26 Aug 18577328.
  2997 iii.   Thomas Howe Barri7328, born 25 Sep 18627328.
     
Child of Fanny Howe and John Barri is:
  2998 i.   Alice Hamilton8 Barri7328, born 14 Jan 18707328.

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