|
FAIRBANKS FAMILY. The name of Fairbanks is indissolubly associated
with St. Johnsbury, whose progress and prosperity has been largely built
upon the great business enterprise of this family. A volume would fail
to do justice to the wealth of historic and biographical incident connected
with the inception and progress of that great enterprise, and the lives
and public services of its founders and promoters. In 1815 Joseph Fairbanks
and his family moved here from Brimfield, Massachusetts. He united the
occupations of a farmer and a carpenter, and when he moved to Vermont he
also built and conducted the sawmill, soon adding a gristmill, which were
located where Fairbanks village now stands. His son, Thaddeus, a skilful
mechanic and natural inventor, was his efficient assistant in these enterprises.
In 1823 he started a small iron foundry, and joined the following year
by his brother, Erastus, they commenced the manufacture of stoves and plows
of cast iron. 1829-'30 the raising of hemp became a leading industry, and
E. & T. Fairbanks built three of the great machines for dressing hemp,
their works being then located near the site of the hoe factory. It became
necessary to provide for accurately weighing the hemp straw. The only scales
in use were the even balance and the Roman steelyard, not improved since
the days of the Caesars.
The only device for weighing carts was a lever, a stick of timber
suspended high up from a gallows frame, from the short arm of which chains
hung that could be hooked around the cart axle, and from the long arm a
platform on which weights could be placed. Mr. Fairbanks' first arrangement
was to place an A shaped lever in a suitable pit, and upon it balance on
knife edges a free platform, level with the ground. To keep this platform
from rocking on its support, he framed into it a vertical post, well braced
and from the top of this attached level chains to fixed posts from either
side. This scale was accurate, but clumsy.
This great invention was constantly improved, and the magnitude
of the operations of the scale company expanded to meet the growing demand
for an article of prime necessity. Forty-four carloads of the products
of the manufactory have been shipped in a single week. There has never
been a strike in the seventy years' existence of the Fairbanks company,
and the enterprise exemplifies an almost ideal industrial situation, with
mutual and cordial cooperation of capital and labor.
We shall find even a brief reference to the personalities of the
noble and public-spirited men who laid the foundations and raised the super-structure
of the prosperity of St. Johnsbury, full of interest and inspiration. The
original firm consisted of the three brothers, Erastus, Thaddeus, and Joseph.
The latter was the lawyer and literary man, Thaddeus was the fertile inventor,
and Erastus the business man of the firm.
Source:
Successful Vermonters, William H. Jeffrey, E. Burke, Vermont, The Historical
Publishing Company, 1904, p.119-120.
Prepared
by Tom Dunn, 2006
|
