Wave 3 - Civil War and Reconstruction Era Inventions (1860 to 1880s)

MEDICAL AND SOCIAL SAFETY

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MEDICAL AND SOCIAL SAFETY 〰️

Even in the aftermath of slavery, African Americans inventiveness in the face of poverty of post-Emancipation in the 1870s. Surviving the failures of the requested "40 acre and a mule" reforms by the corrupted Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (a.k.a. "The Freedmen's Bureau") required new tools and new social models such as the mutual aid societies that helped provide a dignified existence in life (banking services). African Americans drew upon the ancient models of "susus" as a cooperative banking model. Additionally, these societies provided guarantees for the burial of loved ones amid rejection from White cemeteries and protection from the threats of graverobbing funded by medical schools, many of whom used corpses to peddle ideas of biological racism (i.e., eugenics). 

By this point, certain cities had become clear hotbeds for the Black inventors to both gain inspiration and to seek patents for their creations. Washington, D.C. – later call “Chocolate City” – was one of those cities. The Columbian Harmony Society is a DC-based mutual aid societal group that formed in the 1820s, which many Black inventors were a part of as cooperative patrons and whose proceeds from their emergent financial successes could be shared philanthropically for basic needs. The construction of the Columbia Harmony Cemetery was one of those purposes.

Leonard C. Bailey patented a “combined truss and bandage for supporting lower-body hernias” in 1883 which was adopted by the Army Medical Board and earned him millions. He was a treasurer of Columbian Harmony Society and buried in Largo, Maryland at National Harmony Memorial Park.

James Wormley was “renowned” and granted a patent for a lifesaving float in 1881. The float device had rope twisted and passed into sleeves or tubes outside of the boat, which helped occupants. He was wealthy caterer and owner of the famous Womrley Hotel/House, which opened in 1871.

ENERGY AND TRANSPORT TECH

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ENERGY AND TRANSPORT TECH 〰️

Wars have significantly influence demand for what needed invention in young America, eager to assert its independence and prowess to itself and on the worlds stage. The Civil War was one of the first of such periods of internal strife that pushed every corner and fabric of the embattled society to contribute, and enslaved people were no different.

The enslaved Benjamin T. Montgomery was inventor of a propellor for a steamboat which was later adopted by the Confederate navy as a substitute for paddle wheels. His invention tested current laws as his owners brothers Jefferson Davis and brother Joseph Emory Davis tried to be assigned the patentee and assignee of the boat propellor invention. Montgomery moved to Ohio and tried to apply for rights just before the end of The Civil War. He received favorable local press such as Cincinnati Daily Gazette in 1863 and he exhibited it at the Western Sanitary Fair in 1862 (pg. 33). An incredibly rare statement by the Patent Solicitor of Cincinnati James Lyman was written in 1892, after Montgomery died in 1878. Critical and yet affirmative, it basically exposed the previous Solicitor for not honoring Montgomery's application. Remarkably, it also stated that Abraham Lincoln’s steamboat model (which the office did assign drawings) would have “suffer by comparison” to Montgomery's suppressed ones. Later, the Montgomery family – Isaiah Montgomery and brother Peter Montgomery – continued to push forward for patents with examiner Henry Blair in 1903. They claimed to have invented a “ditching plow” that went unpatented too. All of these inventions were part of their family legacy of attempting to establish a thriving, forward-looking "Negro town" called Mound Bayou, Mississippi. 

Landrow Bell - a prominent member of the Columbian Harmony Society - was the inventor of the improved smokestack for locomotives in 1871. He lived on 8th Street in Washington, DC in the SW quadrant. (pg. 48)

As migrations occurred and urbanization was an increasing way of life, electricity was a major area of industrial innovation in the late 19th century onward – especially Light Bulbs. Black inventor Lewis Howard Latimer invented the light bulb method that allowed for manufacturing of long-lasting carbon filaments that Thomas Edison needed for the incandescent bulb in 1881. He was also a patent illustrator. His illustrations are what got him through the door as a draftsman and then he began learning about the electricity industry. In fact, he was the draftsman for Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone invention starting in September 1875, which was issued a patent in March 1876. 

Born in Chelsea, MA in 1848 as the child of fugitives of Norfolk, VA, whom became the subjects of an infamous legal case of a slaveowner showing up with police in Boston to claim Latimer’s parents. It led to a Massachusetts law forbidding state officers to aid in hunting fugitive slaves (p.44). He led an illustrious career as the only African American to be a part of the Thomas "Edison Pioneers" scientific team.

FASHION TECH

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FASHION TECH 〰️

Many Americans still lived in rural conditions and were confined to infrequent shoe purchases, if at all, due to their cost of production and manufacturing. As more people urbanized, foot safety was important as bicycles and cars required them. Shoes were revolutionized by the Dutch Guianan black inventor Jan Earnst Matzeliger who patented in 1883 – after seven years of passionate research – a shoe-lasting machine that cut the cost in half to manufacture (pg. 40). It was so remarkable that buyers came to photograph a demonstration of his machine to prove his claims.

He went on to receive five additional patents from 1883 to 1891. He was financially robbed by greedy investors and manufacturers who spawned companies such as the Union Lasting Machine Company and the Consolidated Lasting Machine Company, who bought the rights to his patents and decided to pay him in stocks rather than money. He died poverty-stricken from tuberculosis at age 36 in 1889. The executor of his estate George Moulton gave the holdings of Matzeliger’s stocks to fifteen friends and his hospital, his church, his foster son Lee. 

He is buried in Lynn at Pine Grovery Cemetery (pg. 43). He has been honored by Governor of Massachusetts with a bridge in 1984 in Lynn, MA and U.S. Postal Service in 1991. However, the bridge has not been maintained in his name.