USA > Connecticut > Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography, genealogical-memorial; representative citizens, v. 5 > Part 14
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The Newton family is one of the oldest in New England. The immigrant ances- tor of Mr. Newton, Richard Newton, came from England, probably in the sum- mer or fall of 1638, and was one of the early settlers of Sudbury. His name ap- pears on the list of original proprietors of Sudbury in 1640. He became a freeman in May, 1645, and was one of the thirteen who signed the petition for Marlborough. The petition was granted, and in the allot- ment of land, Richard Newton received thirty acres. He finally became possessed of nearly one hundred and thirty acres there. In 1664 he was one of eight who petitioned for permission to establish a church and call a minister. He married Anne or Hannah, as she is called in his will, daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Loker, of County Essex, England. She died at Marlborough, December 5, 1697, and he died August 24, 1701.
Their son, Moses Newton, was born at Sudbury, October 20, 1645, and was a worker in iron. He received his portion of his father's estate before the latter died. On March 20, 1676, while the peo- ple were at church, they were attacked by Indians, and Moses Newton received a ball in his elbow, from the effects of which he never fully recovered. In the Indian wars and troubles of the period, 1700 to 1713, Moses Newton, Sr., his son, Moses, and John Newton, with their families, were assigned to Isaac Howe's garrison, No. 6, near what is now the Newton Rail- road Station. On October 27, 1668, he married at Marlborough, Joanna, daugh- ter of Edward and Joanna Larkin, of Charlestown, Massachusetts. She died in 1723, and he died in 1736.
Their son, Moses Newton, Jr., was born February 28, 1669, and married, Decem- ber II, 1695, Sarah, daughter of Isaac and Frances (Woods) How, born January 28, 1675, and died December 4, 1733. She was the granddaughter of John How, who was a resident of Watertown in 1639. He was one of the Sudbury citizens who signed the petition for Marlborough in 1657. He was admitted freeman in 1687, and conducted the first public house in Marlborough. In 1717 he became one of the original proprietors of Shrewsbury.
Their son, Elisha Newton, was born in October, 1701, and married at Shrews- bury, Massachusetts, Sarah, daughter of Isaac and Mary (Wait) Tomlin, of Brook- field. She was born at Marlborough, April 15, 1708; was admitted to the church at Shrewsbury in 1734, and died about 1798.
Their son, Solomon Newton, was born January 28, 1740-41, and died there May 28, 1822. On May 18, 1762, he married Hannah, daughter of Daniel and Sarah (Ball) Hastings, born in Shrewsbury, April 14, 1742, and died there November 9, 1781. She was descended from Thomas and Susannah Hastings, who left Ips- wich, England, in the ship "Elizabeth," April 10, 1634, and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Daniel Newton, son of Solomon New- ton, was born, one of twins, April 13, 1776, and died at Shrewsbury, March 6, 1827. On January 31, 1803, he married Lucy, daughter of Daniel and Hannah (Harrington) Maynard, born June 2, 1782, and died October 2, 1818. She was descended from John Maynard, who was in Sudbury in 1638, and was one of the petitioners for Marlborough. Soon after his marriage, Daniel Newton moved to Heath, Massachusetts, where he owned and operated a saw mill until the death of his wife, when he returned to Shrews- bury.
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Philo Slocum Newton, son of Daniel and Lucy (Maynard) Newton, was born March 29, 1811, at Heath, Massachusetts, and died at Hartford, Connecticut, May 2, 1891. He was reared in Shrewsbury, receiving such educational advantages as the town schools of his day afforded. On December 1, 1841, he married Elizabeth Ann, daughter of Nathan William and Abigail (Coleman) Pelton, of Wethers- field, born August 13, 1822, and died May 12, 19II. She was a descendant of John Pelton, who was born in England about 1616, and who is on record as a land- owner in Boston in 1634. Mr. and Mrs. Newton were the parents of the following children: Anna Coleman, who married Dr. George F. Hawley, of Hartford, and Philo Woodhouse, who married Angelia Holden Thompson, daughter of Deacon Alfred and Lucy (Maynard) Holden, at Worcester, Massachusetts, April 17, 1890.
DES JARDINS, Benjamin M., Noted Inventor.
In the preamble to a narration of the life and achievements of Benjamin Myr- rick Des Jardins, inventor, it is unneces- sary to indulge in elaborate eulogy of the man : pen-pictures descriptive of his industry, his ingenuity, his versatile qual- ities and meritorious characteristics, would be superfluous ; to plainly record his triumphs in and contributions to the world's mechanical arts is sufficient to in- dicate his superlative qualities; his achievements show the eminence to which his genius has exalted him among the meritorious inventors of the latter half of the nineteenth and the early dec- ades of the twentieth century. Further- more, his name has found honored posi- tion in so many national and internation- al publications of this period, his achieve-
ments have been recounted so often in American and foreign journals, technical periodicals, magazines, and like literature, and his inventions have wrought such definite effect upon one phase, in particu- lar, of this generation's progress in me- chanics, that historical students of the next and subsequent generations, in an- alyzing the world's progress of the pres- ent period, will readily become cognizant of the appreciable service rendered the inventive and mechanical arts by Benja- min Myrrick Des Jardins, and will allot to him his rightful place among the American inventors of this age.
Invention, in the man, has been the outcome of the possession and exertion of an invaluable composite quality, in which are embraced courage, intellect, imagination, determination, persistence, pertinacity, an indifference to poverty, and a wonderful optimism. All these, and some others, have place in the requisite composite quality, but all would fail to attain the result sought unless genius, that intangible something which so often appears to run contrary to apparent prac- ticability and theoretical supposition, be present as the main component. Very few of the worth-while inventors of this age, or for that matter of past ages, have been deficient in these qualities, and there have been very few who have not in their in- itial efforts lamentably lacked the finances without which even the most valuable in- ventions may not be able to pass the em- bryonic stage. Benjamin M. Des Jardins cannot be excepted from this generality, for he has demonstrated that he possesses all of the above-enumerated qualities, as well as some additional and equally cred- itable qualities which were developed during his early struggle for his mere material existence, and for the instilling of life within the inventions of his fertile brain. One of the additional qualities
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brought to light by the strenuous efforts of M. Des Jardins to circumvent the dire threatenings of poverty was a manifested literary capacity of much merit, though his literary power has been neglected in his inventions, which, particularly those having bearing on the printing trade, have been such as to accentuate the encourage- ment the narration of his early days of trial and the causes responsible for his ultimate success will afford would-be in- ventors who labor under similar handi- caps.
Benjamin Myrrick Des Jardins was born in the town of Tyre, Michigan, on October 10, 1858, son of Gregoir and Marie (Trudeau) Des Jardins, and grand- son of Zacharie Des Jardins, who was one of the early settlers of the Province of Quebec, Canada. Historical records authenticate the statement that the Des Jardins family was of French extraction, and of titled lineage. The activities of the progenitor of the American branches of the family were confined to Canadian soil, and many of his descendants have found prominent place in Canadian his- tory. Zacharie Des Jardins, the grand- ancestor of the American branches of the line, was a successful and highly regarded farmer and community leader at St. Ther- ese de Blainville, a village about seven- teen miles distant from Montreal. He was a man of strong personality and su- perior intellect, and took an active part in the Canadian Rebellion. aligning his sympathies with the public movement which sought to revolutionize adminis- trative balance, so as to secure the in- auguration of remedial measures to coun- teract the effect of past governmental abuses.
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His son, Gregoir Des Jardins, father of Benjamin M. Des Jardins, was, however, of different disposition to that which characterized his father ; he was a man of
profound thought on matters of religion, and of strong conviction, independently manifested by his secession from the church of his forebears, and adoption of Protestantism. The activities and prom- inence of the Des Jardins within the church of Rome had been so historic, that the severance of allegiance by one of its scions accentuated the act, and even- tually wrought disaster to the business affairs of Gregoir Des Jardins. An esti- mate of the standing of the Des Jardins family within the Roman Catholic church may be gauged by the position of one of its members, Alphonse T. C. Des Jardins, a Canadian journalist, editor of "L'Ord- re," and later president of Le Credit Fon- cier du bas Canada, who took active part in organizing the Canadian Papal Zouave contingent, which went to assist the Pope in 1868, and who in 1872 was created a knight of the order of Pius IX. Gregoir Des Jardins was forced to leave the home of his father, and the companionship of people of his own native tongue, and he sought a less perturbed environment within the United States, entering what was virtually the wilderness when he settled in the vicinity of Tyre, Huron county, Michigan. He no doubt exper- ienced difficulties similar to those en- countered by most other pioneers of civ- ilization, and early settlers, and no doubt his efforts and example produced an ef- fect in creating within his son, Benjamin M., the admirable qualities of resistance he later exhibited. Also his son's me- chanical ability may be attributed in some measure to the mechanical ingenu- ity developed in his father by the neces- sities of the primitive conditions under which they lived. It has been authenti- cated that Gregoir Des Jardins possessed considerable mechanical ability, and that the humble frontier home of his family was equipped with many original labor-
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saving devices of his invention. He mar- ried thrice, his third wife having been Marie Trudeau, a French-Canadian, whose forebears were of the French no- bility. She bore him thirteen children, one of the younger being the distin- guished inventor to
record whose achievements is the main purpose of this article. Gregoir Des Jardins was seventy- seven years of age when he died at Tyre in 1888. His third wife, nce Marie Tru- deau, lived to attain the age of eighty- four, her death occurring in 1903. At the time of her death, all her many children yet lived, as also did forty-seven of her fifty grandchildren.
It can be imagined that the educational facilities open to her son, Benjamin Myr- rick Des Jardins, in the vicinity of their frontier home were meagre. He absorbed all the learning the little district school of Tyre afforded, and readily assimilated what supplementary knowledge was ten- dered him by his gifted mother, and elder brothers, one of whom became an eminent divine of the Methodist church, whilst another won prominent place among the architects of Cincinnati, but Benjamin M. soon grew beyond the educational facili- ties of his home, and determined to jour- ney to Kalamazoo, and there work his way through Kalamazoo College, which he did, but during which experience he was called upon to taste the bitternesses which result from an insufficiency of money. He maintained himself during his undergraduateship mainly by his writings, having fortunately merited and gained place on the staff of one of the Kalamazoo daily newspapers. He like- wise fortunately cultivated another price- less association during that period, in gaining the appreciative acquaintance of Senator Julius C. Burrows, a lawyer and politician of prominence, and in becom- ing a member of his household, which cir-
cumstance, coupled with his newspaper connection, probably influenced apprecia- bly the trend of his later endeavors. His journalistic affiliation brought him into in- timate touch with appliances then avail- able to printers, and in the home of Sen- ator Burrows he had access to a splendid private library, embracing many volumes on mechanics, which facility considerably aided the young thinker in his earnest re- search into the principles of mechanics, whereby he might acquire technical knowledge with which to develop a me- chanical means to meet a handicap he had noted in the operation of printing at the Kalamazoo printing plant. The labori- ousness, the uncertainty and unevenness in execution, and the slow monotony of the compositor's hand-setting of type im- pressed him as glaringly inconsistent, when compared with the accuracy and rapidity of the mechanical devices and equipment of the press-room, and he con- ceived an idea which inspired him to ac- quire a general knowledge of mechanics with the least possible delay, so that he might hasten to perfect the mechanical type-setting means his brain had embryon- ically planned to displace the hand proc- ess, and his energetic and persistent ap- plication to the project during the winter of 1882 brought him very substantial en- couragement. His study and experiments on the subject continued almost inces- santly for eighteen years, until complete success had crowned his efforts, and he had given to the world a machine which added very materially to the present day perfection of the printing art, but only he knows the full extent of his struggles during that arduous and apparently inter- minable period of experiment and disap- pointment. The typesetting machine he constructed in 1882-1883 and his first computing instrument to justify the lines of type failed to attract the financial sup-
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port necessary for its general exploita- tion ; and so obsessed was he in the prob- lems of invention that his consequent neglect of his journalistic duties brought him, almost unnoticed, to the point whereat he no longer had that source of income, and he was eventually compelled to forsake his collegiate studies, so as to temporarily devote his energies to the more prosaic labors of a laundryman, which expediency was dictated by his condition of pocket. The steam laundry enterprise, notwithstanding his endeavors in co-operation with three successive part- ners, failed to better his financial condi- tion, and he finally had to abandon the business. He then compiled a directory of the city and county for the following year, a laborious work which redounded to his credit as an accurate compilation of detail. A firm of publishers, recogniz- ing its merits, bought it, and with the money thus obtained, added to the pro- ceeds of the sale of his laundry business, Mr. Des Jardins applied himself with re- newed vigor and hopefulness to the per- fection of his inventions. Soon, however, he was again without means, and again had to set the material before the theo- retical; he secured an appointment on the Kalamazoo "Gazette" and for a while was content to devote only his spare moments to his mechanical devices, but soon his financial status had so far ad- vanced that he was again able to take up his studies at Kalamazoo College. In the summer of 1883 he traveled through Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, using his vacation period in strenuous labor, as a means whereby he might become better condi- tioned for subsequent studies, and in a position to more freely take up his hobby. But the knowledge of his ingenious con- trivances had preceded him, and in Louis- ville, Kentucky, Mr. Des Jardins was ap- proached by three capitalists: Dr. W. L.
Breyfogle, later president of the Monon Route Railroad; R. W. Meredith, of the "Courier Journal" of Louisville ; and Mr. E. A. Maginess, secretary of the Louis- ville Exposition, which was in progress at that time. In its outcome, however, the introduction was disappointing to the inventor, as the three gentlemen, though much interested in Mr. Des Jardins's in- ventions, eventually decided not to under- take their exploitation, so that young Des Jardins had perforce to continue his busi- ness trip through the middle west, and to finally return to Kalamazoo, there to again resume his newspaper work. But encouraged by the near-success at Louis- ville, he from that time on was wedded to his art, and so as to gain access to future possibilities, Mr. Des Jardins re- moved to Chicago, in the fall of the year 1884, and opened an office for drafting and designing machinery. He did well, and was now in the sphere to which his talents best fitted him. Ere long he be- came secretary of the Inventors' Asso- ciation of the State of Illinois, in which capacity he developed the acquaintance of many of the leading engineers and mechanical experts of that important centre, and by his able counsel grew thor- oughly into the esteem of his co-workers, meriting their implicit confidence in his ability as an inventor, and thereby at- tracting to his support the financial in- terest of which he stood so greatly in need. This support, emanating from the late Senator Frank B. Stockbridge, en- abled Des Jardins to construct an experi- mental machine at the Chicago Model Works, and to open a model shop. Sub- sequently, however, this shop was aban- doned by Mr. Des Jardins, as more profit- able connections were then at his hand; he became associated with the business department of the Chicago "Inter-Ocean," which appointment allowed him more
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leisure time to devote to his inventions. Later, he joined the business staff of the Chicago "Mail," under the management of Assistant Postmaster General Frank Hatton, and during the two years of his connection with that paper he completed his model for a new and improved ma- chine. Severing his connection with the Chicago "Mail," he traveled for a time for the "Farm, Field and Fireside" mag- azine, of Chicago. All this commercial labor was to a purpose, and in 1887, hav- ing acquired a moderate surplus of cap- ital, he again set himself to assiduous labor on his inventions, and undertook the construction of a machine that was wholly automatic, controlled by perfo- rated copy which would set, justify, and distribute not less than twenty thousand ems per hour. He had the financial back- ing of William H. Rand, of Rand, Mc- Nally & Company, and had almost com- pleted the erection of the machine when, on November 30, 1891, the Arc Light building in which he worked was de- stroyed by fire, his plant and his almost completed machine adding to the result- ing debris. Such a misfortune should have crushed his spirit, but it is by such trials that greatness in man is demon- strated ; those who succeed do so despite handicaps. But all are not called upon to bear such extreme misfortune as that then experienced by Mr. Des Jardins, and he proved himself worthy of inclusion among men of achievement by his opti- mistic continuance after the disaster of 1891, and his sanguine spirit eventually carried him beyond the reach of failure. Mr. Rand continued to have confidence in Des Jardins's ability, and so the in- ventor set to work again to create the perfect machine, locating, for the purpose, at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1892. In ad- dition to the type-setting and distributing machine, Mr. Des Jardins planned also
to construct an automatic justifier, for which there was a promising market. His first Connecticut machine was built in Manchester in 1893-94, and was com- plete in every detail, in the form of the present successful devices; the original model of his new type-justifier was the second of two machines constructed at the Dwight Slate Machine Company's works in Hartford. It went through va- rious evolutions, such as are continually being devised to further enhance the per- fection of mechanical inventions of in- ternational import, and at the Paris Ex- position of 1900 the Des Jardins inven- tions received notable recognition, their excellence bringing Mr. Des Jardins three diplomas from the International Jury of Award-a gold medal, a silver medal, and honorable mention.
Many have been the inventions Mr. Des Jardins has since successfully de- vised, many of them of almost equal im- portance to those of his early efforts: his typewriter computing machines, two dis- tinct types of which he built in 1900, have become invaluable clerical aids, and have had wide sale, though marketed by others under licenses secured from the Des Jar- dins companies; his ingenious crypto- graph, which in reality is a typewriter for secret correspondence for office use, an intermediate displacing device between two typewriters, such as the Underwood, by which a communication written on one of them is automatically written on the other, but with each character con- tinuously displaced and arbitrarily spaced so that the cryptogram appears in appar- ent words or groups of five letters which, when copied on the first machine, re- writes the original message on the sec- ond-and for army use the same device points out, or prints, and is sufficiently small to go readily into a coat pocket of average size, and its mechanism so de-
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vised that the characters printed are con- stantly changing, making the message ab- solutely undecipherable without the key, and with the key recipient should he not have his machine, by a special arrange- ment of the key figures which he alone possesses, though by a somewhat tedious process, can, in cases of emergency, re- arrange the characters and read the mes- sage. This invention is a triumph of in- ventive skill of high order ; his computing scale, which has filled as useful a place in commercial life as the cash register device, and the many other utilities his inventive excellence has furnished the world, bring his name into creditable prominence in the world of mechanics and invention.
In his laboratory, the Buena Vista Lab- oratory at West Hartford, Mr. Des Jar- dins has, of late years, devoted his efforts to the elucidation of many difficult prob- lems of mechanical science. Freed of the urgent material necessity, his days now are given more especially to the de- velopment of mechanical movements that have never before been produced, irre- spective of whether they be immediately applicable or not, and, as hereinbefore re- corded, his research has found practical utilization in mechanical lines not related to those to which he has devoted special attention in recent years. His computing machines demonstrate movements many leading engineers had declared impossible of accomplishment. An assorting ma- chine of his invention is capable of al- most unlimited extension, even though the patent drawings state its capacity definitely as that of sorting 9,999 differ- ent articles. The numbered boxes of the device are controlled from a keyboard, to some extent similar to that of an adding machine, and the machine, which adds greatly to the efficiency of department- store accounting, has a wide range of uses, among them, to mention a few, that
of sorting sales tickets, money orders and cheques, letters, et cetera.
Withal, his achievements of later life emphasize the inherent ability which in him lay, and by which he was capable of serving the world so usefully when once the first struggle had been overcome, and the diverting perplexities of poverty had been passed. But that struggle he had to fight alone, and in the outcome is evident the man. A contemporary biographer wrote the following, respecting Mr. Des Jardins and his work :
Mr. des Jardins's works have practically estab- lished new eras in their respective arts. The history of the development of these inventions, from their first inception at the unskilled hands of a young college student and newspaper writer to the mechanical triumph of an ingenious mind and trained hands, is but the story of many another inventor whose sleepless nights and per- sistent thought have at last been rewarded by seeing the creatures of his brain move like things of life and perform the functions ex- pected of them as though endowed with a soul.
In 1898, the Des Jardins Type Justifier Company was organized, with Mr. Will- iam H. Rand, of Rand, McNally & Com- pany, as one of the prime movers, and Mr. Des Jardins as president, the capital of which corporation was $500,000; ill 1899 the Des Jardins Computing Register Company was incorporated, with a capital of $100,000, and with Mr. Des Jardins originally as vice-president, though for the last five years he has been president. From 1899 to the present, Mr. Des Jar- dins has become actively interested in many companies formed for the purpose of manufacturing and marketing his in- ventions of various kinds. Many of his devices perfected in the last few years of the nineteenth century were unfortunate- ly placed in the hands of new companies whose promoters and controlling ele- ments had had no experience in enter- prises of this character, and as a conse- quence failed to properly place the de-
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