USA > Connecticut > Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography, genealogical-memorial; representative citizens, v. 7 > Part 51
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the sales increased from five hundred a year to five thousand. Not content with its success in this country, Mr. Hall start- ed out to compete with the foreign mar- ket, and the sale of the Pickering gov- ernor in Great Britain is now represented by a figure that is four times its total original output.
In addition to his interests in the Pick- ering governor, Mr. Hall was in 1884 elected the president of the Shaler & Hall Quarry Company, with which his family had long been identified. This concern he soon infused with the new life and energy characteristic of the man. He revolutionized its entire management, in- troduced new and up-to-date machinery and started it upon a new and thoroughly vigorous career of prosperity. When, twelve years after his first entrance upon its affairs, a new company was formed called the Brainerd, Shaler & Hall Quarry Company, he became the president and acted in this capacity until his death. In the meanwhile his own business, which had been carried on as a partnership, was reorganized as a corporation, Mr. Hall's official position being that of treasurer, while he also retained a proprietary inter- est. About the same time a very flatter- ing offer was made to him by the board of directors of the Colt Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, which recog- nized his ability as an executive of un- usual power and efficiency. The board asked him to become the general manager of the corporation, by arranging at the same time, in recognition of the condition of his health, that he should be lightened of all the cares of the office, and the routine of the work. With every care to relieve him of any burden in the connec- tion, a large responsibility devolved upon him. The vice-president, Caldwell H. Colt, was absent from Hartford the greater part of the time, so the entire
management of the manufacturing end of the work and also its relation to the buy- ing public was in his hands. His dynamic personality, however, soon brought about a fresh vigor in the prosecution of the work of the corporation, and he was en- couraged by the loyal support of the board of directors in the changes which he advocated. In 1890 he was elected vice-president and treasurer, and in June, 1901, when the company was reorganized, he was made president, which office he held until his death.
Mr. Hall always took a deep interest in the town of his adoption, and was promi- nent in working for its wellbeing. He refused nominations to both branches of the State Legislature, it being necessary for him to conserve his energies upon the undertakings which he was committed. He received more than one recognition from his fellow citizens who desired his ability in the conduct of municipal affairs, but refusing some, he served from 1890 to 1896 on the City Board of Water Com- missioners. In 1895-96 he served as State Senator from the First District of Hart- ford, his party affiliations being Demo- cratic, and in 1896-1900 supported the gold wing of that organization.
He was a director in various Hartford corporations, among these being the Phoenix Fire Insurance Company, the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Hartford National Bank, and the Dime Savings Bank. He was one of the organizers of the Board of Trade, and was a member of its first board of direc- tors. In New York he was a director of the Neptune Meter Company. He was a member of the Hartford Club, the Man- hattan Club, the Engineers' Club, and the New York Yacht Club of New York City, and the Metropolitan Club of Washing- ton. He was a member of the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and
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of the Society of Colonial Wars, and of the Mayflower Society. He was a thirty- second degree Mason.
Mr. Hall was a member of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Protestant Epis- copal, and was senior warden of the church. Loyalty to the highest, as he knew it, was a keynote to the character of the man, and it was to be seen in his business relations, his contact with the community-at-large and in his social con- nections. Able and upright as a business man, he was a still more potent factor in the life of his time through a personality which set the highest ideals before the vision of his fellows and then went to work to attain them. He would have said that he did not reach that for which he strove, but the common consensus of the community was that here was a man who had accomplished his aims.
Mr. Hall married, February 9, 1870, Sarah G. Loines, of New York, who was descended from Quaker stock on her father's side and also from the family of Hopkins of Rhode Island. Her ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, was a very prominent citizen of Rhode Island during the Revo- lutionary period. He was chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and also of the Superior Court, governor of Rhode Island, and speaker of the House of Rep- resentatives. He was twice elected to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia, and was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. and Mrs. Hall had four children, two of whom are still liv- ing, Clarence Loines and Grace Loines.
Mr. Hall died June 25, 1902, after an illness of about three weeks, and many tributes were paid to his memory and to the sense of the loss the community had sustained. Among the expressions of sympathy were resolutions passed by the Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, the Brainerd, Shaler & Hall
Quarry Company, the Church of the Good Shepherd, Trinity Parish, of Port- land, Connecticut, the Men's League of the Church of the Good Shepherd, of which he was president, the Phoenix Life Insurance Company, the Manufacturers' Governor Company, and the Hartford Na- tional Bank, besides a number of others. That of the Colt's Company read as fol- lows:
The Hon. John H. Hall, president of this com- pany, having died on June 25, 1902,
We, the members of the board of directors of the Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Com- pany, deem it fitting and proper to enter on the records of this company, and hereby order to be so entered, this expression of our apprecia- tion of his exceptional ability as a financier and manager; of his invaluable services to this insti- tution, covering a period of fourteen years, dur- ing which time its affairs have become more firmly established than ever before; of his sym- pathy and geniality as a business associate; and, finally of his high character as a man.
And, furthermore, we order that a copy of this vote be suitably engrossed, as a token of high esteem and as an expression of our sympathy for those who mourn his loss from their family circle. THE COLT'S PATENT FIRE ARMS MANUFACTURING COMPANY.
The following is the tribute of the Brainerd, Shaler & Hall Quarry Com- pany :
At a meeting of the board of directors of the Brainerd, Shaler & Hall Quarry Company, held this day the following minute was adopted:
The directors of the company realize the great loss sustained by the death of the president, the Hon. John H. Hall, who died in the city of Hart- ford, June 25, 1902, and desire to record their high appreciation of his eminent ability, his tire- less energy, honesty of purpose, and his stead- fast friendship, and wish to convey to his fam- ily their most profound sympathy and sorrow in their deep affliction. Since the organization of this corporation he has been our president and our friend. We miss his guiding hand, which was ever ready to do the right. We miss his genial presence, his generous disposition, and his wise counsel. He was true, loyal, careful and con-
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scientious, and was always keenly alive to the best interests of this company. Born in Portland, and early identified with its religious, business and social life, and although in latter years a resi- dent of Hartford, yet he never lost sight of the welfare of his native town, and could always be relied upon to lend his most earnest effort for the good of this community. In his death this board has lost a singularly efficient officer and a cherished associate. His family has been bereit of a loving husband, and a devoted father, and the State of one of its most useful citizens. We direct that this minute be entered on the records of this company and a copy transmitted to his family W. H. EDWARDS, Secretary.
Portland, Connecticut, July 15, 1902.
DES JARDINS, Benjamin M.,
Inventor of Worldwide Fame.
In the preamble to a narrative 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 in- dustry, his ingenuity, his versatile quali- ties and meritorious characteristics, would be superfluous ; to plainly record his tri- umphs in and contributions to the world's mechanical arts is sufficient to indicate 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 nine- teenth and the early decades of the twen- tieth century. Furthermore, his name has found honored position in so many na- tional and international publications of this period, his achievements have been recounted so often in American and foreign journals, technical periodicals, magazines, and like literature, and his in- ventions have wrought such definite effect upon one phase, in particular, of this gen- eration's progress in mechanics, that his- torical students of the next and subsequent generations, in analyzing the world's progress of the present period, will readily
become cognizant of the appreciable serv- ice rendered the inventive and mechanical arts by Benjamin Myrrick Des Jardins, and will allot to him his rightful place among the American inventors of this age.
Invention, in the main, has been the outcome of the possession and exertion of an invaluable composite quality, in which are embraced courage, intellect, imagina- tion, determination, persistence, perti- nacity, and indifference to poverty, and a wonderful optimism. All these, and some others, have place in the requisite compo- site quality, but all would fail to attain the result sought unless genius, that intangi- ble something which so often appears to run contrary to apparent practicability 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 de- ficient in these qualities, and there have been very few who have not in their initial 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 pos- sesses all of the above-enumerated quali- ties, as well as some additional and equally creditable 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 brought to light by the strenu- ous efforts of M. Des Jardins to circum- vent the dire threatenings of poverty was a manifested literary capacity of much merit, though his literary power has been neglected in his concentration upon his inventions, which, particularly those hav- ing bearing on the printing trade, have
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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 history. 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. Therese de Blainville, a village about seventeen miles distant from Montreal. He was a man of strong personality and superior intellect, and took an active part in the Canadian Rebellion, aligning his sympathies with the public movement which sought to revolutionize administrative balance, so as to secure the inauguration of remedial measures to counteract the effect of past governmental abuses.
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 forbears and adoption of Protestantism. The activities and promi- nence 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 eventually wrought disaster to the business affairs of Gregoir Des Jardins. Gregoir Des Jar- dins 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 virtu- ally the wilderness when he settled in the vicinity of Tyre, Huron county, Michigan. He no doubt experienced difficulties simi- lar to those encountered by most other pioneers of civilization and early settlers, and no doubt his efforts and example pro- duced an effect in creating within his son, Benjamin M., the admirable qualities of resistance he later exhibited. Also his son's mechanical ability may be attributed in some measure to the mechanical in- genuity developed in his father by the necessities of the primitive conditions un- der which they lived. It has been au- thenticated that Gregoir Des Jardins pos- sessed considerable mechanical ability, and that the humble frontier home of his family was equipped with many original labor-saving devices of his invention. He married thrice, his third wife having been Marie Trudeau, a French-Canadian, whose forbears were of the French nobil- ity. She bore him thirteen children, one of the younger being the distinguished 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, nee Marie Trudeau, 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 grandchil- dren.
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
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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 emi- nent divine of the Methodist church, whilst another won prominent place among the architects of Cincinnati, but Benjamin M. soon grew beyond the edu- cational facilities of his home, and de- termined to journey 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 insuffi- ciency of money. He maintained himself during his under-graduateship mainly by his writings, having fortunately merited and gained place on the staff of one of the Kalamazoo daily newspapers. He likewise fortunately cultivated another priceless association during that period, in gaining the appreciative acquaintance of Senator Julius C. Burrows, a lawyer and politician of prominence, and in be- coming a member of his household, which circumstance, coupled with his newspaper connection, probably influenced apprecia- bly the trend of his later endeavors. His journalistic affiliation brought him into intimate touch with appliances then avail- able to printers, and in the home of Sena- tor 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 compositior'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 embry- onically planned to displace the hand process, and his energetic and persistent application to the project during the win- ter of 1882 brought him very substantial encouragement. His study and experi- ments on the subject continued almost in- cessantly for eighteen years, until com- plete success had crowned his efforts, and he had given to the world a machine which added very materially to the pres- ent-day perfection of the printing art, but only he knows the full extent of his strug- gles during that arduous and apparently interminable period of experiment and disappointment. 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- 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 con- dition of pocket. The steam laundry en- terprise, notwithstanding his endeavors in cooperation 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
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.
detail. A firm of publishers, recognizing its merits, bought it, and with the money thus obtained, added to the proceeds of the sale of his laundry business, Mr. Des Jardins applied himself with renewed vigor and hopefulness to the perfection of his inventions. Soon, however, he was again without means, and again had to set the material before the theoretical ; he se- cured an appointment on the Kalamazoo "Gazette" and for a while was content to devote only his spare moments to his me- chanical devices, but soon his financial status had so far advanced that he was again able to take up his studies at Kala- mazoo 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 conditioned for sub- sequent studies, and in a position to more freely take up his hobby. But the knowl- edge of his ingenious contrivances had preceded him, and in Louisville, Ken- tucky, Mr. Des Jardins was approached by three capitalists-Dr. W. L. Breyfogle, later president of the Monon Route Rail- road; R. W. Meredith, of the "Courier- Journal" of Louisville ; and Mr. E. A. Ma- giness, secretary of the Louisville Exposi- tion, 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' inventions, eventu- ally decided not to undertake their ex- ploitation, so that young Des Jardins had perforce to continue his business trip through the middle west, and to finally return to Kalamazoo, there to again re- sume his newspaper work. But encour- aged by the near-success at Louisville, he from that time on was wedded to his art, and so as to gain access to future possi- bilities, Mr. Des Jardins removed to Chi- cago, in the fall of the year 1884, and
opened an office for drafting and design- ing machinery. He did well, and was now in the sphere to which his talents best fitted him. Ere long he became sec- retary of the Inventors' Association of the State of Illinois, in which capacity he developed the acquaintance of many of the leading engineers and mechanical ex- perts of that important centre, and by his able counsel grew thoroughly into the esteem of his co-workers, meriting their implicit confidence in his ability as an in- ventor, and thereby attracting to his sup- port the financial interest of which he stood so greatly in need. This support, emanating from the late Senator Frank B. Stockbridge, enabled Des Jardins to construct an experimental machine at the Chicago Model Works, and to open a model shop. Subsequently, however, this shop was abandoned by Mr. Des Jardins, as more profitable connections were then at his hand; he became associated with the business department of the Chicago "Inter-Ocean," which appointment al- lowed him more leisure time to devote to his inventions. Later, he joined the busi- ness 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 machine. Severing his con- nection with the Chicago "Mail," he trav- eled for a time for the "Farm, Field and Fireside" magazine, of Chicago. All this commercial labor was to a purpose, and in 1887, having accrued a moderate sur- plus of capital, he again set himself to as- siduous labor on his inventions, and un- dertook the construction of a machine that was wholly automatic, controlled by perforated copy which would set, justify, and distribute not less than twenty thou- sand ems per hour. He had the financial backing of William H. Rand, of Rand,
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McNally & Company, and had almost completed the erection of the machine when, on November 30, 1891, the Arc Light building in which he worked was destroyed by fire, his plant and his al- most completed machine adding to the resulting debris. Such a misfortune should have crushed his spirit, but it is by such trials that greatness in man is demonstrated ; 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' ability, and so the inventor set to work again to create the perfect machine, locating, for the purpose, at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1892. In addi- tion 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 complete 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 Hart- ford. It went through various evolutions. such as are continually being devised to further enhance the perfection of mechan- ical inventions of international import, and at the Paris Exposition of 1900 the Des Jardins inventions received notable recognition, their excellence bringing Mr. Des Jardins three diplomas from the In- ternational Jury of Award-a gold medal, a silver medal, and honorable mention.
Many have been the inventions Mr. Des Jardins has since successfully devised,
many of them of almost equal importance to those of his early efforts. His type- writer computing machines, two distinct types of which he built in 1900, have be- come 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 in- termediate 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 continu- ously displaced and arbitrarily spaced so that the cryptogram appears in apparent words or groups of five letters which, when copied on the first machine, rewrites the original message on the second, 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. Its mechanism is so devised that the char- acters printed are constantly changing, making the message absolutely undeci- pherable without the key, and with the key recipient, should he not have his ma- chine, by a special arrangement of the key figures which he alone possesses, though by a somewhat tedious process, can, in cases of emergency, rearrange the char- acters and read the message. This inven- tion is a triumph of inventive skill of high order. His computing scale has filled as useful a place in commercial life as the cash register device, and the many other utilities his inventive excellence has fur- nished the world bring his name into creditable prominence in the world of me- chanics and invention.
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