USA > Michigan > Wayne County > Detroit > History of Detroit and Wayne County and early Michigan: A Chronological Cyclopedia of the Past and Present, Vol. II > Part 33
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1877 he bought out his brother Albert's interest in the business, and associated his two sons with him in business at Detroit, under the name of A. Backus, Jr. & Sons, and in 1885 a stock company was formed. On October 24, 1882, the planing mill was destroyed by fire, entailing a heavy loss, but it was rebuilt and in full operation on March 4, 1883.
In rebuilding the planing mill, Mr. Backus con- structed a furnace on a perfect combustion princi- ple, which proved a great success, has been applied to a large number of furnaces burning coal, and bids fair to revolutionize steam making. He has secured letters patent for the invention in the United States and also in foreign countries, covering his application of this principle of perfect combustion, and after years of patient toil and large expendi- tures of money, he bids fair to reap his merited reward. The Backus Perfect Combustion Furnace has been shown to possess great merit, and has proved a perfect smoke consumer and a large economizer of fuel.
Besides the interests above' enumerated, Mr. Backus is engaged in several farm improvements, where he has shown great skill as an organizer, and any work planned by him may probably be safely imitated by others. Like many other self-made men, he started in life with no capital save integrity and industry, with a purpose to be prudent and tem- perate in all things, and he has the satisfaction of knowing that his success is the result of his own thoroughness and practical business methods. He is known and recognized as a live man of energy, with an irreproachable and honest purpose that almost invariably commands success. He is par- ticularly fortunate in having reared two sons, who are fully competent to foster and increase the busi- ness he has established.
CARLETON ABBEY BEARDSLEY is the second son of Lockwood H. and Catherine (Myer) Beardsley, and was born in Castile, New York, October 4, 1852. His father was born in Scipio, Cayuga County, New York, March 21, 1822, and now lives at Springfield, Oakland County, Michi- gan.
C. A. Beardsley lived with his parents in Livings- ton County, New York, from 1852 to 1866, when the family removed to Pontiac, Michigan. His early life was spent with his parents on the farm in Western New York, where he was given the advan- tages of a district school, improving his opportuni- ties with the utmost diligence. In May, 1868, he removed with his parents to Pontiac, Michigan, where he entered the graded school. Here he was applying himself closely, when sudden reverses in his father's business made it necessary for him to aid himself. Accordingly, in the winter of 1869
and 1870, he taught a district school at Bald Eagle Lake, Oakland County, for a term of four months, receiving as a salary the meagre sum of $126. The effort proved a very successful one, and so well satisfied was the county superintendent, that he recommended Mr. Beardsley as competent to take charge of the schools at Central Mine, Lake Superior, where he went and conducted a success- ful school. Upon returning home, flattering induce- ments were held out to him to enter mercantile life, and in preparation therefor, on April 4, 1873, he entered the Ohio Business University at Toledo, and after graduating, returned to Pontiac, where he re-entered his classes in the High School, and by alternately studying and teaching, he was enabled to graduate in 1875. His vacations while teaching were spent in the law office of A. C. Baldwin, and in the year 1877, he was admitted to the bar, and the following year entered the University of Mich- igan, graduating from the law department in 1878.
In 1880 he removed to Detroit, since which time he has pursued the practice of law, also dealing largely in real estate, and engaging in the manu- facture of furniture, which, in a large degree, absorbed his time and took him from his prac- tice. His factory has turned out only the finest grade of furniture, and of a design and finish unex- celled in the United States. It has employed one hundred and thirty skilled workmen and five travel- ing salesmen.
He is a member of the Union Lodge of Masons, an honorary member of the Detroit Light Infantry, and of the Pontiac and Cass Lake Aquatic Club, and of several other social organizations. He is a member of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church, and has been a liberal contributor to all worthy objects. In business affairs he is eminently progres- sive and enterprising, and socially agreeable and well informed.
He was married April 2, 1879, to Sarah Hance, of Farmington, Michigan, daughter of Mark and Susan Hance. They have had four children, two of whom are living.
THOMAS BERRY, son of John and Catharina Berry, was born at Horsham, England, February 7, 1829, and was the fifth child in a family of ten children. His father, who had been engaged in the tanning business, emigrated to America in 1835, and settled in Elizabeth, New Jersey, resuming his regular occupation. His son, Thomas Berry, was educated in the private schools of Elizabeth, but at an early age began to learn the business of his father, and continued therein, going in 1852, to Richmond, Virginia, and there and in other locali- ties in the same State, managing branch establish- ments owned by his father. He was thus employed
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until 1856, when he came to Detroit, where his parents had removed a short time previously.
For a year and a half following his removal to Detroit, he was not engaged in any regular occu- pation, but spent the time in visiting different sections of the country. Meantime, his brother, Joseph H., had begun the manufacture of varnish at Springwells, and in 1858, Thomas became asso- ciated with him, and they have since constituted the firm of Berry Brothers. The business was continued at Springwells a few years, and then re- moved to the present location, on the corner of Leib and Wight Streets. Here, from a small fac- tory with limited resources, their business has grown from year to year, until at the present time they are more extensively engaged in the manufacture of every grade of varnish than any other firm in the world. They have eight branch houses located at New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Roches- ter, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Chicago, and the value of their products amounts to about $1,000,000 annually, furnishing employment to one hundred and fifty persons. Their goods find a market in every State in the Union, and in all the principal foreign countries. In this connection, it may be mentioned as a notable fact, that Detroit has an unusual number of men of great organizing capac- ity and undaunted perseverance, who have materi- ally advanced the prosperity of the city by building up large manufacturing enterprises, and probably no city of its size has so many widely known busi- ness establishments.
In politics Mr. Berry was originally a Whig, but since 1856 he has been a member of the Republi- can party. The management of extensive business interests has, however, prevented his participating very largely in political affairs, but a keen and lively interest in the maintenance of good city gov- ernment, has led him to serve in several local offices. In 1876-7, he was a member of the Board of Estimates from his ward, and in 1880 a member- at-large. In 1881 he was elected one of the coun- cilmen, served three years, and was re-elected in 1884. He was also one of the Poor Commissioners in 1880, and served as president of the board.
Besides his connection with the varnish business, he is a stockholder in the Detroit Linseed Oil Com- pany, a joint partner with his brother Joseph H , in the Combination Gas Machine Company, a director of the Citizens' Savings Bank, and is interested in several minor business enterprises in Detroit and elsewhere, and serves as one of the trustees of the Michigan College of Medicine. He is a member of the Masonic order, belonging to Zion Lodge, Mon- roe Chapter, and to the Detroit Commandery No. I, of Knights Templar.
He was married in 1860, to Janet Lowe, a
daughter of John Lowe, of Niagara, Canada. They have had five daughters, four of whom are living.
CALVIN KNOX BRANDON was born at New Carlisle, Ohio, September 6, 1841, and is the son of George S. and Nancy (Craighead) Brandon, and is of Scotch-Irish ancestry. His paternal grandfather, Templeton Brandon, was born in Scotland, came to America when a boy, and settled in Adams County, Pennsylvania, where he became a prosperous farmer. His son George S., who was born in 1803, was engaged in milling and farming until 1842, when he removed to Indianapolis, Indi- ana, and became one of the earliest settlers of that city, and was a prosperous merchant. He was a man of strong character and of devout piety, and for many years was an elder in the Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, presided over by Dr. Gur- ley, afterwards the distinguished Chaplain of the United States Senate. He died on August 22, 1847. His wife, who survived her husband only one month, came of a family renowned in the ecclesiastical and civil history of Scotland and America. Her great-grandfather, John Craighead, was the youngest son of Rev. Thomas Craighead, a native of Scotland, where he was educated as a physician, but soon abandoned his profession, studied divinity, and for several years was pastor of a Presbyterian church. In consequence of the oppression endured by members of his church, he emigrated to America in 1715, and settled near Boston, Massachusetts. In 1733 he removed to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and was very active in planting and building up churches in that region. He died while in the pulpit at Newville, Pennsylvania, at the close of a sermon, in April, 1739. He was an eloquent preacher, with marked ability, original in thought, and fearless in the ex- pression of his opinions. His numerous descend- ants dwell principally in the East and Southwest, where many of them have occupied positions of honor and responsibility. His son, Rev. Alexander Craighead, was a bold and advanced champion of American civil liberty. For several years he preached in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but in 1749 removed to Virginia, and in 1756 to Sugar Creek, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, where he died in 1766. During his residence at the latter place, he did much to inculcate sentiments of politi- cal liberty among the people of his parish, and to him the people of that region were indebted for the training which placed them in the forefront of American heroes and patriots. His church was the oldest in the upper country, and the parent of the seven churches that formed the convention at Charlotte, North Carolina, which on May 20, 1775, issued the Mecklenburg Declaration of Inde-
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pendence, the first decided avowal of the right of organized hostility to English rule, and the princi- ples then enunciated were substantially embodied in the Declaration of Independence adopted by the first American Congress.
After the death of his father and mother, C. K. Brandon went to Adams County, Pennsylvania, and passed his boyhood upon a farm, going to country schools in the winter. At the age of fifteen he went to Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and for two summers continued at farm work. He then entered Farmer's College, at Bellefonte, Centre County, Pennsylvania, and remained one year, and at the age of nineteen went to Macomb, McDon- nough County, Illinois, to look after some land belonging to his father's estate. While there, President Lincoln's call for troops was issued, and on April 13, 1861, he enlisted for three months, in Company A, Sixteenth Regiment, Illinois Infantry, but was mustered in on April 26 for three years' service, and in May following, his regiment was among the first troops of enlisted volunteers to enter the State of Missouri. The Sixteenth Regi- ment was in General Pope's command during the summer of 1861, and in the winter of 1861-2, guarded the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, and subsequently participated in engagements at Pal- myra, Monroe, Shelbina, Shelbyville, Liberty and Blue Mills Landing, at the siege of New Madrid, capture of Island No. 10, skirmishes before Corinth, and at the battle of Farmington. At the end of his period of service, Mr. Brandon went to Quincy, Illinois, and secured a position as clerk in a wholesale dry goods store, but soon after enlisted in the Fourteenth Regiment Illinois Veterans, and was chosen Captain of Company E. Shortly after he was detailed as commissary of subsistence and general ordinance officer of General Stolbrand's brigade of the Seventeenth Army Corps, and served in this capacity until mustered out of service in Sep- tember, 1865.
Upon leaving the service he removed to Saline County, Missouri, and purchased a stock farm, which he conducted for six years, and then sold out and came to Detroit. His first service here was in the employ of the Detroit Car Works. In 1875 he became purchasing agent of the Detroit Stave and Heading Works, then owned and conducted by Frederick Buhl. In 1877 he purchased Mr. Buhl's interest in the business, since which time the growth of the concern has been rapid and remuner- ative. In 1879, R. S. Keys became a partner with him, under the firm name of Brandon & Keys, and in 1883 the business was incorporated as the Detroit Stave and Heading Works. Its officers have since been C. K. Brandon, President ; J. P. McLaren, Vice-President, and R. S. Keys, Secretary and
Treasurer. The business has been a marked suc- cess, and its growth has been largely due to Mr. Brandon's energy and careful management. Their plant, one of the largest in Michigan, is located on the corner of Clark Avenue and the Michigan Cen- tral Railroad, and covers an area of over twelve acres ; 10,000,000 staves and over 700,000 heads are manufactured yearly, and find a ready market all over the United States, and in portions of Europe. From seventy-five to one hundred men are em- ployed.
Of late years Mr. Brandon has been largely in- terested in real estate operations, especially in Hamtramck and Springwells, and is the owner of a number of houses in various parts of the city. A few years ago he purchased fifty-eight acres of land in Hamtramck, divided it into city lots, and it has proved a valuable investment. He is President of the Fontaine Crossing and Signal Company, of Toledo, Ohio, and of the East Detroit and Grosse Pointe Railroad, and is financially interested in vari- ous other enterprises in Detroit.
He has been a Republican in political faith ever since he has been a voter, and was elected a Repre- sentative to the State Legislature from the Third District, in 1884, by a majority of nearly 300. The most important local measure which came up dur- ing his term, was the question of the annexation of Hamtramck, Greenfield, and Springwells to Detroit, which he strongly favored, and was successful in effecting. He is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Loyal Legion, and of Detroit Masonic Commandery No. 1. He is a member of the Jefferson Avenue Presbyterian Church, and for several years has been one of its trustees.
Habits of trained industry, unquestioned honor and honesty, broadness of views, united with enough conservativeness to prevent his taking undue risks, and great executive ability, are the strongest traits in his character. Personally he is of quiet, retiring disposition; thoroughly domestic in his tastes, fond of his home, and finds his great- est pleasure in the family circle.
He was married October 24, 1867, to Louisa, daughter of A. W. Russel, one of the best known and most respected citizens of Lancaster City, Pennsylvania. They have had seven children, five of whom are living, three boys and two girls.
WILLIAM AUSTIN BURT was born in Wor- cester County, Massachusetts, June 13, 1792. His ancestors, representing both English and Scotch races, settled in New England early in the seven- teenth century, and he possessed the strong charac- teristics, mental and physical, of his forefathers. Self-denial, earnestness of purpose, ambition to excel, loyalty to relatives, friends, and his own con-
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victions, and steadfast adherence to right in all things, were prominent traits in the character of his ancestors and himself.
As a boy, he possessed strong intellectual powers, coupled with remarkable mechanical ability, and fortunately he was able also to use either hand with equal dexterity, nature evidently having de- signed him for an inventor. The correctly-geared mills, whittled out with his jack-knife, with which he did the churning for his mother, and his miniature saw mills, made both for entertainment and use, were completed while pursuing his studies in navigation, land surveying, music, and stenog- raphy. A note book, which he kept when but seventeen years of age, now in possession of his grandson, Hiram A. Burt, of Detroit, shows that at that early age he had fully conquered all the methods of land surveying then practised ; was far advanced in the study of navigation and astronomy ; a fair theoretical musician, and that he had invented for his own use, and nearly perfected, a system of stenographic writing. It will be noted, also, that his education had been acquired chiefly through his own efforts, for, aside from about two months at the public school, he received no other training in any educational institution. He was not only studious and thoughtful, but also patriotic, serving in the New York militia for sixty days, in 1813, and again for sixty days in the spring of 1814. He was married on July 4, 1813, to Phobe Cole. In 1815 and 1816 he was Justice of the Peace, School Inspector, and Postmaster, in Erie County, New York.
He was possessed of a courageous and adventur- ous spirit, with an almost boundless ambition to see and know, and in 1817, in quest of a personal knowl- edge of the West, before the days of the Erie Canal, or the era of steamboats or railroads, he made the journey from Buffalo to Cincinnati (by way of Pittsburgh), thence to Jeffersonville, Indiana, Vin- cennes, and St. Louis, then back to Vincennes, and to Fort Wayne, Fort Meigs, Detroit, and by sailing vessel to Buffalo. Twice during the suc- ceeding seven years he made trips to Michigan, and finally, in 1824, settled in the township of Washington, Macomb County, Michigan. He began business as a land surveyor, mill builder, and farmer, and endured the personal discomforts and hard manual labor, and practised the self-denial that fell to the lot of all pioneers. To these labors he added habits of diligent study, and the varied experiments of an eager, far-seeing mind, never contented unless using its utmost effort towards achieving its best. His facilities for experimental work were very lim- ited, and consisted of a few carpenters' and black- smiths' tools and utensils. Iron was scarce and very dear, and brass was almost unobtainable ; there were no foundries near at hand, and the various
metals were not offered in the many convenient shapes now so common.
In order to fully employ his time, he built mills here and there, wherever his services were sought, and whenever he wanted a tool for any special purpose, he produced it at his own forge, or bench, and it generally proved that his tools were entirely new additions to the tools of craftsmen. Among these earlier tools and inventions was a compass for striking an oval of varying diameters, a T square of unique construction, and a "typographer," or type-writing machine. The "typographer" was conceived in 1828, patented in 1829, the patent having the signature of President Andrew Jackson. The typographer was further perfected in 1830, and the records of the Patent Office show that he was the first inventor of a mechanical type-writer. The instrument was exceedingly simple in construction, but for beauty and perfection, the work done by it, as shown by letters written on it in 1830, is not equalled by any modern type-writer.
Before he had been three years in the Territory, his abilities were generally recognized, and in 1826 and 1827 he was elected a member of the Territorial Council. In 1832 he was appointed District Sur- veyor by Governor Porter, and about the same time he was appointed Postmaster at Mt. Vernon, Michi- gan, which office he held for twenty-four years. In 1833, when he was forty-one years old, he was made Deputy United States Surveyor for all the district northwest of the Ohio River, and held the position until his decease. In 1833 he was also appointed one of the Commissioners of Internal Improvements for Michigan, and on April 23, of the same year, was appointed an Associate Judge of the Circuit Court. He held this last position with much credit for several years, and was familiarly addressed as Judge up to the time of his death ; but it was as a surveyor and inventor that he gained his greatest renown. As a member of the Board of Internal Improvements, he opposed the visionary schemes of that day, such as the canals at Saginaw and Grand Rapids. As a Government Surveyor, he was noted for integrity, faithfulness, skill, and correctness. Under date of October 8, 1834, M. T. Williams, Surveyor-General of the Northwest Territory, wrote to Senator Lucius Lyon, as follows: "Your friend, Mr. Burt, proves to be an excellent surveyor ; for a first contract, he has returned the most satisfactory work I have yet met with."
Mr. Burt had as assistants all of his sons, namely, John, Alvin, Austin, Wells, and William; he also employed other young men, sons of his neighbors, all of whom he trained, and some of them gained enviable reputations as land surveyors. During the several years that he was employed by the Govern- ment, Mr. Burt and his sons surveyed much of the
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States of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota, including the sites of the present cities of Milwaukee, Rock Island, and Davenport. On January 14, 1840, he was deputized to survey the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and to connect there- with the geological survey then in progress under Dr. Houghton. This work required the services of Mr. Burt and his sons for about ten years, and it was while doing this work that he discovered and reported on fourteen different deposits of iron ore, which, in his opinion, constituted about one-seventh of the total amount.
Later developments show that his estimate was approximately correct. In a letter to his wife, written July 11, 1846, telling of his work in the Upper Peninsula, he said: "We have found five very extensive beds of iron ore, of an excellent quality, enough, I think, if worked, to build a rail- road around the world." Mr. Burt's associate, Dr. Douglas Houghton, having met a sudden death, the labor of preparing the geological report of the survey then in progress, fell to Judge Burt. It is published in Part 3, Executive Document No. I, of Thirty-first Congress, first session, and bears testi- mony to the thorough character of his knowledge and work. In a letter, written May 17, 1835, he says : "The aberrations of the needle are truly perplexing. I have to correct very many of my north and south lines, and it is most annoying, this inability, as yet, to discover a method for doing away with the difficulty or the cause thereof." Under date of April 29, 1835, when engaged on the Government surveys in and about the city of Milwaukee, he wrote to one of his assistants, as follows: "I arrived here to-day, having finished the north tier of townships as far west as the town lines are run. The aberrations of the needle were worse in my last township than in any other I have yet surveyed. * * In one * instance I had to increase the variation one degree for two miles, to keep parallel ; the next two miles needed no increase of variation, and for two miles more the variation decreased twenty and thirty sec- onds. The changes are mysterious, and will prob- ably remain so until some accidental discovery reveals the secret." It thus appears that up to 1835 Mr. Burt experienced all the annoyances met with by other land surveyors, in surveying trapezoidal tracts, but, unlike them, he was not satisfied to re- main without a remedy for the trouble, and all of his correspondence shows that he was trying hard to evolve a method to do away with the inaccuracies and annoyances due to a sole reliance upon the magnetic needle.
his researches resulted in the production of the solar compass. In 1835, in order to test its principles, he made a model of this instrument, and in the latter part of the same year the first solar compass was made under his supervision, by W. J. Young, of Philadelphia, then the best known and most expert mathematical instrument maker in this country. The new instrument was submitted to a committee of the Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsyl- vania, and after a full examination of its principles and merits, they awarded the inventor a premium of $20 and a Scott's Legacy Medal. Like most new inventions, the solar compass proved to be susceptible of improvement, and five years later Mr. Burt submitted a new solar compass to the same Institute, and their committee reported that it was a decided improvement, both as to accuracy and simplicity. Mr. Burt, however, was not per- fectly satisfied, and in 1851 he exhibited, at the World's Fair, in London, a solar compass still fur- ther improved as to scope, accuracy and simplicity. This instrument then, and since 1850, was known as Burt's Improved Solar Compass, and in its development and construction, Judge Burt was greatly assisted by the suggestions and mechanical skill of his sons, and it may be said to represent the result of their joint labors. For this compass a premium medal was awarded by the Committee on Astronomical Instruments, and the inventor was personally complimented by the Prince of Wales. The premium medal was accompanied by the fol- lowing certificate :
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