Caledonia

FAIRBANKS, Thaddeus

Men of Vermont: Illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters & Sons of 
Vermont. Ullery. Brattleboro: Transcript Publishing Company, 1894, pp 129-133

Thaddeus FAIRBANKS was born 17 January 1796 in Brimfield [Hampden County], 
Massachusetts, and died 12 April 1886 in St. Johnsbury [Caledonia County], 
Vermont. The first of the name came to this country in 1633, Johnathan 
FFAYERBANKE, from Sowerby, near Halifax, on the west border of Yorkshire 
[England]; and Richard, who was the innkeeper and first postmaster of Boston 
[Suffolk County, Massachusetts]. Jonathan, the ancestor, so far as known, of 
all the American families, built in 1636 a house in Dedham [Norfolk County], 
Massachusetts, which with the additions made later is still standing. The 
"Item: two vices and one turning laeth and other seuch thinges," and "Item: 
many smale tools for turning and other the like work," in the inventory of 
the estate of Jonathan F. in 1668 seem to indicate thus early the mechanical 
taste of the family, while the plan of the house, the finish, and many little 
arrangements show taste and skill.

George, the second son of Jonathan, came with is father from England, lived 
in Dedham, and in 1657 removed to Sherborn [Middlesex County, Massachusetts], 
where he was selectman and a leading citizen. His [George's] fourth child, 
Eliezur, was born in 1655 and became a prominent man in Sherborn. His 
[Eliezur's] youngest child was "Captain" Eleasur, born in 1734, known in 
Sherborn history as "Deacon" Ebenezer, moved to Brimfield [Hampden County], 
Massachusetts, in 1783. His [Ebenezer's] second son, Joseph, born in 
Sherborn in 1763, moved with his father to Brimfield, bought a small farm, 
and in 1790 [Joseph] married Phoebe PADDOCK of Holland [Hampden County], 
Massachusetts, whose ancestor came to America with Governor CARVER, and 
married into the family of Governor BRADFORD, and whose brother, Judge 
Ephraim PADDOCK, and others of the family, coming to Vermont, became honored 
and prominent citizens. To them [Joseph and Phoebe] three sons were born: 
Erastus, 28 October 1792; Thaddeus, 17 January 1796; and Joseph Paddock, 26 
November 1806.

Thaddeus, though born upon the farm, was a slender child, nervously 
organized, growing too fast to be strong, suffering in his plays with rougher 
children, then as all his life lacking physical vigor, so that in his later 
years he said that he did not know that he ever in all his life felt well, an 
experience that led to such care of himself and such pains to make the most 
of himself that few men have accomplished more or lived longer than he. He 
describes himself as exceedingly timid, exceedingly bashful, so that when 
sent on his mother's errands to the store in the evening no one could know 
what a struggle it cost him to pass the graveyard, made terrible by the talk 
of the boys, under the dark trees on the way, or to nerve himself to speak to 
the storekeeper as he must. What costs another nothing develops in such a 
child a true manliness, a real heroism. And because it was not easy for him 
to speak he thought the more, and gained the habit, so marked in all his 
life, of not beginning to speak until he had thought the matter through and 
was quite prepared to speak intelligently. The boy who preferred to be with 
his mother instead of playing with boys outside was learning to consider 
every question so thoroughly that later his advice was sought and heeded by 
probably more men than ever came to anyone else in the state.

His father, Joseph, was a carpenter as well as farmer, and Thaddeus, who was 
afraid to speak to the storekeeper, when five years old was found running as 
fast as a child could around and around upon the plates of a building partly 
raised; and very early he began to use his father's tools with a skill that 
seemed inborn, setting in motion little machines driven by the brook back of 
the house, or making various things for his mother's convenience.

His father at that time had met with some losses, there was little money in 
the country, and the years when Thaddeus should have gone to some academy 
were years when the crops failed, so that he had only the opportunities 
furnished by the common schools, when he was well enough to attend. Books 
were expensive. He often in later years spoke of how large a sum the dollar 
that must be paid for a new arithmetic seemed to him, and many a student 
coming to him for aid has had occasion to be glad that he remembered how in 
his boyhood and young manhood he longed for educational privileges, which he 
missed so much that he was glad to help others to gain them.

Joseph FAIRBANKS and his sons were too enterprising to be content with the 
hard work and small returns of the life of the rather rough farm. The new 
settlements of Vermont attracted them, and in May 1815, he sold his property 
in Brimfield, purchased the falls of Sleeper's River, in what is now the 
southwest part of the village of St. Johnsbury, and moved his family into a 
little cabin of rough boards there, in which they lived two and a half years, 
as pioneers live.

He [Joseph] and his son Thaddeus worked together, and being skilled 
mechanics, built a dam upon the stream, which, coming from the then wooded 
country, was of some size, and erected and operated a saw mill and a grist 
mill where the Fairbanks scale factory has grown up. Meeting thus the 
necessities of the new country they began to prosper. In a shop over the 
grist mill they also made carriages, doing so good work that in 1892 an old 
gentleman drove into St. Johnsbury with a wagon which he said had been used 
every year since his father purchased it of Thaddeus FAIRBANKS in 1819. In 
the summer of 1818 Thaddeus built a two-story double house in which his 
parents lived the rest of their life, and to which he, marrying in January 
1820, brought his wife, and lived there until 1838. The work of the mills 
and the shops increased, and for ten years he boarded from three to seven 
men, as the exigencies of that work required.

The maternal uncles of Thaddeus FAIRBANKS were iron workers, the newly opened 
iron mine at Franconia [Grafton County], New Hampshire, attracted his 
attention, and in 1823 he started a small iron foundry, and was joined in 
1824 by his brother Erastus, who gave up his store in Barnet [Caledonia 
County, Vermont], the elder uniting his business experience with the 
mechanical and practical skill of the younger, as they formed the firm of E. 
& T. Fairbanks. Besides some job work they made cooking and parlor stoves, 
patenting one which sold well. Thaddeus also patented a cast iron plough, an 
unheard of thing, which the farmers said would "break all to pieces" but 
which, as made by the inventor, soon displaced the wooden ones with steel 
point, the only kind before known. For stoves and ploughs, Thaddeus made not 
only the plans, but also the patterns with his own hands, moulding many of 
them and attending to the melting, improving the blast furnace, and 
overcoming the faults that appeared in weak or porous castings. What he 
learned by this experience of making strong iron was invaluable to him in all 
the later business.

In 1829 and 1830 the attention of the farmers of New England was directed to 
the raising of hemp, and machines for dressing it were required. E. & T. 
Fairbanks built three of the immense Haynes machines, thirty-two feet long, 
and each having one hundred and thirty fluted rolls arranged in pairs and 
geared together so that the hemp stalks were crushed between them as they 
were drawn from one end to the other of the machine. Mr. FAIRBANKS made the 
gear wheels, a machine for fluting the rollers, and parts that required 
skilled work, besides planning and supervising the building of the new shop 
and store rooms, and patenting an improved hemp dresser. He was also made 
manager of the St. Johnsbury Hemp Company.

His duties as manager, purchasing hemp by weight, developed a necessity, 
which with such a man as he must prove the mother of invention. That which 
cost from ten to fifteen dollars per ton must be accurately weighed. The 
only weighing machine for carts then known consisted of a stick of timber 
suspended high in the air, from one end of which two chains hung down with 
rings at the ends which could be slipped over the ends of the axle, while 
from the other end of the timber lever hung a platform upon which weights 
were piled until the cart swung clear of the ground. The first device of Mr. 
FAIRBANKS consisted of a platform upon which a cart could be driven, resting 
and balanced upon a long knife-edge, or upon two in line, fized upon a 
triangular lever, of which the apex hung by a steel-yard rod from a beam 
pivoted and graduated like the old Roman steel-yard, while the base rested 
upon proper bearings at the other end of the scale. To keep the platform 
balanced upon the supporting knife edges, a stiff post was framed into it, 
from the top of which level chains extended to posts set in the ground on 
either side which being level neither lessened nor increased the load resting 
upon the lever under the platform.

The scale which Mr. FAIRBANKS built upon this plan to weigh hemp worked so 
well that his brother thought that some might be sold as town scales, and an 
agent was to take the early morning stage and make the attempt. Mr. 
FAIRBANKS says: "While sitting up watching for the time to call him, the 
principle upon which we now build our scales suddenly came into my mind. I 
told the agent that he must wait a few days until I could make plans and 
patterns in accordance with my new discovery, and said to my wife that I had 
just discovered a principle that would be worth more than a thousand 
dollars." If such an arrangement of compound levers had ever been suggested 
before, Mr. FAIRBANKS did not know it, for it had not been put into practical 
use, and he obtained a patent for it as early as 1831, as his invention. His 
was the first real improvement upon the scales buried in the destruction of 
Pompeii. The first hay scale was rude, having wooden levers with cast iron 
bearings, but it was vastly better than anything made before, and in a few 
weeks several were sold.

Mr. FAIRBANKS at once saw that the combination of levers in the hay scale, in 
which the four pivots upon which the platform rested should all stand in the 
same relation of leverage to the indicating beam from which these levers 
hang, would be equally adapted to scales of other sizes for other uses. He 
at once set about making plans and patterns with his own hands for store 
scales. These and the counter scales, as well as the railway and canal boat 
scales which he designed later were new articles of manufacture, and 
everything about them must be originated. He says: "I had to consider the 
strength of material, the shape that would secure the greatest strength with 
the least material, and the symmetry and beauty of outside appearance. 
These, especially the last, required a great amount of study. No one can be 
sure beforehand what the taste of the public will approve. That I succeeded 
in what I aimed at is shown by the fact that now after a lapse of fifty years 
the scales are made after the same design and all other makers follow the 
same. My evenings and sometimes nights were spent in this study, for I must 
be at the shop all day. My habit was to make the plans complete in my mind 
before commencing to put them upon paper."

The scale was a comparatively simple invention, but many of the machines 
invented by Mr. FAIRBANKS for facilitating the manufacture were exceedingly 
ingenious, one for engraving the sides of the scale beams being capable of so 
many adjustments that the old foreman used to say that it could do everything 
but talk. Invention was not laborious; to see a result desirable was to 
devise a mechanism for accomplishing it. The real struggle was with poverty, 
and unskilled help and with ill health. The demands of the business growing 
so rapidly could not be met from its earnings, and he made scales for fifteen 
years with only a little machinery. Trained mechanics could not be hired in 
the country, and he had only such assistants as he could educate himself. No 
business was ever carried on at greater disadvantage, or by its success 
attested more manly qualities in its manager.

The invention of the scale met at once a great want, and gradually changed so 
entirely the methods of doing business, that now it is as essential as the 
steam engine or the telegraph. Almost nothing is measured or counted, 
everything is weighed, from the minute prescription of some potent drug to 
the loaded freight train or canal boat. And Mr. FAIRBANKS lived to see 
scales demanded for such a variety of uses that some five hundred 
modifications were sent out from St. Johnsbury. The scale has become a most 
potent factor in modern civilized life, the arbiter between buyer and seller, 
and by its accuracy is always teaching exactness in business methods, and 
enforcing strict integrity in business transactions. His invention was a 
scale, not a pair of scales. It takes its name from the graduated beam, the 
scale of equal parts (scalla, ladder), and not from the two scales (shells) 
of the even balance.

Mr. FAIRBANKS obtained early an English patent, and others later. The first 
was sold to H. POOLEY, of Liverpool, who thereupon established what is still 
the leading manufactory in Great Britain. The scales made at St. Johnsbury 
are also sold in England, and to other countries the export is very large. 
These scales are graduated according to the standards of all the nations of 
the world, and are sent everywhere, Russia, Japan, China, Australia, and the 
South American states furnishing large markets. These scales and their 
inventor have received abundant recognition and honors, awards, diplomas, 
medals, from mechanics and agricultural fairs, the Philadelphia Centennial, 
the London, Paris, and Vienna Expositions, and as a posthumous tribute to Mr. 
FAIRBANKS, as well as an honor to the house which he established, twenty 
awards by the judges of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. More personal than 
these, after the Vienna Exposition he received from his "Imperial and Royal 
Apostolic Majesty" the Emperor of Austria, the knightly decoration of the 
Imperial Order of Francis Joseph; from the King of Siam the decoration 
Paspamula, the gold medal of Siam, with the heathen prayer, "May the Power 
which is mightly in the universe keep him and guard him, and grant him all 
happiness and prosperity"; and from Mohammed es Sakok, Pasha, Bey of Tunis, 
the decoration "of our Order of Iftikar," and the Mohammedan invocation, "May 
you wear it in peace and prosperity."

Mr. FAIRBANKS was not only a scale maker, but having occasion to build so 
much he became an architect of no mean ability, working out the details, from 
frame to finish, not only of shops, but of some public buildings, some fine 
residences, and a great many most convenient little houses, sold or leased to 
workmen, which are a comfort to their families and an ornament to St. 
Johnsbury. And his inventions were not merely of scales, for which, and 
machines for making them, he received thirty-two patents, but he patented 
also a hemp machine, a stove, a cast iron plough, a device for creating 
draught in chimneys, a steam heater, a steam water heater, a feed water 
heater, and an improvement in refrigerators. This last consisted of placing 
the ice above the level of the articles to be cooled, and the principle has 
been universally adopted for refrigerators, fruit houses, meat packing 
houses, etc. The moisture is condensed upon the ice, with all tainted 
vapors, and the cooled air flows down upon the articles below. Mr. FAIRBANKS 
could not go into new business, and gave away his patent, which its new owners 
later told him was worth at least a million dollars. A rival company 
attempted to cover the claims of this into a patent of their own by reissue, 
and to establish a monopoly. The battles that followed were among the 
hardest fought of patent litigation, and the final decision established the 
priority of his invention, the judge saying, "In this case the evidence is 
perfectly conclusive of the construction, both in 1846 and 1849, by Thaddeus 
FAIRBANKS of refrigerators embodying the principle." In all refrigerating 
apparatus, as in the plough and the scale, Mr. FAIRBANKS' invention proved a 
revolutionary improvement.

Perhaps it was owing to his own sense of loss by deficiency of education that 
Mr. FAIRBANKS was led to such intense interest in giving educational 
advantages to others. As a young man we find him interested in a lyceum, 
with his employees and others, and his lectures upon astronomy and heat 
prepared for that audience indicate vigorous and original thought. St. 
Johnsbury had various private high schools before its academy, and he and his 
noble wife were seldom without nephews, nieces or others in the family 
enjoying these advantages. He and his brothers established St. Johnsbury 
Academy in 1842, and twenty years later he undertook its support, and still 
later erected its buildings, and contributed to its endowment fund enough to 
make his total gifts to it over two hundred thousand dollars. He also 
contributed largely to the funds of Middlebury College of which he was a 
trustee, and was a constant giver to many western colleges and other 
institutions. He was likewise for many years the largest contributor to home 
missionary work in Vermont, and equally large to foreign missions, while all 
the societies that naturally appealed to him received liberal regular 
donations, from him, and scores of students were aided by him.

Mr. FAIRBANKS, while exceedingly taciturn, was an attractive, impressive man. 
Active to the last, in spite of limitations from partial blindness, he was 
interested in everything, and his last patent was allowed upon his ninetieth 
birthday. His was a beautiful old age. Children loved him, and clung to 
him. A little child taken to church for the first time saw him come in, and 
in an awed whisper asked, "Mamma, is that Jesus?"

He died after a painful illness, from the indirect effect of a fall, at the 
age of ninety years and three months. On the day of his funeral all business 
in St. Johnsbury was suspended, buildings were draped in mourning, and great 
numbers came to look once more on his face, and joined the procession to the 
grave. A man of Christian faith, of spiritual insight and force, and of fine 
native gifts, Mr. FAIRBANKS was successful above most men in his chosen lines 
of work, and was useful wherever he was successful.

On 17 January 1820 he [Thaddeus FAIRBANKS] was married to [Miss] Lucy B. 
BARKER, a native of St. Johnsbury, whose father Barnabas, came with his 
father and the first settlers of the town, and in 1791 brought his bride, 
Ruth PECK [PECK assumed by submitter to be a maiden surname, not a middle 
name], from Rehoboth on a pillion behind him. Mrs. [Lucy B.] FAIRBANKS was a 
woman of marked ability, taking her full share of the care of the family, and 
full of kindly deeds. Her son was Rev. Henry FAIRBANKS, and her daughter, 
Charlotte, became the wife of Rev. G. N. WEBBER, D. D., pastor at Hartford 
[Hartford County], Connecticut, professor in Middlebury College, and pastor 
at Troy [Rensselaer County], New York, and [Charlotte WEBBER] died 29 March 
1869. Mrs. [Thaddeus] FAIRBANKS was born [Lucy B. nee BARKER] 29 April 1798, 
and died 29 December 1866.

Submitted by Cathy Kubly