Civil War Articles by Julian WilliamsWillcoxes Spawned Sewing Machines And Cadillacs
This article was compiled by Julian Williams.
The Willcoxes are a most unusual people. Last week, when I was telling the Marine Manufacturing Company boat folks about John Willcox, the old boat builder up the road from Jacksonville, Georgia, I had no idea what next I would find out about the Willcoxes.
By the way, the annual meeting of Marine Manufacturing was certainly a treat for me as I told the boat fellows and ladies some fish stories and other stories. I hope it turned out to be an "Evening of Mirth" for all. Steve Harris who heads up the plant here in Douglas was kind enough to invite an amateur storyteller (me) to the annual dinner meeting. He said the boat dealers from all over the country enjoyed the evening. I surely hope so. Steve was also very kind in generously supporting our efforts to erect some planned historical cenotaph monuments. He and his company are certainly assets for Douglas and the surrounding areas. They build and sell a lot of boats. Old Capt. John Willcox would be proud of them.
The next few days, my memory was jogged again concerning the Willcoxes as my wife and I journeyed to North Carolina with a group from the First Baptist Church. They were kind enough to allow some of us stragglers from College Avenue Baptist to join their group. We came within miles of the old stomping grounds of John Willcox (father of boatbuilder John) of Chatham County, North Carolina, who made cannonballs for George Washington and the Revolutionary cause.
And now I come across a story of one of the Pennsylvania Willcoxes who spawned a sewing machine and the Cadillac automobile. He had a whole lot to do with the sewing machine and indirectly had something to do with America having a General Motors luxury automobile.
America, about 1857 was inventing things coming and going. Elias Howe and Isaac Singer had sewing machines on the market but they were fairly expensive for the average consumer.
And up in his little inventor's shop in Philadelphia, James Willcox decided it was time to get in on the action. Along with James Gibbs, he gave this country one fine sewing machine.
The meeting of the two men occurred somewhat accidentally. James Gibbs, an inventor also, had seen a woodcut of an early sewing machine in a newspaper. Without benefit of an actual model, he studied the drawing and came to several conclusions. He immediately wanted to make a less bulky and more efficient machine. And less expensive. He also wanted to use only one needle and one thread. To do this, he ingeniously designed a revolving looper which would make a chain stitch as opposed to the old lock stitch.
Without even an adequate machine shop, he fashioned a crude wooden model of a sewing machine he hoped he could convince someone to finance. That is when he ran into James Willcox.
"I was in Philadelphia in 1857", he later wrote, "selling the first of my first two inventions in the office of Emery, Houghton and Company, when James Willcox came in. He remarked that he was a dealer in new notions and inventions, and he asked me to come to his little shop in Masonic Hall and build a model of my machine".
James Willcox's son, Charles, worked with Gibbs in building a working model of the machine. Later, James Willcox approached the firm of Brown and Sharpe to see if they would produce the machines.
An agreement was finally reached but Lucien Sharpe was cautious about the whole arrangement. He was a New Englander proud of his work and didn't quite know what to make of this new challenge. Although he had initial setbacks in the production of the machine, he finally succeeded in putting out a high quality product. The sewing machine was to be a real competitor and a top-notch piece of engineering and production.
The International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society tells us:
"An article praising Gibbs's machine appeared in an 1859 issue of Scientific American and concluded that "one cannot but admire the beauty and accuracy of (the machine's) movements, and the entire absence of all noise, even when it is running at the rate of two-thousand stitches and upwards per minute". It pointed to the "good workmanship" of the Willcox and Gibbs machine and noted that it used interchangeable parts which could be easily and cheaply replaced if broken.
In addition, the machine came upon an "elegant stand that forms an ornament to a parlour". The writer in Scientific American also observed that the machine had been shown at the Franklin Institute Fair in Philadelphia, where a panel of judges gave it "the highest commendation" and an "eminently favourable report"."
Someone even boasted of the Willcox-Gibbs machine in a little jingle (here is part of it):
"If one thread will do,
Why bother with two,
To break, to confuse, and to tangle?
There is not a sound
When my looper goes round,
No shuttles or bobbins to jangle.
I am quick, yet I make
Not a single mistake,
You have only to keep me agoing.
And I never will shirk
The least bit of your work.
But do all the family sewing."
With the ending of the Civil War it looked like things might come apart - especially for Gibbs, who fought for the Confederacy. But James Willcox saved the day again. A Union detective had followed Gibbs back North, thinking he was the Confederate soldier who had been responsible for inventing a Southern mortar - used against the North in the War.
"Gibbs decided to go to New York to discover if anything remained of his sewing-machine business. Borrowing a broadcloth suit from a brother-in-law, he left Virginia in June 1865. His daughter, Ethel, recalled later that her father was followed from Jersey City to 658 Broadway in New York by a Northern detective who thought he was a man named "Gibbs from Louisiana, who had invented the famous mortar used by the Confederate Army". When Gibbs entered his old office, the detective evidently realised he had the wrong man. James and Charles H. Willcox greeted Gibbs with open arms and told him that they had deposited $10,000 in the bank to his credit. The two Willcox men had not made it public that the credit was for a Confederate because the money would have been confiscated."
Now I would say that was teamwork at its very best. It didn't take long for Willcox-Gibbs to be in business again making one of the finest sewing machines the world has ever known. They quit making home sewing machines back around the 1970's but Willcox-Gibbs is still a powerful company with subsidiaries in various fields of research and production.
But how did Willcox help spawn the making of the Cadillac automobile?
"Among those who worked on Willcox and Gibbs machines at the Brown and Sharpe factory was one Henry Leland who was in charge of the sewing-machine department from 1878 until 1890.
Leland went on to devote his skills that he had learned on sewing machines to forming the prestigious Cadillac Car Company - the Rolls Royce of American automobiles."
Henry Leland built the Cadillac on the philosophy that his car would have 100 percent interchangeable parts. Why not? The idea had worked for one of the best sewing machines ever made - it would work for his Cadillac! Small wonder he didn't name it a Willcox!
P.S. Leland also built the Lincoln motor car and regretted he ever sold it to Henry Ford. He wanted to buy the company back but Ford refused.
Credits:
Graham Forsdyke for A History of the Willcox-Gibbs Company;
David Hounshell for From the American System to Mass Production;
for The International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society Articles on Willcox-Gibbs;
Bernard Williams for the jingle about Willcox-Gibbs Sewing Machines;
History of General Motors;
other various sources of information.
