Philetus Woodworth Gates, who was born in Fenner, New York, 1817, and died in Chicago in 1888, was a nestor in the machine business in the middle and western states and it is probable that there are more large concerns in existence today which sprang from his companies than from any other large corporation in this part of the country. At the age of fifteen he was bound as apprentice to a blacksmith at Bristol Center, New York. After working for a time in that and other places in the east and also in St. Louis, he started for Chicago, but stopped at "Yankee Settlement", about twenty-five miles southwest of Chicago on the Illinois-Michigan Canal, in the neighborhood of what is now known as the "Sag". He found employment on a farm, and married there. In 1840 he and his father-in-law took a contract on a sub-section of the canal, but depreciation in the scrip in which they were paid left them financially bankrupt and heavily in debt. In 1842, with $3 in money and a horse which he sold for $7, Mr. Gates went to Chicago accompanied by his family and the family of his father-in-law. One thousand feet of lumber was bought on credit, for which they paid an interest rate of 4 per cent a month. This lumber the men carried on their backs to a point on the Chicago River and erected a blacksmith shop and foundry. The firm prospered, several different partners entering it with Mr. Gates, although they afterwards disposed of their interests on profitable terms. Car building was added to the manufacturing lines, after Andrew Fraser, E. S. Warner and Thomas Chalmers became connected with the house. Mr. Gates made many valuable inventions, one being the conical die for the continuous cutting of threads, which patent covers the principle in all dies which have since been manufactured for the continuous cutting of threads. He also made many of the improvements which finally resulted in the Gates rock breaker, now the standard gyratory rock crusher of the world.
Eliphalet Wickes Blatchford was born at Stillwater, New York, 1826. He was very young when his father, who was the first man to be ordained a minister of the gospel in Chicago, came to Illinois. He was graduated from Illinois college at Jacksonville in 1845. Five years later he went to St. Louis and engaged in the lead and metal business, also extensively in oils. He came to Chicago and founded
E. W. Blatchford Company in 1854. For forty years he was at the head of the Chicago Theological Seminary. He was one of the directors of the Crerar Library and did much enthusiastic work in the interest of the Chicago Manual Training School.
Information Sources
- Transactions of the Illinois State Historical SocietyV28, 10-11 May 1921 pages 68-69