Born: 12 August 1812 in Stark County, Ohio
Died: 1 Jan 1872
Ephraim Ball and Cornelius Aultman of Canton, Ohio, belong to a class of the world's benefactors who have made two blades of grass grow where but one grew before. Both are self-made men, and by their invention of machines adapted to the wants of agriculturists have built up manufacturing establishments that are among the largest and most important in the West.
Ephraim Ball, the inventor of the famous Ohio Reaper and Mower, was
born in Stark county, Ohio, in 1812, and passed his youth amid
hardships and privations, without the advantages of even an ordinary
common school education. Compelled, when not more than fourteen years
of
age, to seek his own subsistence, he attained the age of manhood with
only a knowledge of the ruder parts of the art of the house-carpenter.
Having married early in life, he became surrounded by the cares of a
family, for whose support, in 1840, he directed all his mental and
physical energies to the starting of a foundry for making Plough
castings, and a shop for Stocking Ploughs. "Should he now contemplate,"
says a brief memoir furnished us by one familiar with the facts, "an
establishment for casting ocean steamers in one piece the work would
look scarcely more formidable." With no previous knowledge of the
business—having never seen liquid iron but once in his life—yet obliged
not only to plan but to execute all the work himself, be became in turn
carpenter, stone cutter mason, pattern maker, plough stocker, painter,
salesman, purchaser, financier, and bookkeeper to the establishment.
With hands and brain earnestly employed, and all his hopes centered on
success, difficulties, competition, and opposition only solidified his
resolution. No wonder that in such a mental gymnasium mind grew
rapidly, manners improved, intelligence, skill, judgment, and influence
increased. It was a success. Ploughs were made and sold known as
'Ball's Blue Ploughs.'
A partnership was now formed which has made a
name and influence the world over. Cornelius Aultman and Lewis Miller,
names well-known on the Patent Office records and throughout the West,
became the partners of Mr. Ball and in 1851 the little shop at
Greentown was abandoned, and the (afterward) great firm of Ball,
Aultman & Co. appeared at Canton, Ohio, on the Pittsburgh, Fort
Wayne, and Chicago Railroad. Here genius had a wider range, and here,
in 1854, the West was first cheered by the sight of "The Ohio Mower," a
machine with double driving wheels and a flexible finger-bar.
The loss
of all their shops and tools in the same year by fire deferred the
full, practical development of the machine until 1856, when Mr. Ball
took out Letters patent for his improvement. From that time forward
business increased rapidly and improvements followed in quick
succession. The "Buckeye" machine was brought out in 1858, after the
dissolution of the firm, which look place early in that year. In the
hands of his former partners, C. Aultman &. Co., this, which also
belongs to the family of two wheeled machines, has attained a wonderful
success, probably equal to that of the parent machine, as many as seven
thousand having been made by them in 1865.
In 1856, Ball, Aultman & Co., made five
hundred Ohio Mowers, and it
is not known that any other machines with double drivers were made, but
for the sake of comparison, the whole number made may be put at six
hundred. The number of machines with single driving wheels made in that
year was not far from twelve thousand, or in the proportion of twenty
to one. In 1865, of one hundred and twenty thousand machines made,
considerably over one half are believed to have been double drivers.
That all, or even a majority of these, were Balls' machines, is not
claimed, yet there is little doubt that the success and popularity of
his machine contributed greatly to the change in the relative numbers
of each class, and to the preponderance of the double drivers.
In 1858, the firm of Ball, Aultman & Co. was dissolved, and each of
the original partners proceeded to erect or fit up establishments which
are now among the largest of their class in the West, and which will be
more particularly described in another place.—See Manufacturers of
Canton, Vol. III.
This is an extract
from the book A History of
American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860 exhibiting the origin and
growth of the principal mechanic arts and manufactures, from the
earliest colonial period to the adoption of the Constitution, and
comprising annals of industry of the United States in machinery,
manufactures and useful arts, with a notice of important inventions,
tariffs and the results of each decennial census by John Leander
Bishop, Edwin T Freedley and Edward Young (1866).
