from:
Historic Homes
and Institutions...of Worcester County, Mass. (1907)
EBENEZER
BUTTERICK, inventor of the celebrated and useful "Butterick
Patterns," was born in Sterling, Worcester county, Massachusetts, May
29, 1826. He was the son of Francis and Ruhamah (Buss) Butterick,
grandson of Jonathan and Hannah (Sawyer) Buttrick , great-grandson of
Francis and Hannah (Gilson) Buttrick, great-great-grandson of John and
Mary (Blood) Buttrick. The father of the last name John was a son of
William and Sarah (Bateman) Buttrick, and grandson of William Buttrick,
who was born in England in 1616, came to America from
Kingston-on-Thames in 1635, and died in Concord, Massachusetts, June
30, 1698. Ebenezer Butterick's father was a farmer and carpenter, an
active and leading citizen, and the principal founder of a Universalist
Society in Sterling, a proof of the intellectual courage which he never
lacked, and which his son inherited and enlarged.
The son
was educated in the common schools of Sterling and in Leicester
Academy, an ancient and still flourishing school in Leicester,
Massachusetts. The best business habits of his life he credited to his
clerkship in his brother's village store, the firm, Butterick and
Bartlett. Still a youth, he began the business of tailoring as an
apprentice in Worcester, Massachusetts. Careful application soon made
him an expert and enabled him to establish himself as a merchant tailor
of taste and skill in Sterling, Leominster, and finally in Fitchburg,
Massachusetts. In 1850 he married Ellen Augusta Pollard, of his native
town, who died in 1879, leaving a daughter, Mary Ellen Butterick, a son
having died in infancy.
In the conduct of his business, Mr.
Butterick was much annoyed by the waste of time in cutting children's
garments, and conceived the idea that a set of graded patterns would be
a great advantage to him and other tailors, and especially to mothers
making clothes for their own children. It was during a period of
recuperation from disabling sickness and anxiety that his meditative
mind conceived this idea. It was highly characteristic that a
benevolent impulse and an interest in little children were fundamental
to the invention which is now so intimately and honorably associated
with his name. In June, 1863, he astonished his wife by telling her
that he was going to set about the making of patterns as a new
business, and her deterrent caution did not avail to check his
enthusiastic confidence that he was on the track of a useful and
profitable invention. Having made convincing experiments in Sterling,
he cut the first salable patterns on an extension table in the sitting
room of his house, 41 Grove street. They were patterns for boys'
clothing, and the boy who furnished the first measurements was Clarence
Butterick, a nephew of Mr E. Butterick, then four years old and now, as
then, living in Sterling, Massachusetts. The first positive success was
with the "Butterick Shirt Pattern," but an equal success with patterns
for boys' and girls' clothing soon followed. The first patterns were
folded by members of the family, his own and his wife's relatives. They
were packed in boxes containing each one hundred patterns, and were
sold at a wholesale price of $10 for each box; $25 retail. The first
small purchases were made in Shirley, Massachusetts, and the purchasers
of the first box were James Tuttle & Co., of South Acton. Mr.
Butterick never spent the ten dollar bill which he personally got for
this box of patterns, but kept it as an interesting reminder of the day
of small things.
In September following the start in
June,
rooms were taken in a house near Mr. Butterick's, and five girls and
women were employed to do the folding under the direction of Mrs.
Butterick's sister. A Mr. Curtis, of Fitchburg, did the first printing,
and Mr. A. L. Howard of Fitchburg was the first traveling salesman.
Another salesman, John Roach, traveling through New Hampshire, Maine
and Nova Scotia in the fall of 1863, was successful to a degree that
was decidedly encouraging. A device for "trimmed patterns" answered a
good purpose till the introduction of cuts and drawings on the pattern
labels superseded it. In the spring of 1864, the work was taken to the
old Academy building in Fitchburg, and during the same season Mr.
Butterick issued his first fashion-plate, a small one. showing what he
could do in the line of children's garments. Later in the year he began
publishing gentlemen's fashion plates, accompanied by cut patterns,
which did away with the labor of tracing and cutting out patterns from
diagrams as had been previously necessary.
Some months in
advance of these improvements, Mr. Butterick had introduced his
patterns in New York. In or about October, 1863, he had taken two upper
rooms at 192 Broadway. Almost literally he "took up his bed and
walked," for he brought a bedstead of his own invention from sterling
for the back room where, using it by night, by day it could be folded
against the wall. His inventive genius was always seeking and finding
new avenues of expression. Shortly, Mr. Abner W. Pollard, later for for
a long time a partner in the business, came to New York to assist Mr.
Butterick, his brother-in-law, and he also lodged in the back room,
which by day was store-room and work-shop, in the front room Mr.
Butterick meeting his customers. Factory and home were removed to
Brooklyn in 1865, December 7th, a day of national thanksgiving for the
return of peace. The home gathered in seven persons who had assisted in
the work in Fitchburg, while for the factory a second story in a
dwelling house was at first sufficient room. From time to time a room
was added, then a larger building was taken, and finally a commodious
building on the corner of Throop and Lafayette avenues, which has until
now (1904) been equal to the manufacturing requirements of the
business. It was Mr. Butterick's habit to go to the manufactory in its
humble stage every morning before breakfast and sweep the rooms and
make the fires, after breakfast going to the New York office. In 1867
Mr. Butterick associated with himself J. W. Wilder, his general agent,
and A. W. Pollard, his secretary, in the firm of E. Butterick &
Co., and the business throve apace until 1875 when particular
circumstances conspired with the financial depression of the time to
cripple it seriously. It soon rallied in response to the heroic efforts
put forth by Mr. Butterick, his partners assisting to maintain an
enterprise in which he had unfailing confidence and pride. The
Butterick Publishing Company was organized in 1881. In the meantime
subsidiary offices had been established in all important centres in
this country and abroad, and the praise of the Butterick patterns was
everywhere heard, especially as, since 1866, their most significant
appeal has been to women, whose convenience and economy and taste they
had preeminently served.
In 1883 Mr. Butterick's health
suffered a serious collapse. It rallied slowly, but never completely,
during the remainder of his life, during which, still interested and
influential in the conduct of the business, he lived in a quiet
meditative fashion, spending nearly or quite half the year in the town
where he was born, and where he made himself a commodious but simple
home on a large farm, and endeared himself to all the neighborhood by
his cordial friendliness. His participation in the business ceased in
1899, but never his interest in this creation of his mind and heart. Of
his physical disabilities he made mental opportunities. His liberal
means took nothing from the simplicity of his character and tastes. To
gentle manners he united an inflexible will and sense of justice that
was an immovable rock. Of a deeply religious nature, he cherished a
most comfortable faith in the openness to each other of this life and
the life beyond. He was formally associated with the Metropolitan Art
Museum, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, the Brooklyn
Guild, and the American Unitarian Association. In the welfare of poor
children he had special interest, and a generous appreciation of their
needs. No man was ever less injured by good fortune or less convinced
that mere money-getting is the chief end of life. After a short
illness, he died March 31, 1903, and was buried in Leominster,
Massachusetts, a town adjoining the pleasant town where he was born.
From:
Historic
Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of
Worcester County, Massachusetts, by
Ellery Bicknell Crane, Pub. The Lewis Publishing
Company (1907), pages 300-301. (source)
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