Background
Benjamin was born at Martin's Stream, Norridgewock, Maine, United States. He was the son of Seth and Hulda (Besse) Sturtevant and a lineal descendant of Samuel Sturtevant who emigrated to Plymouth in 1642 from Rochester, Kent, England.
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Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant
Edit ProfileEducation
Sturtevant's parents were poor and his father was in ill health so that the boy had little opportunity for an education, being compelled to help in supporting the family by laboring on a farm.
Career
Desiring something better, he left home when he was fifteen and worked his way to Northbridge, Massachussets, and then back to Skowhegan, Maine, where he entered a cobbler's shop and during the next eight years became a skilled shoemaker.
This confining employment injured his health, however, and in the hope of bettering his condition he turned his attention to the possibility of devising a machine to peg boots and shoes.
Although he possessed no knowledge of mechanics and had had no experience with machinery, he devised a crude model of a shoe-pegging machine in a few months.
Proceeding immediately to Boston with the model but no money, he assigned one-half of his invention absolutely and the entire control of the remaining half to a local business man in return for a meager living wage.
From 1857 to 1859 he was engaged in making improvements on the original machine, for which he secured five patents. Meanwhile, another patentee of a shoe-pegging machine, wholly worthless, met Sturtevant's backer and skilfully frightened him into believing that Sturtevant's ideas were infringements and open to possible lawsuits.
As a result, Sturtevant lost his only financial support in addition to all rights in his patents, and was again penniless. He had not, however, divulged all of his ideas to his guarantor, and immediately turned his attention to pegmaking machinery, realizing that any shoe-pegging machine was worthless without pegs.
By December 1859 he had devised and patented (No. 26, 627) a pegwood lathe which cut a spiral veneer from around a log, and by July 1862 (No. 35, 902) the process and machinery for converting such veneer ribbons into pegs. This process involved drying the veneer, beveling one edge, which edge was then compressed and toughened (all by machinery of his invention) and the whole ribbon, usually 100 feet long, made into a roll ready for use in the shoe-pegging machines.
Unfortunately, to obtain money for this work which consumed all of his time from 1860 to 1863, Sturtevant had to sell, bit by bit, most of the rights and other possible applications of these inventions, being able to retain for himself only such parts as applied to the production of shoe-pegs.
One of the applications of his patents which he thus lost was for the manufacture of wooden toothpicks. Nevertheless, he secured enough capital to establish a ribbon pegwood manufactory at Conway, New Hampshire, which was highly successful, having markets throughout the world.
The dust created by the buffing wheels in the early shoe factories was very annoying and about 1864 Sturtevant began considering ways and means of eliminating it. His solution of the problem was the invention of a rotary exhaust fan (patented October 29, 1867) which within a comparatively short period he was supplying to the local trade in Boston.
By applying the same mechanical features to the crude air blowers then existing he produced a greatly improved machine and developed so many new applications for it, such as pressure blowers, ventilating fans, and pneumatic conveyors, that he literally created a new industry.
He died in 1890.
Achievements
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At the time of his death Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant's manufactory produced over 5, 000 blowers yearly and employed about 400 men. He gave liberally of the fortune he acquired to educational and religious institutions, contributing largely to Colby University, Vermont Academy, and Newton Theological Seminary.
Connections
He was married at Norridgewock, Maine, in 1852, to Phoebe R. Chamberlain and at the time of his death in Jamaica Plain was survived by his widow and two daughters.
