Charles Danfort an American inventor, whose name is connected with cotton-manufacturing business.
Background
Charles Danfort was born on Augusy 30, 1797 in Norton, Massachusetts, United States. He was the fifth child of Thomas and Betsey (Haskins) Danforth. He was a descendant in the seventh generation from Nicholas and Elizabeth Danforth of Framlingham, England, who came to America in 1634 and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Charles’s father was a farmer and clothier as his father and grandfather had been before him; he served in the Revolution as fife-major, and was with Washington on Long Island and at New York.
Education
From early boyhood young Danforth showed a decided inclination to the mechanical arts, and after attending school until he was fourteen years old he entered a cotton-mill at Norton as a throttle-piercer.
Career
Danforth joined the army, first as a substitute and later on his own account, and after the war went to sea for several voyages as a common sailor.
Then taking up school-teaching, he was given charge of a district school near Rochester, New York, but he soon returned to the cotton-manufacturing business, this time as foreman of a factory in Mattcawan, New York.
When twenty-eight years old he moved with his family to Sloatsburg, New York, on the Ramapo River, where he worked in a cotton factory as a carder and setter-up of machinery.
While engaged in this latter occupation he designed and patented, on September 2, 1828, an important improvement in spinning frames known as
The idea was appropriated by others, with the result that Danforth received very little profit from it.
Armed with his patent, however, he moved to Paterson, New Jersey, obtained a machinist’s job with the firm of Godwin, Rogers & Clark, and after explaining his patent, prevailed upon them to manufacture his spinner. Within a comparatively short time he was offered and accepted Rogers’s place in the firm, but continued in the machine-shop.
In 1840 he purchased the machine-shop branch of the company’s operations and two years later bought the cotton-mill as well, and immediately undertook the expansion of the business to include the making of machine tools.
Remarkably successful in this, and wishing to add a locomotive shop to his works, in 1852 he prevailed upon John Cooke, a foreman in the Rogers Locomotive Works, to join him.
Within two years the company, then known as Danforth, Cooke & Company, received a large order for locomotives from the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad which brought them so much celebrity that their good name was firmly established and their locomotives were sold throughout the world.
In 1855 the Danforth Locomotive and Machine Company was incorporated, Danforth retaining the presidency until 1871 when he retired and was succeeded by John Cooke.
Cooke died in 1882, but his sons carried on the business until 1901 when the works were sold to the International Power Company, who in turn sold them to the American Locomotive Company. Although averse to public life, he accepted the presidency of the Paterson City Council for one term.
Achievements
Charles Danforth has been listed as a noteworthy inventor, manufacturer by Marquis Who's Who.
Connections
Danforth married Mary, daughter of Thomas and Sarah Willett of Matteawan, New York, on October 18, 1823.
