John Milton Greist was an American inventor and manufacturer.
Background
John Milton Greist was born on May 9, 1850 in Crawfordsville, Indiana, seventh of the eight children of Joseph W. and Ruth Anna (Garretson) Griest. His parents had moved to Indiana from Pennsylvania, where earlier generations of the father’s family, spelling their name “Griest, ” had settled in the early days of the colony. They were Quakers in religion. John’s father, still actuated by the spirit of the pioneer, had, during the gold rush, pushed on across the Continent to California, where shortly afterwards he died.
Education
Although the family was poor, young John was allowed to go to school until he was fourteen.
Career
Greist then went to work in Plainfield, Indiana, selling Wheeler & Wilson sewingmachines. He was apparently an able salesman, for in the course of five or six years his selling territory was extended to cover parts of the states of Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa.
His large experience with users of sewing-machines acquainted him with a real demand for additional equipment which would enable the user to do more than straight sewing. Early in the seventies, therefore, he began, in a small way, to man- ufacture attachments in Delavan, and shortly thereafter moved to Chicago and organized the Greist Manufacturing Company. Although at that time many patents had been issued for tucking, ruffling, and other sewing-machine attachments, Griest was the first to undertake the refinement of these earlier devices and make them practical.
In the course of the succeeding seventeen years his company built up an extensive business based upon his own patented improvements, which numbered close to fifty. In addition to those he himself manufactured, in 1883 Greist sold a number of patents having to do with hemming, tucking, and ruffling to the Singer Manufacturing Company, and three years later he perfected a button-hole attachment which brought his company large contracts from the sewing-machine manufacturers.
In 1887 he gave up his Chicago business to establish and manage an attachment department for the Singer company, to which his patents during this period were assigned. In 1889 he resigned from the Singer company and went to New Haven, Connecticut, where he organized the firm of J. M. Greist & Company, but about a year later moved to Westville, a suburb of New Haven, and established the Greist Manufacturing Company.
The demand for his products grew rapidly and in the course of a few years nearly all of the sewing-machine manufacturers and supply houses ordered their attachments from Greist.
Achievements
Connections
He was married twice: in August 1870 to Sarah Edwina Murdock, who died on August 14, 1897, and in October 1899, to Mary Fife Woods of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who, with two sons and a daughter by his first wife, survived him.