Background
John Wesley Masury was born on January 1, 1820 in Salem, Massachussets. He was the son of John and Priscilla (Carroll) Masury and a descendant of the French Huguenot family of Le Mesuriers.
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John Wesley Masury was born on January 1, 1820 in Salem, Massachussets. He was the son of John and Priscilla (Carroll) Masury and a descendant of the French Huguenot family of Le Mesuriers.
After receiving a good secondary education he worked in various capacities in Salem until 1842, when he went to Brooklyn, N. Y. , which was his home for upwards of forty years. Here he became a clerk in the retail paint store of John D. Prince. A few years later, at the suggestion of Masury, Prince established a factory for the making of ground dry colors under the firm name of John D. Prince & Company, with Masury as partner. The business was imediately successful and in a short time a third partner, to serve as salesman, was admitted and the company name changed to Prince, Masury & Weeks. Subsequently, Masury and Weeks bought out Prince and the two partners continued the business until the death of the latter in 1857. In order to buy his deceased partner's holdings Masury secured as a partner Frederick L. Whiton, and the firm was known as Masury & Whiton. On the death of Whiton in 1871, Masury took his son-in-law, F. L. Miller, into the business, changing the name of the concern to John W. Masury & Son. A short time after Prince and Masury began the manufacture of dry colors, the latter conceived the idea of making ready-mixed paints as well. The greatest problem involved was that of securing a suitable metal container, and Masury began experimenting with this object in view. Within two years after he began making coach colors, ground in Japan, with his improved mill, the demand for them called for more than three hundred tons a year per color. Masury wrote a number of books and pamphlets on paints and painting, the best known of which is House-Painting, Carriage-Painting and Graining, published in 1881. He died on May 14, 1895 at his residence in New York and was buried at Center Moriches, L. I.
In 1857, April 28, Masury patented a "metallic paint canister, " and on July 5, 1859, he secured a second patent for an "improved paint can"; but it was not until 1873 that he perfected a paint can with a top so thin that it could be cut with a pocket knife. The use of this type of can as a container for ready-mixed paints marked the beginning of a very successful business for Masury, since his company enjoyed a monopoly of the invention for twenty-one years. Another important invention of Masury was an improved paint mill, patented October 4, 1870, for grinding colors to an impalpable fineness in quick-drying varnish. Such grinding required that the millstones be held in close contact, and in the ordinary mill the frictional heat developed was sufficient to spoil the thinning material. Masury, however, devised a method by which a stream of cold water was passed over the outer surfaces of both the upper and lower millstones, thus preventing a destructive temperature. This invention alone permitted the manufacture of the so-called coach colors, which, prior to this time, had been made wholly in individual shops.
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He was twice married: first, October 15, 1844, to Laura A. Carlton of Salem, and, second, to Grace Harkins of Brooklyn.
