Louis Goddu

January 1, 1837 (age 82)

St. Césaire, Canada

On reaching his majority, Goddu left Canada for Northampton, Massachusets, in search of greater opportunity. For four years, he was employed in one of the shoe factories there, becoming eventually an operator of a shoe-sewing machine patented a few years earlier by Lyman Blake. This renewed contact with machinery revived Goddu’s interest in mechanics, and he began thinking and working not only on improvements for the Blake machine but also on machinery for other phases of the shoe-making process. Throughout the period of the Civil War, Goddu devised and patented machines for pegging and stitching shoe soles, but had very little success in selling or introducing them. In 1865, however, he moved with his family to Lowell, Massachusets, and there met and became intimate with Gordon McKay, one of the pioneers in the introduction of machinery into the shoe industry. McKay was then particularly interested in bringing about the solution of the problem of nailing shoe soles by machine, and seeing in Goddu a real inventive genius, he hired him and purchased his more promising patents. For some six years, Goddu worked for McKay in Lowell and then moved to Winchester, Massachusets, where McKay’s metallic fastening interests centered. Here Goddu spent the rest of his life, eventually becoming one of the foremost inventors of shoe machines, particularly those which handled tacks, nails, or metals. His first machine of the soling machine using screw-thread wire was devised about 1876. It included a coil of wire held in a revolving kettle suspended from the ceiling. The weight of the kettle gave sufficient pressure to worm the screw-cut wire into the leather sole.

Louis Eloi Goddu

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inventor

Background

Louis Eloi Goddu was born in on October 1, 1837, St. Césaire, Canada. He was the son of Augustin Louis and Esther (De Lorge) Goddu, both of whom were French Canadians.

Education

Goddu's very early life and youth were spent on his father’s farm, and until he was twelve years old he attended the district school near his home.

During this time, he gave noticeable evidence of mechanical ability, and about 1850, his parents sent him to Montreal and engaged him as an apprentice in a machine shop.

Goddu remained in Montreal for approximately eight years and acquired great skill as a machinist as well as a well-rounded knowledge of mechanical principles and practices. He also took up and learned the shoemaker’s trade.

Career

On reaching his majority, Goddu left Canada for Northampton, Massachusets, in search of greater opportunity. For four years, he was employed in one of the shoe factories there, becoming eventually an operator of a shoe-sewing machine patented a few years earlier by Lyman Blake.

This renewed contact with machinery revived Goddu’s interest in mechanics, and he began thinking and working not only on improvements for the Blake machine but also on machinery for other phases of the shoe-making process.

Throughout the period of the Civil War, Goddu devised and patented machines for pegging and stitching shoe soles, but had very little success in selling or introducing them.

In 1865, however, he moved with his family to Lowell, Massachusets, and there met and became intimate with Gordon McKay, one of the pioneers in the introduction of machinery into the shoe industry.

McKay was then particularly interested in bringing about the solution of the problem of nailing shoe soles by machine, and seeing in Goddu a real inventive genius, he hired him and purchased his more promising patents.

For some six years, Goddu worked for McKay in Lowell and then moved to Winchester, Massachusets, where McKay’s metallic fastening interests centered. Here Goddu spent the rest of his life, eventually becoming one of the foremost inventors of shoe machines, particularly those which handled tacks, nails, or metals.

His first machine of the soling machine using screw-thread wire was devised about 1876. It included a coil of wire held in a revolving kettle suspended from the ceiling. The weight of the kettle gave sufficient pressure to worm the screw-cut wire into the leather sole.

Achievements

Goddu devised and patented machines for pegging and stitching shoe soles. His greatest series of inventions, probably, were those having to do with the improvements of the soling machine using screw-thread wire. In the course of his life, Goddu obtained about three hundred patents, 137 of which were for machines which filled important places in shoe production at the time. He was also the inventor of an oil burner for power plants and patented the machine for improved wire nails used in the building.

Membership

Goddu was a life member of the Mechanics Charitable Association and was at one-time park commissioner of Winchester.

Connections

Goddu married in 1860, in Montreal, Canada, Rosanna Roy, a native of that city, and at the time of his death in Winchester was survived by four sons and three daughters.

Father:: Augustin Louis Goddu
Mother:: Marie Esther Delage Goddu
Brother:: F Regis Goddu
Brother:: Napoleon Goddu
Brother:: Jean Baptiste Goddu
Brother:: Mitchell Goodhue
Brother:: Joseph Goddu
Sister:: Anastasie Goddu Gobeille
Sister:: Mathilda Goddu Fredette
Sister:: Cleophie Goddu Vadnais
Wife:: Rosanna Roy Goddu
Daughter:: Eda Elizabeth Goddu Carter
Daughter:: Vienna Goddu Preston
Daughter:: Florence L. Goddu
Son:: George Goddu
Son:: Napoleon Goddu
Son:: William Goddu
Son:: Eloi Goddu
colleague:: Gordon McKay

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Louis Goddu

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Louis Eloi Goddu

Background

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Career

Achievements

Membership

Connections

Born

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held at Chicago in 1893.

For the latter invention

Goddu was awarded a gold medal at the World’s Columbian Exposition