Background
Samuel Godfrey Reynolds was born on March 9, 1801 in Bristol, Rhode Island, the son of Greenwood and Mary (Caldwell) Reynolds, and a descendant of Robert Reynolds who was in Boston as early as 1634.
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Samuel Godfrey Reynolds
Edit ProfileEducation
Samuel was reared on his father's farm and obtained an elementary education, but being of a mechanical turn of mind, became interested in other things than farming.
Career
He tried his hand at the tannery business for a number of years and devised some minor improvements in the process then employed; soon he was devoting more time to work on inventions than to his tanning.
One of his early contrivances was an improved waterwheel of iron, which he sold to a New Hampshire manufacturer for a nominal sum. When he was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old he began considering improvements in nail-making machinery. At that time there had been invented and patented in the United States approximately 125 machines for turning out nails and tacks, and the factories using these were numerous in the larger cities of the East. Reynolds worked upon a machine for making wrought-iron nails and rivets and was granted a patent for his improvements on April 13, 1829.
England at that time was very much interested in the American nail-making machines, and in the hope of profiting by the sale of his patent to English interests, Reynolds employed an agent to introduce his invention there. Unfortunately, however, the agent obtained the patents in his own name and sold them. To make good this loss, Reynolds added improvements to his original machine, which he patented Mar. 18, 1835. Nine years later, he patented a spike-making machine and went directly to England, where he succeeded in interesting the firm of Coats & Company, bankers, in furnishing financial backing for the manufacture of his several machines. He was aided, too, in obtaining patents in England, Holland, Belgium, and France.
In the meantime, he turned his attention to pin-making machinery, and on December 31, 1845, obtained United States patent No. 4346 for the machinery for heading and pointing pins. He devised, also, a machine to stick the pins into paper, thus dispensing with manual labor for this work. Coats & Company were much interested in adding the manufacture of this to that of his nail and spike machines, but about the time that the necessary arrangements were made the company failed with large liabilities. As a consequence, Reynolds also failed.
Returning to the United States in 1850, in an effort to recoup his losses he began to devise improvements in horse-nail machinery, and on January 20, 1852, secured patent No. 8677 for a machine he had made. This was manufactured and sold in Providence by William Tollman.
In 1866 and 1867 he received patents for improvements thereon, and from these three inventions he derived a considerable income.
Reynolds died in Bristol, Rhode Island, and was survived by five children.
Achievements
Connections
He was twice married: first, in 1823, to Elizabeth Anthony of Pomfret, Connecticut, who died in 1834; and second, on November 18, 1845, to Catherine Ann Hamlin of Syracuse, New York.
