Stephen McCormick was an American inventor and manufacturer.
Background
Stephen McCormick was born on August 26, 1784 at Auburn, in Fauquier County, Virginia. He was the son of John and Elizabeth (Morgan) McCormick and a kinsman of Robert McCormick. His paternal ancestors emigrated from Ulster, Ireland, to Pennsylvania and thence moved to Virginia.
Education
McCormick did not take kindly to his father's suggestion that he study law but sought a more congenial occupation in inventive activities.
Career
One of his first enterprises was to improve the shape of the nether millstone on a water-power gristmill, thereby increasing its productivity. He next became interested in the development of a practical iron plow and by 1816 had invented, manufactured, and put into use a cast-iron plow, superior to that invented earlier by Charles Newbold. He took out his first patent February 3, 1819, and followed it with subsequent patents on January 28, 1826, and December 1, 1837. His plow, made of detachable parts, consisted of an especially designed cast-iron mould board to the bottom of which was fastened an adjustable wrought-iron point. In practice, this implement decreased the draft, deepened the furrow, and pulverized the soil more thoroughly. The introduction of the principles of replacement and standardization of parts made the iron plow a practical invention and also aided in the development of manufacturing processes. When Lafayette visited the United States in 1824, McCormick presented him with one of his plows. Lafayette lent it to the Royal Central Agricultural Society of France which on May 17, 1826, highly commended its principles. At first McCormick manufactured his plows in small numbers on the farm at Auburn and marketed them in the vicinity. Coincident with the grant of his second patent in 1826, he began an active campaign to introduce his plow into Virginia and other Southern states. Still maintaining the factory at Auburn, he established factories at Leesburg and Alexandria, Va.
The product from these factories was sold directly to consumers or through the agency of the firm of McCormick & Minor in Richmond. Supplementing his personal activities, McCormick arranged for the construction of his plows with several Virginia iron furnaces on a license fee basis. Other iron furnaces of the state began to pirate his invention as early as 1827, manufacturing and selling his plow on an extensive scale in violation of his patent rights. He also had to contend with a claim of infringement of his patent by another inventor, Gideon Davis, who sued him but eventually compromised the case out of court. McCormick's plows were manufactured chiefly between 1826 and 1850, when they were widely used in Virginia and to a less degree in other Southern states. The production figures available show that five thousand and forty were made and sold at the furnaces of William Weaver and Jordan & Irvine between 1827 and 1839, and that as many or more were made by a dozen other Virginia iron furnaces in the same period. McCormick wrote in 1830 that Benjamin Blackford, a Virginia iron manufacturer, was paying him annually between $1, 200 and $2, 000 in license fees, the royalty on each plow usually being seventy-five cents or less. McCormick's most widely known contemporary was Jethro Wood of New York, who took out a patent for his castiron plow some seven months later than McCormick's patent of the same year, and subsequently built and sold his plows in the Northern states. With Wood, McCormick shares the honor of the introduction of the cast-iron plow into the United States. Retiring from business in his later years, he died at the age of ninety-one and was buried on his old farm at Auburn.
Achievements
Personality
In character he was said to have been honest, candid, and fearless.
Connections
McCormick married Sarah Barnett of Fauquier County in February 1807. She died in 1814, leaving three children, and on February 29, 1816, he married Elizabeth M. Benson of Stafford County, Va. , by whom he had nine children.