Background
Thaddeus Fairbanks was born January 17, 1796, on his father’s farm in Brimfield, Massachusetts, the son of Joseph Fairbanks and Phebe Paddock, and brother of Erastus Fairbanks.
(Excerpt from The Fairbanks Family: Fayrebancke, Ffaierban...)
Excerpt from The Fairbanks Family: Fayrebancke, Ffaierbanke, Fairebancke, Ffayerbanke, Fearbanke, Ffarbaink, Ffarebanke, Fairbank The order of the present arrangement is primarily by generations; then those of each generation are arranged by families, placing first the families of older sons. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Thaddeus Fairbanks was born January 17, 1796, on his father’s farm in Brimfield, Massachusetts, the son of Joseph Fairbanks and Phebe Paddock, and brother of Erastus Fairbanks.
Most of his early education was obtained at home under the tutelage of his mother. As Thaddeus grew older and when crops were good, he had the opportunity of augmenting this home study with attendance in the established public schools.
It would seem that at an early age he gave evidence of having inherited the characteristic Fairbanks aptitude for mechanics, which he applied in various ways as a youth.
When his father moved to Vermont in 1815 and undertook mill construction, Thaddeus assisted him. As a side line they also undertook wagon construction.
In 1823, in partnership with his brother Erastus, Thaddeus established a small iron-foundry in St. Jolins- bury, Vermont, operating it under the name of E. & T. Fairbanks. For the succeeding seven years a variety of small foundry jobs were undertaken, with Thaddeus showing particular interest in the improvement of commodities adapted to manufacture in the foundry. Thus on April 19, 1826, he secured a United States patent for a plow equipped with a cast-iron mold board which, as soon as it was produced by the brothers, met with wide demand.
Shortly thereafter he devised a parlor stove as well as a cook stove, both of which were made in the foundry. Besides his inventive work and that of operating the foundry, Thaddeus was employed as manager in one of the hemp mills in St. Johnsbury, and for this enterprise he patented in 1830 a flax and hemp dressing machine. About this time, too, the existing crude method of weighing the hemp purchased from the growers, by suspending the cart and load from one end of a huge wooden steelyard, attracted Fairbanks’s attention.
For some time he had had in mind the adaptation of a platform upon which a cart with its load of hemp could be rolled and weighed. Accordingly he developed the idea and early in 1831 applied for a patent for a platform scale which was granted on June 13, 1831. This was the first scale of this sort, which has since come into worldwide use and has been adapted in hundreds of forms.
Thereafter the main business of the company was the manufacture of scales. Fairbanks continued to make improvements on the existing equipment and also to devise new applications of his basic patent, extending all the way from small apothecary to railroad scales. He also continued his early interest in improvements in heating apparatus and among his later inventions in this field were a draft mechanism for furnaces in 1843, a hot-water heater in 1881, and finally, a feed-water heater. Thaddeus Fairbanks died on April 12, 1886, in Saint Johnsbury, Vermont.
(Excerpt from The Fairbanks Family: Fayrebancke, Ffaierban...)
Also, with his brothers Erastus and Joseph, Thaddeus Fairbanks established St. Johnsbury Academy in 1842, and for twenty years thereafter was its sole support, at his death bequeathing to it a large endowment fund.
On January 17, 1820, Thaddeus Fairbanks married Lucy Peck Barker, a native of St. Johnsbury, and of this union two children were born.