The Inventive Life of Charles Hill Morgan: The Power of Improvement In Industry, Education and Civic Life. Allison Chisolm
an anniversary event for the Methodist Tract Society.
The next day would be the first of two required to get to Pittsburgh on the train, stopping overnight at a railway hotel in Altoona. It took another five hours to arrive in Pittsburgh, where he found a hotel, got a haircut, and toured ironworks and a coal mine. On his second full day there, he visited the Pearl Steam Mills and then the Pennsylvania Railroad Shop.
After meeting the foreman, George W. Grier, he secured a drafting job not in Pittsburgh, but back in Altoona. It was Saturday, and he could start the following Thursday. That gave him a chance to visit the Armory, attend several church services and look in many of the city’s shops.
He arrived in Altoona Wednesday April 11, found a rooming house and as he noted, “commenced drawing for the Pennsylvania Rail Road Company.” For the next month, he drew locomotive trucks, pumps, and details of an Eagle Locomotive pump for a Wilworth engine.
The change of scenery did not help his health, however. Within a day of arriving in Pennsylvania, he complained he “was quite unwell.” After settling into Altoona, his indigestion returned. “My food soured on my stomach and distressed me,” he wrote on April 16. And the changeable weather, where he noted on April 18 the “thermometer stood at 2 p.m. at 90 and snow in sight...” led to a “severe cold which settled in my head and throat;” yet, he added, “worked all day for Pa. RR.” The next day, he worked again, but fell ill, as he described, “took physic, went to bed with a raging headache.”
Stomach issues continued to plague him for the duration of his time in Altoona. He found solace in walking and hiking. “Rambled all day with Mr. Howe,” he wrote on May 9, “went to the Kettle and on top of a high peak. Went without my Dinner and got very tired and felt better for it.”
Given his illnesses, he probably needed a few extra days to complete his assigned work, but after putting in a final five hours with the Pennsylvania Railroad Company on May 14, he began his lengthy journey back to Clinton. With checks in hand totaling $50 (almost $1,200 in today’s dollars), he travelled for the lowest possible cost, but not the most direct route. That first afternoon, he took a train to Harrisburg, using a pass from a colleague.
The next morning, after shipping his trunk ahead to New York City from Harrisburg, he proceeded to walk to Lebanon—a marathon trip of at least 28 miles, about four times as far as any Shrewsbury-to-Worcester walk. With some understatement, he wrote after arriving in Lebanon, “got very tired, went to bed or between two featherbeds very early.”
He opted to spend 44 cents on the next leg of his trip of about the same mileage, to get to Reading by coach, where he found a man willing to share a 75-mile journey northeast to Stroudsburg for a dollar, tolls and horse feed. Morgan and E.A. Brady of Carlisle travelled about eight miles to reach Maiden Creek for dinner. They continued to Trexler, another 17 miles, before stopping for the night. Schoenersville was the next day’s destination, close to 30 miles, and then Wind Gap the day after, where he paid four cents to water the horse after covering some 16 miles.
On the fourth day, they reached Stroudsburg by 11 a.m., which left Morgan plenty of time to locate lodging and a church service, as the next day was Sunday. Monday found him in two separate coaches, first to Easton and then connecting to New York City, where he picked up his trunk and stayed a final two nights before heading back to New England on a steamer to Providence. Altogether, he had spent $21.95 over eight days to get home, nearly half his $2-a-day earnings.
Having been away for close to two months, Charles understandably bought a few niceties for his family. Once he arrived safely in Clinton, he gave Hatty a new bonnet, a pineapple, and dinner in Worcester, hiring a team of horses for the occasion. Hatty’s younger sister, Marietta, received a gold ring. He bought steak, as well as seven pounds of rice and four pounds of wheat meal for the family.
New England has a very short planting season. Charles’ return in late May was just in time to help at the Plympton farm. For the next three weeks, he planted squash, “citrons,” beets, rutabagas and peas, picked stone, and hoed weeds with his in-laws. Sometimes there was an early harvest. When a dog chased a woodchuck on the property, he wrote, “helped the dog get a woodchuck out of the wall, dressed him and carried part to Clinton.” Two days later, he had claimed the dog’s prize and reported, “had a woodchuck stew for dinner.”
WORKING WITH LOCAL INNOVATORS
After the town’s Independence Day celebration, where he must have discussed his recent experiences out west and his availability for employment with several of Clinton’s machinists, the enterprising young man began several short-term jobs. As his diary notes the number of hours worked at each project, his hourly wage was likely about 25 cents an hour.
The first job was for the Lancaster Quilt Company, often called the Counterpane Mill. On July 7, he spent three hours “drawing a heart cam” for them, and earned 75 cents. Then his former employer, J.B. Parker, found more than 40 hours’ worth of work for him in July and early August. He asked Morgan to work on a horseshoe machine, drafting and possibly machining a hanger and drop shaft, and for six hours one day, “shoe sole prep.”
Parker was now the proprietor of Parker & Palmer, a partnership formed in 1852 with Gilman M. Palmer’s forging company, after the Clinton Company decided to make the machine shop independent of its business. As the Clinton Almanac described it in its 1856 edition, “this shop is situated near the railroad depot, and produces some $35,000 worth of machinery per annum, and employs about 30 men. This, as well as the Foundry, have Steam for their motive power.”
Morgan also found work that summer with E.W. Goodale, who had travelled with him to New York back in March and had previously supervised him in the Clinton Company machine shop. Goodale was developing a machine to manufacture paper bags, a novel concept in 1855 but one of several in development. Charles made drawings of a number of parts of the machine, including wing folders. The design process for new machinery, as he learned, can be one of trial and error. In late July, he confessed in his diary, “found that I had made a mistake in figures of my drawing of wing folders—cost of making the pattern___.” The cost of his mistake was never recorded. Goodale paid him $11.50 for 44 hours of his drafting services, or about 26 cents an hour.
Morgan’s digestive upsets continued on and off through the summer, and on August 2, he travelled to Worcester to consult Dr. Sargent. Like Dr. Rogers had said earlier in the year, Dr. Sargent recommended that Morgan leave Clinton. He did not suggest travel west, but rather east for some sea air, prescribing mackerel fishing.
THE CALL OF THE SEA
Once again, Morgan borrowed $15 from his father, and began a new journey. This time, he went to Boston on August 14, sailed to Provincetown, and did go fishing “with a party of Ladies & Gents” as his doctor recommended.
But to derive the greatest medicinal benefits, how could he fund an extended period of fishing at sea? Within a week, he found his answer. He “engaged to go as cook for Capt. Ellis Holmes” on the schooner Juniata, a fishing excursion headed for Canada’s Prince Edward Island. Cooking wasn’t as much of a stretch for Charles’ skills, as he had spent much of the time between work projects at home helping his wife and baking.
The same day Charles signed on with Captain Holmes, he took on a true sailor’s job: cleaning out the ship’s forecastle, the upper deck of the ship where sailors lived. They set sail (after Morgan “got breakfast for part of the crew”) on August 24 and lost sight of Provincetown the next day.
The health benefits were slow in coming. Seas were rough that first full day on the Atlantic and not surprisingly, Morgan was “sea sick all day.” Two days later, however, he had his sea legs and felt he was “getting along nicely with my cooking.” They reached the Nova Scotia shore on the sixth day and anchored in several harbors over the next week.
“Caught my first fish,” he noted a week after they set sail. On shore, he “picked a peck of cranberries, besides blueberries and gooseberries.”
They reached Prince Edward Island