Home of the Sewalot Site By Alex I Askaroff For antique and vintage sewing machines Sewing Machine Fault Finder Sewing Machine Tension Problems Isaac Merritt Singer Main Site Index Alex has spent a lifetime in the sewing industry and is considered one of the foremost experts of pioneering machines and their inventors. He has written extensively for trade magazines, radio, television, books and publications worldwide. Alex I Askaroff style="font-family:Garamond;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; " lang="en-gb"Isaac Singer A brief history of a giant By Alex Askaroff style="font-family: Garamond; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial" Isaac Merritt Singer 27th October 1811 - 23rd July 1875 Touched by Fire What a man! When I first started, as a child, to hear stories about Isaac Merritt Singer I was enthralled. He had lived the American dream. A true rags to riches story. They say a fewlang="en-gb" men are touched by fire in their lives, Isaac was one of these men. Other books will blind you with facts, figures and endless dates. Let me tell you about the man who became a household name and his invention that changed the world. lang="en-gb"Over a lifetime I have collected every snippet on the great man and put it all here. I hope that many others will follow in my footsteps and take his story further. Please forgive any mistakes. Isaac Merritt Singer was the youngest of eight children. His father, Adam, was possibly of German-Jewish origin as there was a Jewish family in his hometown of Frankfurt, Germany, known as the Rei- singers. The first Singer sewing machine Well folk's this is what it is all about, the first practical sewing machine in the world. The model A of 1851 made Isaac Singer one of the richest men on the planet. It had many novel ideas, a straight vertical moving needle going up-and-down. A wheel that feed the work through and a shuttle copied from Elias Howe. Boy that was going to lead to trouble... Isaac Singer’s father arrived in w:st="on" New York in 1769 at the age of 16. This German immigrant had arrived in w:st="on" America to find a dream. Little did he know that his youngest son would fulfil that dream! Who would believe that even today people sailing to w:st="on" America set eyes on one of Isaac’s wives! Yes, one of the first sights they see when nearing Ellis Island is the Statue of Liberty, is supposedly modelled on the most beautiful woman in 19th century Europe , Singer’s half-French wife and actress, Isobel. Gustav Eiffel, of Eiffel Tower fame, in Paris, built the structure in 1885. It enables Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty to stand proud, welcoming people from all over the worldlang="en-gb". Édouard René de Laboulaye had the idea of presenting a statue representing liberty as a gift to the United States of America. The sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, Laboulaye's old friend, turned his idea into reality. He knew Isobel or Isabella rather well and many say he had an affair with her. style="font-family:Garamond;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"Bartholdi originally asked his mother to sit for the statue to get the basic feminine outline but she could, or would, not stay still enough for long periods. Then he asked Jeanne-Emile Baheux de Puysiex a woman he met he while holidaying in America. She later became his wife. style="font-family:Garamond;mso-bidi-font-family: Arial"However it is still Isobel, the French actress, the most beautiful woman in Europe, that is rumoured finally sat for the statue. Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty, Isaac Singer’s wife Isobel! Even as an old man, Isaac Singer's charm and wealth attracted beautiful women and Isobel was his last conquest. As a young man, by all accounts, he had the devil in him. He was a renowned womanizer and father to at least 28 children by several wives and countless lovers. However, I am jumping ahead. He has many miles to go and many hardships to face before he makes his millions. Isaac Singer's father, Adam Singer, set up business as a wheelwright and barrel maker, or cooper, married and started a family. History tells us that lived until 1855. He was 102, an amazing fact for the hard frontier life of those days and very doubtful. However it may be true even without porridge and soya! Isaac Singer’s mother, Ruth, left the family home when Isaac was a child to become a Quaker. It is said that in later years Adam Singer at the age of 99 went to find Ruth, possibly to tell her of the fortune their youngest son was making. He tracked her down in w:st="on" Albany , NY , only to find that, at the age of 96, she had passed away shortly before his arrival! I am not sure about the reliability of these dates as they do seem extreme and mean that Ruth must have had Isaac Singer when she was in her 50s. I suppose it is possible, there was little birth control. Maybe Isaac’s birth was the last straw for Ruth? In the history books Isaac Singer seems to have been born in several locations in the w:st="on" New York area. One humorous solution was that Ruth had a slow birth in a fast wagon! However for our story we will go for the most likely town. Some say Isaac Singer was born in the small frontier town of w:st="on" Schaghticoke , NY, on the 27th October 1811, some say Pittstown. His dad Adam was already nearly 60! Although the family moved away it would be back in w:st="on" New York City , many years later, that Isaac Singer made an indelible mark on American history, leading to one of the first skyscrapers and one of the largest buildings in the world at that time. The actual signature of the great man himself Isaac Merritt Singer Adam Singer remarried but Isaac Singer never connected with his stepmother. Isaac Singer, now in Oswego must have had a hard childhood for, by the age of 12 and still a young boy, he slipped his running shoes on and ran as far away from home as he could. There is little detail of his early years. It must have been hard on the road at such a tender age. What would make a child run from home is anybody’s guess. He probably stayed with some of his older brothers who had left home earlier. There are tales that he worked part-time and paid for rudimentary schooling between jobs as a mechanic and carpenter. So how did the most famous name in the sewing world get into the sewing business? Isaac Singer was smart, cunning and ruthless. He had to be to survive on the streets of 19th century America. w:st="on" America was a bustling mass with immigrants flooding in and prosperity blooming. There were endless opportunities for those willing to grasp them. After a few years in the wilderness Isaac Singer reappears in history. He had learned the trades of mechanic and cabinetmaker in Waterloo, New York. Two trades that later would combine to his benefit and make him one of the richest men in the world. He was also a showman. He thought of himself as an accomplished actor landing himself the role of Richard III with a group of travelling actors when he was only 19. That same year Isaac married Catherine Haley. By the time Isaac was 23 he had a William and in 1837 a daughter was born Lillian C Singer. As a handsome young man, with an inventive mind, we find Isaac Singer at the age of 28 having invented a machine for drilling and excavating rock. He had no use for his invention and sold it for a year’s wages. He later invented a rock drilling machine so you can see his inventive mind at work. With his new wealth he quickly put it to use and followed his first love —acting. Isaac Singer formed a group of actors called the Merritt Players and off they went around America treading the boards. It was on one of his trip to Baltimore he spied a young beauty on the audience. Before long he had used all his charms on Mary Anne Sponsler. She took acting classes and soon joined Isaac on the road. Mary Anne would go on to have 10 children with Isaac although she was married to him for only the briefest time just before he left America. Two of the children unfortunately died in infancy which was not uncommon in that period. Of course it was not long before Isaac's money ran out and he was back to working for a living. His first attempt at the American dream had failed but he was not finished, not by a long way. Isaac Singer could charm the socks of anyone, as one hotel manager remembered. Isaac Singer, his wife and children arrived at the hotel penniless. Isaac Singer performed for the guests to pay for board. When Isaac Singer packed to leave the hotelier even gave him some money. He last saw the family heading out of town, into the wilderness on a buckboard. In Fredericksburg, PA, lang="en-gb"Isaac Singer's inventive mind was at work again, this time in inventing a wooden printer’s type.