Generations of augermakers in Kingston, Massachusetts

Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Sep 2000 by Welcker, Peter, Welcker, Merrill L, Welcker, Anne P

John Washburn, the "inventor" of the screw auger was born in 1764 and died in 1801. His father-inlaw, William Drew, a shipbuilder, had seen an iilustration of a screw auger in "an English magazine" shortly after the Revolutionary War and suggested that John make one like it.1 This magazine illustration sounds like Phineas Cook's design published by William Bailey in London in 177. William Drew knew a good idea when he saw it. The wooden ships he built on the Jones River in southeastern Massachusetts needed thousands of bored holes to take the wooden pegs that held them together. And the screw auger would be a big improvement over the pod augers then used. A pod auger requires a starting hole which usually is made with a gouge or chisel; the screw auger doesn't. The screw augers threaded tip allows the hole to be accurately placed without a starting hole, and the screw tip draws the auger into the wood. The pod auger, on the other hand, depends on a continuous push to keep it cutting. And the screw stem of a screw auger removes the cut-away chips. The superiority of the screw auger resulted in its rapid replacement of the pod auger in the toolboxes of the shipbuilders and timber framers of America.

We suspect that the screw auger was "invented"-- in the sense that American metalworkers founded a process for manufacturing Phineas Cook's design-in many towns and cities across the new republic.

Before his untimely death in 1801, John Washburn may have taught his method of making screw augers to several Kingston metalworkers. Seth Drew II and Seth Washburn, Jr. were the same age as John Washburn. Thomas Cushman was 20 in 1801, while Daniel Bisbee was 26. Cushman and Bisbee are known augermakers; Seth Drew II and Seth Washburn may have been. Augermaking was a specialty Not everyone in a workshop could or would make augers, even if co-workers did. The craft seemed to pass on in a definite succession. The Dictionary ofAmerican Toolmakers (DAT) Lists no augermakers under Washburn.

Daniel Bisbee made augers in Trout (also called Furnace) Brook from 1810 until 1844. The Trout/Furnace Brook area was the site of one of the earliest ironworking ventures in Kingston. John Faunce ( 16671751 ) bought land in this area from Gershom Bradford in 1722 and ironworking took place in this area in 175. Wording in a 1747 deed suggests that ironworking may have actually begun before 1714. A small millpond on Faunce's property powered a bellows for the furnace that the brook is named for. Here iron master Jeremy Florio ( 1665-1755) introduced the art of casting vessels in sand. So apparently this was a true blast furnace and not merely a bloomery This was quite an industrial center in the 1700s, but time passed and silt settled. Around 1840 one of the Faunce family filled in the millpond to make a meadow.2

Daniel Bisbee dammed Trout/Furnace Brook in 1810 to make a millpond for his auger factory In 1844 he sold out to Thomas Russell. Russell made two new millponds now called Sylvia Pond and Russell Pond. Bisbee's millpond, formerly called Iron Works Pond, is now called Bryant Pond after Sylvanus Bryant, who ran a saw and boxboard mill on this site from 1870 until it was abandoned in 1900.

Daniel Bisbee was born in 1775. He married three times; the last marriage was in 1847 when he was 72. Augers with his mark are known and he is recorded in the DAT.

His son, Daniel Bisbee, Jr. (born 22 September 1806), bought a mill on Second Brook where he made tacks and brads in partnership with Henry Soule. Thomas Russell bought him out in 1833.

With the exception of Daniel Bisbee, all the other Kingston augermakers worked at Stony Brook, at least temporarily. This "privilege" started with a sawmill, which is mentioned in a 1730 deed, making it one of the oldest privileges in Kingston. In 1746 a gristmill was established on the site, which survived in use until 1866, when it was moved and continued to grind for many more years. In 1805, Seth Washburn, Jr. and Seth Drew II bought the grist mill, privilege, and a blacksmith shop which had been built close by They took Thomas Cushman into partnership and started Stony Brook Ironworks.

Washburn and Drew may or may not have made augers. Thomas Cushman certainly did. In 1815 he sold his share in the Stony Brook Iron Works to Nahum Bailey and moved to Smelt Brook. There he built a dam and shop where he made augers and did ironwork with his son, Asa, for 31 years. He sold the Smelt Brook shop in 1846 to Old Colony Foundry (Asaph and Stephen Holmes) who made stoves and "hollow ware." In 1855 the foundry passed into the hands of Benjamin Cobb and William R. Drew They changed from making stoves and hollow ware to producing rivets and tacks. The company was still in business in 196.

Thomas Cushman was born 15 May 1781 and he died 22 Dec 1858 at the age of 72. On 11 April 1805 he married Sylvia Drew, Major Seth Drew's daughter. So Seth Drew II and Thomas Cushman who worked together at the Stony Brook Ironworks were brothers-in-law.