Commemorative Biographical Record of Fairfield County, Connecticut

the next term of court, and when it came to trial Mr. Emery was fined four pounds sterling, with the costs and fees, " for entertaining strangers." The evidence given was to the effect " yt two men, Quakers, wr entertained very kindly to bed and table and John Emmerie shok yni by ye hand and bid ym welcome." Also, " that the witness heard John Emery and his wife say 'that he had entertained Quakers and that he would not put them from his house,' and used argument for the lawfulness of it." In May, 1663, John Emery petitioned the General Court for the re- mission of his tine, the paper being signed by the selectmen ot his town and fifty of the citizens, but the request was denied. This sturdy pioneer was also active in the case of Lieut. Robert Pike, refusing to recognize the authority of the court to deprive him and his neighbors of the right of petition. He was married in England to Mary , who died in Newbury, April — , 1649, leaving one son, John, and two daughters. On October 29, 1650, he married, for his sec- ond wife, Mrs. Mary Webster, /iJc- Shotswell, widow of John Webster, of Ipswich; by her he had one son, Jonathan. John Emery died in Newbury, Nov. 3, 1683; his wife died April 28, 1694. II. Jonathan Emery, the next in the line of descent, was born at Newbury, Mass., May 13, 1652, and on December 3, 1675, he was "im- pressed " as a soldier in the British army for King Philip's war. On the 19th of the same month, at the famous battle of Narragansett, he was wounded in the shoulder. On November 29, 1676, he married Mary Woodman, daughter of Edward Woodman, and they had ten children, of whom John, the second child, was the ancestor of our subject. III. John Emery was born in 1678, and was married in February, 1705, to Hannah Morse, daughter of Joshua and Joanna Morse. They had nine children, of whom their son, Joshua, was the second. IV. Joshua Emery was born March 21, 1709, and was married March 28, 1728, to Sarah Smith, by whom he had six children, the eldest being a son. John. V. John Emery was born January 6, 1729, and died January 7, 1764. He was married at Haverhill, Mass., on January 24, 1751-52, to Abigail Webster, and they had four children, their third son being named Joshua. VI. Joshua Emery, our subject's grandfa- ther, was born at Haverhill, March 14, 1757, and at the beginning of the Revolutionary war en- gaged in the struggle for freedom, taking part in the battle of Bunker Hill. On January 21, 1781, COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. 27 he was married, in Walpole, N. H., to Ruth Nott, by whom he had eight children, and his death occurred January 6, 1832. VII. Samuel Emery, the sixth child of Joshua and Ruth (Nott) Emery, was born July 14, 1792, in New Hampshire, and took up his home at Mexico, Oswego Co., N. Y. , at an early day, there being only three houses in the place at that time. His remaining years were spent there, his death occurring January 24, 1866. He was first married, on January 2, 1820, to Cath- erine Shepard, who was born at Alstead, N. H., August 19, 1795, and died July 27, 1854. By this union he had nine children — six sons and three daughters — and by his second wife, Mrs. Margaret Sparrowhawk, whom he wedded in Oc- tober, 1856, he had one daughter. VIII. Albert H. Emery, the subject proper of these lines, was the second youngest of the nine children of Samuel and Catherine Emery, and was born June 21, 1834, at the old home in Mexico, N. Y. His boyhood was spent upon a farm, and after completing the course of study offered in the district schools near his home he attended the academy at Mexico for two terms, making a specialty of surveying. He practiced farm surveying near his home for two years, dur- ing which time he taught a district school in an adjoining town for four months. He was then employed for a year in railroad surveys, and in the fall of 1855 he entered the Rensselaer Poly% technic Institute, at Troy, N. Y., where he was graduated in June, 1858, with the degree of Civil Engineer, a part of his expenses during his course having been met by his work as a tutor in the school in topographical drawing. Since 1858 his time has been occupied with his inventions, and during this period he has taken out more than one hundred patents, mostly in the mechan- ical line, although a few are chemical processes. Some are for power presses, heavy' and light, and a large number are connected with scales, guages and testing machines. He designed and constructed the four-hundred-ton hydraulic test- ing machine now in use at the United State arsen- al at Watertown, Mass., which has been de- scribed as "one of the greatest pieces of engi- neering ever done." The fame of this machine has spread over the world, and at present there are eighteen others in this country, Canada and Europe, constructed under Mr. Emery's patents, five being in universities and two in institutes of technology. Our Government publishes each year a report of the work done on the Water- town machine, a volume of seven or eight hun- dred pages being usually required, as the appa- ratus is in operation almost every working day the year round. The volumes now (1898) num- ber nineteen, with two others in press. The work consists in testing materials for construc- tion, giving the tension or compression and the stress or load up to eight hundred thousand pounds. The specimens, which are chiefly metal, vary in length from one inch to thirty feet and in thickness from that of a hair to that of a bridge column. In 1892 the reports showed over fourteen thousand specimens then tested which weighed in the aggregate more than three hundred thousand pounds, and the constant work since that time has greatly increased the number. In 1 88 1, at the fair of the Massachusetts Char- itable Mechanical Association, which was attended by more than three hundred thousand people, nu- merous prizes were offered, including fifteen hun- dred diplomas, six hundred silver medals, fifty gold medals (the blank metal in the latter costing; $32.50 each), and one grand medal of honor, said to have cost $500.00, the only one ever awarded by the Society, and which was offered on this occasion for " the exhibit most conducive to human welfare." This valuable and signifi- cant prize was awarded to Mr. Emery for the testing machine mentioned above, by a special committee of seven appointed by and from the American Association of Arts and Sciences, and the same machine gained the gold medal awarded for "the best scientific apparatus." During the Civil war Mr. Emery was for six months employed as an assistant of General Rich- ard Delafield, then in charge of the fortifications of New York State, including those of New York harbor. On resigning from this position Mr. Emery spent two years and a half in experiment- ing upon ordnance, projectiles and fuses, and during that time he secured several patents in this country and Europe, which embodies some of the results of his investigations. In the course of these experiments he made and fired a great number and variety of projectiles of different sizes and construction. At present he has about thirty applications pending in the Patent Office at Washington pertaining to ordnance, fuses, cart- ridges, projectiles, and gun carriages, and he is now building for the government a twelve-inch disappearing gun carriage, which raises a fifty- two-ton gun fourteen feet, from loading to firing position. The charge for this gun is a thousand pound projectile and 486 pounds of brown per- forated powder, over one hundred thousand pounds of ammunition being required for the gun in testing this carriage. From the first appear- ance of the gun above the parapet the time oc- cupied in reaching position, firing and retreating out of sight is only from six to ten seconds. The 28 COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD. Government contract for this carriage and its foundations amounted to $120,000, with $20,000 additional for the testing, which is expected to cover seventy rounds of projectiles and over thir- ty thousand pounds of powder. On March 3, 1875, Mr. Emery was married, at Westmoreland. Oneida Co., N. Y. , to Mrs. Fannie B. Myers, who was born September 1, 1839. Their only son, Albert H., Jr., born Au- gust 25, 1876, was graduated from Cornell Uni- versity, June 16,1898, with the degree of Mechan- ical Engineer. While at the University he was a member of Sibley College, which had 450 students in 1898, and he was awarded the fifth Sibley prize for proficiency in mechanical arts. There were five prizes given, and he received one of the two which went to the graduating class. He will be engaged with his father in work in connection with guns and gun carriages for the government. Of the many secret societies con- nected with the University, the Sigma XI (Si) is the most popular and exclusive, and elects an- nually a very few of the graduating class and a few of the professors, only those of highest stand- ing, and Mr. Emery was honored by election to its membership, in May, 1898. His thesis, which covered 600 hours' work, in connection with the testing of the resistances of bicycle tires, chains and gears, was very highly commended by the Pope Manufacturing Company, of Hartford, Connecticut. By her first marriage Mrs. Emery had one daughter, Margaret King Myers, who was mar- ried December 31, 1896, to George A. Clyde, of Rome, N, Y., of the firm of Clyde & Coleman, manufacturers of electric wire. The family is prominent in social life, and is identified with the Presbyterian Church, at Stamford. Mr Emery is connected with variousscientific organi- zations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and his high attainments have brought him into fellowship with the leading scientists in all parts of the world.