Figure 34. — Grover and Baker's patent model, 1851. (Smithsonian photo 32003-G.) 



company was not manufactured until 1858 (figs. 

 32 and 33). Comparatively few of these machines 

 were made as they proved to be too small and 

 light. The men in the shop dubbed the machine 

 ''The Grasshopper," but it was officially called the 

 new Family Sewing Machine or the Family Machine. 131 

 Because of its shape, Singer company brochures of 

 the 1920s referred to it as the Turtleback Machine. 

 Since the cost of sewing machines was quite high 

 and the average family income was low, Clark sug- 

 gested the adoption of the hire-purchase plan. Into 



61 This first, family sewing machine should not be confused in 

 name with a model brought out in the sixties. The name of 

 this first, family machine was in the sense of a new "family" 

 sewing machine. In 1859 a "Letter A" family machine was 

 introduced. Thus in 1865 when the Singer Company brought 

 out another family machine they called it the "New" Family 

 Sewing Machine. Both the first-style Family machine and 

 the Letter A machine are illustrated in Eighty Tears of Progress 

 of the United Slates (New York, 1861), vol. 2, p. 417, and dis- 

 cussed in an article, "The Place and Its Tenants," in the 

 Sewing Machine Times (Dec. 25. 1908), vol. 27, no. 893. 



the American economy thus came the now-familiar 

 installment buying. 



Singer and Clark continued to be partners until 

 1863 when a corporation was formed. At this time 

 Singer decided to withdraw from active work. He 

 received 40 percent of the stock and retired to Paris 

 and later to England, where he died in 1875. 



By the mid- 1850s the basic elements of a successful, 

 practical sewing machine were at hand, but the con- 

 tinuing court litigation over rival patent rights seemed 

 destined to ruin the economics of the new industry. 

 It was then that the lawyer of the Grover and Baker 

 company, another sewing-machine manufacturer of 

 the early 1850s, supplied the solution. Grover and 

 Baker were manufacturing a machine that was 

 mechanically good, for this early period. William 

 O. Grover was another Boston tailor, who, unlike 

 many others, was convinced that the sewing machine 

 was going to revolutionize his chosen trade. Although 

 the sewing machines that he had seen were not very 

 practical, he began in 1849 to experiment with an 

 idea based on a new kind of stitch. His design was 

 for a machine that would take both its threads from 



35 



