402 THE FRENCH BLOOD IN AlVIERICA 



A Huguenot 

 Inventor 

 Thomas 

 Blanchard 



Inventor of 

 the Eccentric 



diers of French blood who rendered such signal serv'ice 

 to America, none of them all deserve to rank higher in 

 the scale of usefulness and benefaction than Thomas 

 Blanchard. His ancestors were among the exiles, known 

 as Gabriel Bernon's colony, who undertook to found Ox- 

 ford, in what is now Worcester County. This county is 

 distinguished, as the late Senator Hoar wrote, as the 

 very home and centime of invention. " I do not think any 

 other place in the world, of the same size, can boast of so 

 many great inventions as the region covered by a circle 

 within a radius of twelve miles, of which the centre is the 

 city of Worcester." To name but three of many, in that 

 circle were born Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin 

 that doubled the value of every acre of cotton producing 

 land at once, and revolutionized one of the leading indus- 

 tries of the world ; Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing 

 machine, one of the greatest boons ever known to woman, 

 which made a new household economy possible ; and 

 Thomas Blanchard, subject of this sketch, inventor of 

 the machine for the turnihg of irregular forms. Sena- 

 tor Hoar regarded this as the most important and difficult 

 of all the inventions named, notwithstanding the vast 

 value of the other two. 



The story of Thomas Blanchard, Huguenot descendant, 

 has recently been told by Hon. Alfred S. Roe, author of 

 many historical monographs. We make free use of it in 

 this connection, glad that a man of such inventive ability 

 as Thomas Blanchard can find the wider recognition he 

 deserves. He should have place among the first in- 

 ventors because he is credited with the discovery of a new 

 principle in motion, that of the eccentric. There is 

 scarcely a machine shop in the world to-day that does 

 not in some shape have instances of this French -Ameri- 

 can's genius. 



After the disastrous 'ending of the colonizing attempt 

 at Oxford, a branch of the Blanchard family settled 

 finally in Sutton, where on a farm Thomas was born, 



