1852 - Christopher Hodgkin's Patent Model of a Sewing Machine

Sewing Machine Patent Model

Patent No. 9,365, issued November 2, 1852

Christopher Hodgkins of Boston, Massachusetts

On his sewing machine patent model, Christopher Hodgkins made sure his model was well identified. On the base, “Hodgkins” was painted in bold gold letters, and a brass bed plate was stamped “Christopher Hodgkins.” In his patent specification, Hodgkins wrote “My machine sews with two needles working through the cloth in opposite directions, and the one being made to cross the path of the other. It performs a lock-stitch, the loops made by each thread being locked in the cloth by those of the other.”

Hogkins assigned his patents (Patent No. 9,365, issued November 2, 1852; Patent No. 10,622, issued March 7, 1854; and Patent No. 10,879, issued May 9, 1854) to Nehemiah Hunt of Boston. In 1853, N. Hunt & Co. manufactured sewing machines based on Hodgkins’s patents. A year later, Hunt took a partner, and the company became Hunt and Webster.

Ballou’s Pictorial, July 5, 1856, featured Hunt and Webster in an article. The illustration depicted Hunt and Webster sewing machines in an elegant exhibition and showroom in Boston. They noted that “ . . . the North American Shoe Company have over fifty of the latest improved machines now running . . . .”

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