Mothers of Invention: Thank a Woman
Melitta Bentz
Melitta – does that name sound familiar? Today its namesake’s invention is a coffee machine necessity. If you enjoyed a steaming cup of home-brewed coffee this morning, sans coffee grounds, you have a woman to thank for that.
Amalie Auguste Melitta Liebscher, who later married Hugh Bentz, was born in Dresden, Germany in 1873. As a housewife, she began experimenting with ways to eliminate coffee grounds from her brewed coffee and also make it less bitter-tasting. A common practice at the time was to use a piece of cloth, or even items like socks to filter coffee, but neither method was particularly effective.
A story that circulates on the internet (true or not, I don’t know) is that Melitta was compelled to find a method to filter out coffee grounds because she had observed grounds stuck in her friends’ teeth while attending a coffee klatch. Whatever the impetus for the experimentation, she finally came up with the solution, a simple one actually. After experimenting with several methods, she tried a piece of blotting paper from her son’s school exercise book. It turned out to be a brilliant idea, for after all the purpose of this type of paper was to absorb liquids.
Her simple invention was patented on June 20, 1908 and by the end of that year she had a business, employing her husband and two sons to assist with production and management. In 1909 her new invention won an award at the Leipzig Trade Fair and two awards followed in 1910 at the International Health Exhibition and Saxon Innkeepers’ Association.
World War I brought stringent rationing of paper products, and coffee beans were hard to come by due to blockades designed to cutoff Germany from the rest of the world. With her husband conscripted to serve in the Romanian Army, Melitta supported herself by selling cartons.
Following the war, the company began to expand and by 1928 was employing eighty employees working double shifts. Her son Horst eventually took over the leadership of the company after Melitta transferred her majority stake to her sons Horst and Willi.
World War II brought another halt to commercial production when the company was ordered to assist in the war effort. Later, Allied troops used the facility for “provisional administration” for several years. In 1948 production resumed and by the time Melitta died in 1950 the company had made almost five million Deutsche Marks since its founding.
Melitta’s grandsons, Thomas and Stephen Bentz, now run the company, and today their product line includes premium coffees, basket filters and earth-friendly bamboo filters. A piece of blotting paper and a little female ingenuity was the beginning of an international multi-nillion dollar business.
March is Women’s History Month, so look for more articles about amazing women – “Mothers of Invention”, “Feisty Females” and more.
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Feisty Females: Jessie Daniel Ames
Today’s article closes out the month of February, also known as Black History Month, with a story about an anti-lynching activist Southern white woman, Jessie Daniel Ames. She was also the founder of the Texas League of Women Voters in 1919 and served as its first president, believing that it was the role of various women’s organizations to help solve the country’s racial problems.
Jessie Harriet Daniel was born on November 2, 1883 in Palestine, Texas to parents James and Laura Daniel. Her father was a railroad worker, and after the family moved to Georgetown in 1893 Jessie enrolled in the Ladies’ Annex at Southwestern University at the age of thirteen.
The Ladies’ Annex opened in 1889 and was a self-contained boarding and classroom facility, according to Southwestern University. Following the Civil War, the so-called separate-but-equal doctrine was applied not only to address racial equality but equal opportunities regardless of gender. Essentially, the university was required to provide separate living quarters for women who wanted to pursue an education.
The facilities included living quarters, an art studio, a chapel, a gym and meeting rooms for three sororities and two literary societies. The proximity of these buildings to the main campus was planned so that the distance for either male or female students would be fairly equal, thus allowing all students to access the school’s main facilities easily.
Jessie graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1902 and then relocated to Laredo with her family. In June of 1905 she married Roger Post Ames, an Army surgeon and associate of Walter Reed. Together they had a son and two daughters, yet spent much of their married life living apart. Ames worked in Central America fighting yellow fever, while Jessie remained in the States. According to Dan Utley of Austin, the couple experienced difficulties in their marriage and his family never accepted Jessie (read Utley’s interesting narrative here).
In 1914, Roger Ames died of blackwater fever in Guatemala. Jessie had visited him in August and thought that perhaps their relationship had improved. She was pregnant with their third child when he died four months later. Jesse, then thirty-one years old, had already lost her father three years earlier. To provide for her family she moved in with her mother and helped run their family business, a telephone company in Georgetown.
Her involvement with several Methodist women’s organizations was the impetus for her activism in the women’s suffrage movement. In 1916 she organized local suffrage associations across Texas and worked to ensure that Texas was the first state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1919. With the founding of the Texas League of Women Voters, she served as the organization’s first president and was a delegate to the Democratic Convention in 1920, 1924 and 1928.
Her activism extended to racial issues in 1929 when she became a director for the Commission on Interracial Cooperation. Although the organization’s name implied that the group was “interracial” it was in fact founded in large part by a group of liberal white Southerners. The group strongly opposed lynching, mob violence and the so-called Black Codes which were put in place following the Civil War to restrict the freedoms of emancipated slaves.
The Commission was based in Atlanta and Jesse relocated there in 1930 to assume the position of national director of the CIC Woman’s Committee. That same year she founded the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching. In the face of opposition and threats, forty thousand women across the South signed the Pledge Against Lynching:
We declare lynching is an indefensible crime, destructive of all principles of government, hateful and hostile to every ideal of religion and humanity, debasing and degrading to every person involved…[P]ublic opinion has accepted too easily the claim of lynchers and mobsters that they are acting solely in defense of womanhood. In light of the facts we dare no longer to permit this claim to pass unchallenged, nor allow those bent upon personal revenge and savagery to commit acts of violence and lawlessness in the name of women. We solemnly pledge ourselves to create a new public opinion in the South, which will not condone, for any reason whatever, acts of mobs or lynchers. We will teach our children at home, at school and at church a new interpretation of law and religion; we will assist all officials to uphold their oath of office; and finally, we will join with every minister, editor, school teacher and patriotic citizen in a program of education to eradicate lynchings and mobs forever from our land.
At that time in history, African American males were most often lynched for allegedly raping white women. More often that not, however, the allegations were false and innocent men lost their lives. Jesse strongly believed that white women need not fear, nor did they require special protection from, African American men. In her opinion, the motive for lynching was purely racial hatred.
She organized her members and trained them to go out in their own communities and talk with judges and law enforcement officials, urging them to sign the pledge as well. Interestingly, however, Jessie Ames opposed a federal anti-lynching law, believing perhaps that culture and society needed to change rather than a law requiring compliance. She also believed that an anti-lynching law would only result in more violence against blacks.
Indeed, Southern Senators had tried to filibuster the law and it went nowhere at the federal level. By 1937 the Association of Southern Women had eighty-one state, regional and national groups organized across the country. In 1942 the CIC was replaced by the Southern Regional Council, the Association dissolved, and Jessie retired to Tyron, North Carolina.
Despite threats of physical violence and intense Southern political opposition, the Association had seen progress. By 1940 there were no instances of African American lynchings, records of which had stretched back to the Civil War. In North Carolina, Jessie continued her activism by participating in Methodist Church activities, black voter registration drives and a women’s study group on world politics.
What fueled Jessie Daniel Ames’ resolve to fight as passionately for racial equality as she had women’s suffrage? Historian Jacqueline Dowd Hall called it a “psychological bridge” which she crossed to connect the two issues of social feminism and racial equality.
Perhaps it was due in part to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan; 1930 was also a year of heightened mob violence across the South. It’s easy to see that her activism in the areas of both women’s rights and racial equality eventually bore fruit. In the 1950’s the matter of school desegregation was brought to the judicial system, the Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and later the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.
In 1968, Jessie Daniel Ames returned to Texas for health reasons and lived there until her death on February 21,1972 in an Austin nursing home.
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Ghost Town Wednesday: Total Wreck, Arizona
In 1879 silver was discovered in the eastern Empire Mountains of Arizona and the claims were held by John T. Dillon. According to Ed Vail, author of The Story of a Mine, one of the mines and the little town that sprung up nearby got their name from remarks made by Dillon when he signed the recording papers with Vail’s brother Walter in 1881.
Walter asked him for a name and Dillon said, “Well, the mineral foundation is almost a total wreck,” alluding to the fact that it was located beneath a quartzite ledge that looked like a total wreck. The name stuck and on August 12, 1881 a post office was established.
The Los Angeles Times reported in 1882 that the appearance of the town, however, had nothing to do with its name: “The town of Total Wreck has no appearance of a wreck. It is a thrifty, neat-looking village, the streets laid out at right angles. The main street is named Dillon street in honor of the discoverer of the mine, and the first to discover minerals in this district.”
By that time, the town had two stores, two hotels, a restaurant, five saloons, a carpenter, blacksmith, butcher, brewery, several Chinese laundries and over thirty houses with about two hundred residents. The town was fairly well organized with a deputy sheriff who could muster a posse of ninety men within an hour of any sign of trouble from rowdies or Indians.
On September 7, 1882, the Tombstone Weekly Epitaph reported that the townspeople were overjoyed to have received telegraph connections with the outside world. The Epitaph predicted that Total Wreck was “destined to be one of the most prominent mining camps in the Territory.”
In late November of 1882 one of the local businessmen, E.B. Salsig, was a victim of an attempted assassination by a man named John Drummond. According to the Tombstone Epitaph, Drummond had a reputation and was well-known to the residents of Tombstone. The two men were quarreling over Drummond’s interference with the sale of one of the mines in the district. Mr. Salsig apparently expressed an opinion that Drummond didn’t care for.
Drummond visited the store of Salsig &Sifford and called Salsig out on the street to have a few words, “applying to him epithets which most men resist.” Salsig was insulted and hit Drummond, only to have a revolver drawn on him and then shot three times by Drummond. The first shot resulted in only a flesh wound, while the second went through a wallet and bundle of letters, causing the lead ball to drop in Salsig’s pocket; “but for this it might have produced a fatal wound.”
The legend has oft been repeated that the love letters in his pocket saved Salsig’s life and he later married the woman who had penned the letters. Drummond, however, was arrested and bound over for trial, the Epitaph remarking “it would be well if such characters as this Drummond could be summarily dealt with.”
In June of 1883, several Mexicans were cutting wood in the Whetstone Mountains and were attacked by a band of Geronimo’s Apache warriors. Six Mexicans had been killed and were the first to be buried in the Total Wreck Cemetery. Today there is little, if any, evidence a cemetery ever existed, however.
In 1888 another resident, a miner named James Burns, was buried there after collapsing while working near one of the mine areas. Total Wreck was isolated and too far from Tucson for a coroner to reach the town before decomposition set in. Of necessity, in those times when such services weren’t available, a jury of Total Wreck citizens was sworn in by a Notary Public to investigate the cause of death. The jury determined that Burns died of natural causes due to a sudden rush of blood to his head, as evidenced by the dark appearance of his head, neck and face.
As predicted by the Epitaph in 1882, the Total Wreck claims were quite productive – by 1884 mines in the area had produced around a half-million dollars in silver bullion. On September 13, 1884, the Arizona Weekly Citizen was boasting that “the Total Wreck and many lesser known properties are just beginning to show the silver edge of their boundless wealth, and their prospective output means unprecedented prosperity to our country,” Despite those claims, however, the mill built in 1881 by the Empire Mining and Developing Company was closed at the end of 1884. In those days, booms were always followed by precipitous busts.
Attempts were made to revive operations in 1886, but in the late 1880’s and early 1890’s, mining interests declined. The Tombstone Prospector and Epitaph reported in early January of 1891 that the Total Wreck post office had been closed. The Silver Crash of 1893 resulted in the closing of hundreds of mines all over the West, and subsequently the withering away of hundreds of once-prosperous mining towns. Total Wreck slowly dwindled away as well, and today all that remains are a few walls and numerous holes in the ground.
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Tombstone Tuesday: Elizabeth Mosby Woodson Allison (1824-1924)
I can’t remember how I happened to stumble across the story of Elizabeth Mosby Woodson Allison – perhaps the tragic way she died caught my eye in a 1924 newspaper headline. By all accounts, she lived a full and long life, yet one of the most interesting aspects of Elizabeth’s life was her impressive family heritage.
Elizabeth Mosby Woodson was born on December 30, 1824 in Franklin County, Virginia to parents Benjamin and Martha “Patsey” LeSueur Woodson. According to History of Monroe and Shelby Counties, Missouri, Benjamin “was a prominent teacher in the south-western part of Virginia.” Thus, his children received a good education. The family had connections to the well-known Virginia families of Woodson, LeSueur, Bacon and Randolph.
The LeSueurs were of French origin and traced their heritage back to Eustace LeSueur, a great French painter born in 1617 and referred to as the French Raphael. Other prominent LeSueur family members included Thomas LeSueur, a famous mathematician, and Peter LeSueur a wood engraver. The family’s immigrant ancestor in America, a French Huguenot named David LeSueur, came with Lafayette “to assist the colonies in their struggle for independence.”
The family’s most impressive heritage came through the Randolph family and connected Elizabeth, a first cousin twice removed, to the third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Elizabeth’s grandmother Nancy Anna “Nannie” Woodson (who apparently married her cousin John Stephens Woodson) was the first cousin of Jefferson through his mother’s Randolph line.
That connection alone was impressive enough for the life-long member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, but through the Randolph line Elizabeth was also a direct descendant of Pocohantas through her son Thomas Rolfe. If there was a “royal lineage” in America, this might come close to qualifying as such.
In 1840 Elizabeth and her family migrated to Monroe County, Missouri and were enumerated in Jackson for the 1840 census. In 1844 Benjamin purchased land to farm, but passed away in 1848 before Elizabeth married John Benjamin Allison on November 14, 1850. John was a farmer, and like his father-in-law Benjamin, a teacher.
To their marriage were born nine children: George Wilkerson, Benjamin Alexander, Dorothy Ann (“Dollie”), Arabella Jane, Martha Elizabeth, John Stephen, Emma Jemima (John and Emma were twins), William Mosby and Mary Edith – all living to adulthood with the exception of Martha who died in 1861.
In August of 1861, residents of Monroe County were alerted to the news that the “Federals were coming”. Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson had refused Abraham Lincoln’s request to send Missourians to fight for the Union, calling it an illegal action. In 1861 approximately one-fourth of the county’s population was slaves, so during the Civil War Monroe County was generally on the side of the Confederacy, although there were likely to have been Union sympathizers as well.
From the tone of Chronicles of the Civil War in Monroe County by B.C.M. Farthing, in general the county’s sympathies were more aligned with the South. Where the Allisons and Woodsons placed their loyalties is unclear, although one newspaper account in 1923 indicated that Elizabeth had “interesting experiences connecting her with the Civil War.”
According to accounts provided by family historians and in newspaper clippings, Elizabeth was a member of the Methodist Church who loved to sing hymns and recite poetry. After John passed away in 1904, she lived with her children at various times. In 1910 she was living with Mary and her family in Comanche County, Oklahoma; in 1920 Elizabeth was living with her daughter Arabella and her husband George Fischer in Dallas, Texas.
On the occasion of her ninety-eighth birthday, a Dallas newspaper reported that Elizabeth was at that time the oldest living descendant of Pocohantas. She was in good health:
Despite the worries and cares which she has undergone during her many years, Mrs. Allison is still active and reads without the aid of glasses. She also recites poems and sings songs which she learned in her schooldays.
After all Elizabeth had lived through during her lifetime, her life ended tragically, apparently the result of her habit of smoking a corn-cob pipe. On the evening of February 19, 1924 she accidentally set herself on fire while smoking in bed, and by the time her son-in-law George Fischer reached her most of the clothing on her body had been burned away. George suffered severe burns trying to rescue her.
She was taken back to Missouri to be buried next to John in Audrain County. At the time of her death she was the oldest living descendant of Pocohantas, a fact included in accounts of her death in newspapers across the country.
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Ghost Town Wednesday: Santa Fe, Kansas
The town of Santa Fe, Kansas was officially platted on July 31, 1886 at 4:00 p.m. and named for the Santa Fe Trail which was situated about five miles north of town. It wasn’t long before several business sprang up – two grocery stores, a restaurant and hotel, a bakery, laundry and two lumber yards.
The town was first located in Finney County, but about nine months later on March 5, 1887, Haskell County was formed and named for Congressman Dudley C. Haskell. In July of 1887, Santa Fe, located at the geographic center of the county was chosen as the temporary county seat. On November 7 it became the permanent county seat.
The only transportation service for passengers, goods and mail at that time was the Lee and Reynolds stagecoach line. The railroads had not yet reached the area, and, as was the case with most county seats in that day, they hoped that one would see fit to build a railroad through the town. Even without the immediate prospect of a railway system being built, the town continued to grow.
On January 2, 1888, Santa Fe was incorporated as a third-class city (more than 350 but less than 2,000). In less than two years the town had already added three banks, a school, two churches, a flour mill, five newspapers and more. The first newspaper was the Santa Fe Trail and the longest running newspaper was the Santa Fe Monitor (1888-1918).
At least two railroad companies expressed some interest in building their rail line through the town. The Kansas, Texas & Southwestern Railroad conducted a survey and the Dodge City, Montezuma & Trinidad Railroad submitted a proposal asking the town to subsidize the construction (with a guaranteed completion date within thirty days).
The town, excited at the prospect of having a railway system, raised over ten thousand dollars in just a few hours. Their efforts were for naught, however, as both railroad companies declined to commit to a railway running through Santa Fe.
According to Ghost Towns of Kansas by Daniel Fitzgerald, the late 1880’s were marked by drought and crop failures. The 1890’s were said to have been good years as the town continued to grow and community activities and events were regularly held. However, the late 1890’s brought drought conditions even more severe than a decade or so earlier – somewhere between forty to sixty percent of the county’s residences were forced to leave.
Some decided to remain after renewed prospects of the Santa Fe Railroad building there surfaced. Eventually, the Santa Fe Railroad decided to route its line through Sublette, a few miles south of Santa Fe. In the early 1900’s the town began a slow decline, although efforts still continued to attract a rail line to Santa Fe. A last ditch effort in early 1913 to woo the Wichita Falls Railroad failed, setting the stage for another county seat election.
On February 5 there were two options on the ballot – Santa Fe and Sublette, newly thriving after the Santa Fe Railroad had agreed to build there. Sublette, however, failed to garner the necessary three-fifths vote and Santa Fe retained the seat. On April 11, the district court agreed and ruled in favor of Santa Fe.
However, attorneys for Sublette vowed to take their case to the Kansas State Supreme Court immediately following the district court’s decision. On June 7, 1913, the state supreme court ruled, instead, in favor of Sublette, essentially nullifying the three-fifths vote requirement. To this day, Sublette remains the seat of government in Haskell County.
Over the next five years, Santa Fe residents continued to leave, some migrating to Sublette and others to Satanta. On July 25, 1918, the Santa Fe Monitor was closed as editor John Miller decided it was time to pack up and leave for Sublette. When the migration away from Santa Fe began, families and businesses moved, including physical buildings. On September 10, 1912, the Hutchinson News was reporting “Santa Fe Is Moving”:
One resident, Steve Cave, had already migrated to Sublette and by the end of December 1912 was counted among the enthusiastic “boosters” of Sublette:
The little tidbit at the end of this article is interesting – after Mr. Cave resigned as postmaster of Santa Fe, Mrs. C.M. Smith, a Socialist, was appointed. The article notes that she is “one of the few Socialists holding down a postoffice job in the country.”
According to Daniel Fitzgerald, and as of the printing of his book in 1988, no buildings remained and the former town site had been converted to farm land.
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Tombstone Tuesday: Cemeteries in Odd Places
In the early days of American history, it was common for families to set aside a small plot of land on their farm for the family cemetery. As time marched on, however, farm land gave way to more industrialization and large cities, or later what came to be called the “suburbs”. In some cases, no doubt, old cemeteries were moved elsewhere, but that wasn’t always the case.
This article was published in the October 2018 issue of Digging History Magazine. Preview the issue here or purchase here.
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Surname Saturday: Fulleylove
Today’s surname, in honor of a day of love, is of English origin and dates back to medieval times. The Fulleylove surname gradually evolved from the early use of nicknames. Sometimes nicknames were reflective of physical characteristics, peculiarities, even mental and moral attributes, habits of dress or occupation.
It’s possible the nickname referred to an amorous person, or even a person of religious fervor and devotion. The derivation came, most likely, from the Middle English phrase “full of love” which developed out the Old English word “luf”. According to the Internet Surname Database, the name may have been a direct translation of a pre-existing French name, Pleynamur (or Old French “pleyn d’amour”) which means “full of love”.
Records show a William Fuloflove on the 1332 Subsidy Rolls of Cumberland. Reginald (or Roger) Full-of-Love resigned his church position at Tottingham, Norfolk in 1433 and Ralph Full-of-Love was the rector in West Lynn in 1462. In 1649 the wedding of John Fullilove and Anne Reve was recorded in London.
It is believed that one of the first records of the name occurred in 1327 when Henry Ffuloflove was on the Subsidy Rolls of Cambridgeshire. Spelling variations of this surname include: Fullalove, Fullerlove, Fulleylove, Fullylove, and Fullilove. Whether or not a family crest was ever established is unclear, and the name appears to be somewhat uncommon.
Find-A-Grave lists several with this surname in New Jersey, a few in Arizona, Texas, Michigan and various other places, including England and Canada. Browsing through historical newspapers yielded several results referring to John Fulleylove, a Victorian artist from Leicester, England. After being trained as an architect he became an architectural and landscape artist whose work was known and appreciated around the world.
Two historical newspaper items containing references to the Fulleylove surname caught my eye. I find it especially fascinating to read eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century newspapers. The first item, an “almost obituary”, is from the March 30, 1850 edition of the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
The other was a column entitled “Biblio-File” in the April 14, 1968 edition of the Independent Press-Telegram (Long Beach, California):
To end on a note of love, the amorous tendency is to be found in over a hundred forms among English surnames, starting with the Old English Leofman, and including Truelove and Dearlove, Prett(i)love, Sweeting, Sweetman, Dear, Dearing, Dearman and Darling, Loveman, Luffman and even Lemon. Not to mention Fullalove, Fullilove, Fulleylove, Spendlove, Spendlow and Spindlow, all “in the sense of pouring it out extravagantly.”
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Far-Out Friday: The Great Airship Hoax
Orville and Wilbur Wright had made headlines six years earlier at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina with their “flying machine.” However, from mid December of 1909 to late January 1910, newspapers across the country perpetrated, and later renounced, a farcical tale which came to be called The Great Airship Hoax.
This article has been removed from the web site but will be updated, complete with footnotes and sources and featured in an upcoming issue of Digging History Magazine. History is full of all kinds of hoaxes, schemes and frauds and the upcoming issue will highlight many of them which occurred during the Victorian Era (“O, Victoria, You’ve Been Duped!”). If you’re a genealogist, there are genealogical fraud instances which merit caution. These were featured in an article entitled, “Don’t Be Duped: Genealogical Fraud”, and published in the February 2018 issue of Digging History Magazine. The issue also includes a list of surnames which might be “suspect”.
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Ghost Town Wednesday: Brilliant, New Mexico
Unfortunately, there is probably little left to see, if any, of this once-bustling coal mining town in northern New Mexico. You could perhaps view the location of the old town site if you shell out $450 per night to stay in media mogul Ted Turner’s hunting preserve. The sites that were once the towns of Gardiner, Brilliant, Blossburg and Swastika (see my article about Swastika here) are all part of the Vermejo Park Ranch. Most of the existing structures are said to have been bulldozed, although one might occasionally see an old coke oven here and there.
This article is no longer available for free at this site. It was re-written and enhanced with sources as part of an article entitled “Bullets, Barons, Boom and Bust: The Ghost Towns and Storied History of Colfax County”, published in the July-August 2020 issue of Digging History Magazine. Should you prefer to purchase the article only, contact me for more information.
I invite you to check out Digging History Magazine. Since January 2018 new articles are published in a digital magazine (PDF) available by individual issue purchase or subscription (with three options). Most issues run between 70-85 pages, filled with articles of interest to history-lovers and genealogists — it’s all history, right? ???? No ads — just carefully-researched, well-written stories, complete with footnotes and sources.
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Tombstone Tuesday: The Ellison Family of Sumter County, South Carolina
This family lived in Sumter County, South Carolina, and as the largest slaveholders in the state, were avid supporters of the Confederate cause. The patriarch of the family, William Holmes “April” Ellison, Jr. was a successful entrepreneur and readily offered the labor of his sixty-three slaves to the Confederate Army. Born into slavery, William had been freed on June 8, 1816 at the age of twenty-six by his master (and possibly his father) William Ellison.
It is believed that April Ellison was born in April of 1790, this due to the fact that often children born to slave parents were given the month of their birth as their name. Around the age of ten, April was apprenticed to William McCreight, and learned to build and repair cotton gins. He continued to work in McCreight’s shop until 1816 (even though his apprenticeship had ended after six years) and worked as a blacksmith, machinist and carpenter. During that time, April also learned how to read, write and do basic math and bookkeeping.
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