History of North Orange, (Franklin County) Massachusetts United States of America

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Abner Cheney Goodell, inventor, was born in North Orange, Mass., Feb. 9, 1805; son of Zina and Joanna (Cheney) Goodell; grandson of Joseph and Ann (Hopkins) Goodell, and of Ebenezer and Abigail (Thompson) Cheney; great-grandson of Joseph and Elizabeth (Goodell), great, great-grandson of Joseph and Mary, great, great, great-grandson of Zachariah and Elizabeth (Beauchamp), and great, great, great, great-grandson of Robert and Katherine (Kilnam) Goodell of Dennington, Suffolk, England, who sailed from Ipswich, England, April 30, 1634, and settled in Salem, Mass. Abner received a common school education and worked as a machinist in Boston and at Cambridgeport, where he began his inventions and perfected the art of preparing steel and copper plates for engravers. He continued this business for a while in Ipswich, Mass., and subsequently worked as a machinist in Byfield and Lowell. At Lowell he helped to construct the first locomotive used on the Boston & Lowell railroad, and to build the first turntable. Among his inventions was the first printing-press that printed on both sides of a sheet at once. This he completed under the patronage of Prof. Daniel Treadwell, Rumford professor at Harvard, 1834-45. He also perfected a lozenge-cutting machine identical in principle with the cracker machine which was copied from it and afterward came into general use. In 1837 the removed to Salem, where he helped to build the first electric locomotive engine, invented by Charles Grafton Page, which ran between the cities of Baltimore, Md., and Washington, D.C. Here also he invented machines for making kegs; for splitting and pointing shoe-pegs; for rolling tin tubes; for boring pump and aqueduct logs; for punching and cutting cold steel, and before 1840 he constructed and used a tricycle propelled by foot-power. He died in Salem, Mass., March 27, 1898.

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of North Orange, (Franklin County) Massachusetts

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