Akron Beacon Journal
April 6, 1936
He's Jack of All Trades, Is this Tester of Meters
Miner, Preacher, Inventor, Reporter, That's Samuel Evans
Life for Samuel Evans is one grand adventure, (missing a paragraph)
Wasn't it but yesterday, figuratively speaking, that he was a newspaper reporter in the bonny town of Staffordshire, England, where they wrote all copy in a flowing Spencerian hand in a day when typewriters were unknown.
Wasn't it but yesterday that he was discovering a means of welding aluminum and proudly, getting his patents for the process in London, the first man, in the world, he claims, to have invented this method?
And, come to think of it, there were the years he spent as a Methodist minister. First in England and then in a little parish in Michigan.
Worked In Mines
Not to mention his boyhood in the mines of the english coal towns, in a day when child labor laws were unknown. "Oh, it's a fair life with its share of sunshine and shadow." Samuel Evans has a wooden leg, "but that's nothing to bother about, "he says cheerfully. He also is minus two fingers whicfh he lost in the Buckeye aluminum factory in Doylestown, but that fact doesn't seem to worry him, either. "It's been a long life and lots o' changes," He says. "Starting when I was 7 years of age and went to work in an English silk factory."
Became Expert
"Then I can remember, when I was 10 years old, my mother leading me across a bridge to the mines. I started work at 10 o'clock at night and worked all night long. I was assigned to driving a horse in the mine. It was a vicious horse and this scar on my cheek is a reminder of where it kicked me." But shomehow throughout the years of his checkerboard life, Evans kept sutdying and studying. As a result he rose steadily until he was an exper on aluminum welding, an authority on mining and geology, an expert shorthand student, a minister. After coming to America he worked at the Aluminum Corp. of America, later at the Goodyear, the Buckeye aluminum and the boxboard factory. Evans is 77, living with his wife in Barberton. He has three grown sons.
Samuel Evans who is 91 is the oldedst Doylestown resident. He was born in England. (missing a section)
born February 28, 1858. His reason for coming to America was rather unusual. He was the first man to develop a process for welding aluminum, and the Aluminum Co. of America sent for him to come to New Kensington, PA., to demonstrate. This was in 1901.
He returned to England and in 1903 came back again, this time at the request of the Buckeye Aluminum Co. of Quincy, Mass., which then moved to Doylestown and later to Wooster. As far as he knows, the welding process has never been patented. A year later he bought his wife, the former Sarah Alice Morris, and his family to Doylestown from England. Five of his six children are living. They are Mrs. Clarence Ross (Molly) with whom he makes his home, Walter who is Doylestown's marshal, Mrs. Ethel Kirk of Arkron, Fred of Saginaw, Mich., and Harry of Wooster, Mrs. Evans has been dead for two years. There are 16 grandchildren and 15 great grandchildren.
Mr. Evans has been a member of the Masonic Lodge for 45 years and has retained his membership in the Methodist church. In his younger years he was very active in church affairs and loved to sing. He has always been ardently opposed to "saloons" and liquor traffic."
Put to work in a coal mine at the age of eight, he received little formal schooling. But through his own efforts he is well educated. His library contains nothing but technical books of various kinds, and even when his children were grown up and he was between 50 and 60 years of age, he attended night classes.
When he was 21 he was paymaster in a coal mine in England, and was injured in a cave in, losing a leg. At that time artificial limbs were unsatisfactory because they were stiff. So he carved his own wooden leg and foot, includinga a spring arrangement at the ankle so he could bend it. He has never worn any other kind.
Always an ambitious man, Mr. Evans believes he will live another ten years. His friends would like to see him achieve his ambition.
Monday, May 5, 1952
Man Who Was First To Weld Aluminum Tells Of Process He Invented, Brought To U.S.
By E.H. Hauenstein
DOYLESTOWN - Samuel Evans, 94, who came to Doylestown when the Buckeye Aluminum Co. began manufacturing operations here in 1903, was referred to in a recent Buckeye anniversary article as the man who had brought the process of welding aluminum to America from England.
“I not only brought it to this country, I invented it,” he said at the North Portage St. home which has been the family residence for practically half a century, and where he lives with his daughter, Mrs. Clarence Ross.
Mr. Evans, before he worked as a mechanic in the aluminum field, operated a small jewelry and watch repair shop in the town of Milton, in Staffordshire, England.
An Ohio man, Charles M. Hall, had perfected a process of refining aluminum by the use of electricity, and had it patented. He went to Andrew Mellon with it at Pittsburgh, and not long afterward the process was used in a plant in Cuyahoga Falls. Hall, it seems was not content with his status, made arrangements for the use of his process with the British Aluminum C. Court litigation followed over patent rights, and the American company was the victor.
The manager of the British Aluminum Co. plant in Milton went to Evans and asked him to join the company to do some experimental work which required the mechanical skill he had gained as a watchmaker.
Another British company at that time was making a test of the use of aluminum for manufacturing trolley wire.
“Before that,” Evans recalls, “the only known way to put two pieces of aluminum together was by soldering with the use of pure tin. It adhered, but would not stay together very long. Some chemical reaction causing the joint to come loose. “
“One day I was working with two pieces of aluminum wire, and decided to try welding. With a blowtorch, I heated the two ends, and pushed them together. When the piece had cooled, I removed the surplus, and it looked just like one wire.
“I took it to the manager and asked him to examine it. He didn’t notice the weld, and asked me what I wanted him to observe. I told him that the wire he was looking at had been two pieces, which I had put together. He saw the significance of what I had accomplished, and telegraphed to London. Next day four directors of the British Aluminum Co. came to Milton to see me do it. To prove that I had actually joined the ends of aluminum wire, I used only one piece and welded the two ends, making it into a circular piece. Several samples of this were made by me and placed in the hands of the company officials.”
I was sent to Leeds to weld sections of the trolley wire the other company had made, and to London to weld telegraph wires of aluminum which were used in another experiment.”
“I determined that I should protect my process by patent, and communicated with the patent and department. The London Gazette reported my action on Friday, and on Saturday I was discharged.”
“In 1901 I came to America, arriving on my 41st birthday anniversary, February 28th. I went to New Kensington, where the Pittsburgh Aluminum Co. had moved a plant from the Boston area, and where I did the first aluminum welding ever done in America.
“I was promised a job, a salary and royalty, and the firm agreed to patent my process for me. I guess I was too gullible. At the request of a superior, I taught another man how to weld.
“Soon after that my services were terminated and the promises made to me were not kept. I returned to England, but came back to America exactly two years from my first landing here, on February 28, 1903. With Charles Garretson I went to Quincy, Mass., where I met Leon Ward, and learned the company he was with had been purchased by Doylestown people, and was making final plans to move to Doylestown.”
“He offered me a job at $10 a week until the move took place, and $18 a week at Doylestown. He actually paid me $12 a week from the start, which was what I earned to support my wife and family of six children in England.”
In Doylestown Evans and Larry Farrell who lived in Wooster many years, built a homemade electric system to supply lights to the plant, the first electric lights in Doylestown.
Evans later purchased the home where the family has lived for nearly half a century, leaving it only temporarily while he was in Wooster and later while he was superintendent of a plant in Saginaw, Michigan.
When the Blakes bought the Buckeye and moved it to Wooster in 1912, Evans and his sons, Harry, Walter and Fred, and his son-in-law, James Kirk, went to Wooster to work. After a few years, however, he was induced to return to Doylestown where local citizens had arranged to start a new aluminum company. He was with that company until it was in full operation, but left it later to go to Saginaw, Michigan.
The Aluminum welding process he invented was actually never patented, either in England or in the U.S., but its development has played a large part in the manufacture of aluminum utensils, and in other uses made of aluminum. It has been greatly improved upon since. The blow torch method which Evans discovered was followed by acetylene welding, and later by electric welding. In more recent years induction welding has been used successfully by Buckeye in Wooster and by other firms, and the newest system is a gas welding process using natural gas.
Evans looks back over the years in which the development of the aluminum industry has grown to its present proportions to the time when it was actually born.
With only six years to go to reach the century mark, he continues in vigorous health and talks with authority on the various processes which have aided in its expansion. He is Doylestown’s oldest citizen.
One of his sons, Walter, who is town marshal, also continued to live in Doylestown.
Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser
Saturday, April 9, 1881 Page 7 column 6
SILVERDALE
Colliney Accident-On Tuesday morning a serious accident happened to a young man named Samuel Evans, aged twenty-two, while following his employment at the Grove Colliery, Knutton, belonging to Memsrs. Sh???ier and Co. The unfortunate man was at his work as a loader, when a fall of dirt took place, smaking his ankle, and breaking his leg in two places. On examination by Doctors Yales (Newcastle) and Lewis, and Mr. Coghill (Silverdale), it was found necessary to take off the leg just below the knee, the operation being performed by the same gentleman. The young man is in a favorable condition.
Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser
Saturday, November 12, 1881 Page 5 column
North Staffordshire Miners' Permanent Relief Fund
Samuel Evans, a young man who had been injured at Stainer and Co.'s, Silverdale, made an application under Rule 33 for a lump sum in lieu of weekly pay. The committee made a grant of L20, which he accepted.
Samuel Evans
DOYLESTOWN-Samuel Evans, 95, died Sunday at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Clarence Ross of Portage St., with whom he had lived several years. A native of Silverdale, England, Mr. Evans lived the past 50 years in Doylestown. He was a former employee of the Barberton water department, a member of the Doylestown Methodist church, and the Masonic Lodge in Whittmore, Michigan. Surviving are three sons, Walter of Doylestown, Fred of Hemlock, Michigan, and Harry of Wooster; two daughters, Mrs. Ethel Kirk of Akron and Mrs. Mary (Molly) Ross of Doylestown; a brother, Fred of Burmingham, England; 16 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren. Services are in charge of the Monbarren funeral home.
Services will be Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the Monbarren funeral home with Rev. A.M. Burkhardt officiating. Burial will be in Chestnut Hill cemetery. Friends may call after noon on Tuesday at the funeral home.
April 6, 1936
He's Jack of All Trades, Is this Tester of Meters
Miner, Preacher, Inventor, Reporter, That's Samuel Evans
Life for Samuel Evans is one grand adventure, (missing a paragraph)
Wasn't it but yesterday, figuratively speaking, that he was a newspaper reporter in the bonny town of Staffordshire, England, where they wrote all copy in a flowing Spencerian hand in a day when typewriters were unknown.
Wasn't it but yesterday that he was discovering a means of welding aluminum and proudly, getting his patents for the process in London, the first man, in the world, he claims, to have invented this method?
And, come to think of it, there were the years he spent as a Methodist minister. First in England and then in a little parish in Michigan.
Worked In Mines
Not to mention his boyhood in the mines of the english coal towns, in a day when child labor laws were unknown. "Oh, it's a fair life with its share of sunshine and shadow." Samuel Evans has a wooden leg, "but that's nothing to bother about, "he says cheerfully. He also is minus two fingers whicfh he lost in the Buckeye aluminum factory in Doylestown, but that fact doesn't seem to worry him, either. "It's been a long life and lots o' changes," He says. "Starting when I was 7 years of age and went to work in an English silk factory."
Became Expert
"Then I can remember, when I was 10 years old, my mother leading me across a bridge to the mines. I started work at 10 o'clock at night and worked all night long. I was assigned to driving a horse in the mine. It was a vicious horse and this scar on my cheek is a reminder of where it kicked me." But shomehow throughout the years of his checkerboard life, Evans kept sutdying and studying. As a result he rose steadily until he was an exper on aluminum welding, an authority on mining and geology, an expert shorthand student, a minister. After coming to America he worked at the Aluminum Corp. of America, later at the Goodyear, the Buckeye aluminum and the boxboard factory. Evans is 77, living with his wife in Barberton. He has three grown sons.
Samuel Evans who is 91 is the oldedst Doylestown resident. He was born in England. (missing a section)
born February 28, 1858. His reason for coming to America was rather unusual. He was the first man to develop a process for welding aluminum, and the Aluminum Co. of America sent for him to come to New Kensington, PA., to demonstrate. This was in 1901.
He returned to England and in 1903 came back again, this time at the request of the Buckeye Aluminum Co. of Quincy, Mass., which then moved to Doylestown and later to Wooster. As far as he knows, the welding process has never been patented. A year later he bought his wife, the former Sarah Alice Morris, and his family to Doylestown from England. Five of his six children are living. They are Mrs. Clarence Ross (Molly) with whom he makes his home, Walter who is Doylestown's marshal, Mrs. Ethel Kirk of Arkron, Fred of Saginaw, Mich., and Harry of Wooster, Mrs. Evans has been dead for two years. There are 16 grandchildren and 15 great grandchildren.
Mr. Evans has been a member of the Masonic Lodge for 45 years and has retained his membership in the Methodist church. In his younger years he was very active in church affairs and loved to sing. He has always been ardently opposed to "saloons" and liquor traffic."
Put to work in a coal mine at the age of eight, he received little formal schooling. But through his own efforts he is well educated. His library contains nothing but technical books of various kinds, and even when his children were grown up and he was between 50 and 60 years of age, he attended night classes.
When he was 21 he was paymaster in a coal mine in England, and was injured in a cave in, losing a leg. At that time artificial limbs were unsatisfactory because they were stiff. So he carved his own wooden leg and foot, includinga a spring arrangement at the ankle so he could bend it. He has never worn any other kind.
Always an ambitious man, Mr. Evans believes he will live another ten years. His friends would like to see him achieve his ambition.
Monday, May 5, 1952
Man Who Was First To Weld Aluminum Tells Of Process He Invented, Brought To U.S.
By E.H. Hauenstein
DOYLESTOWN - Samuel Evans, 94, who came to Doylestown when the Buckeye Aluminum Co. began manufacturing operations here in 1903, was referred to in a recent Buckeye anniversary article as the man who had brought the process of welding aluminum to America from England.
“I not only brought it to this country, I invented it,” he said at the North Portage St. home which has been the family residence for practically half a century, and where he lives with his daughter, Mrs. Clarence Ross.
Mr. Evans, before he worked as a mechanic in the aluminum field, operated a small jewelry and watch repair shop in the town of Milton, in Staffordshire, England.
An Ohio man, Charles M. Hall, had perfected a process of refining aluminum by the use of electricity, and had it patented. He went to Andrew Mellon with it at Pittsburgh, and not long afterward the process was used in a plant in Cuyahoga Falls. Hall, it seems was not content with his status, made arrangements for the use of his process with the British Aluminum C. Court litigation followed over patent rights, and the American company was the victor.
The manager of the British Aluminum Co. plant in Milton went to Evans and asked him to join the company to do some experimental work which required the mechanical skill he had gained as a watchmaker.
Another British company at that time was making a test of the use of aluminum for manufacturing trolley wire.
“Before that,” Evans recalls, “the only known way to put two pieces of aluminum together was by soldering with the use of pure tin. It adhered, but would not stay together very long. Some chemical reaction causing the joint to come loose. “
“One day I was working with two pieces of aluminum wire, and decided to try welding. With a blowtorch, I heated the two ends, and pushed them together. When the piece had cooled, I removed the surplus, and it looked just like one wire.
“I took it to the manager and asked him to examine it. He didn’t notice the weld, and asked me what I wanted him to observe. I told him that the wire he was looking at had been two pieces, which I had put together. He saw the significance of what I had accomplished, and telegraphed to London. Next day four directors of the British Aluminum Co. came to Milton to see me do it. To prove that I had actually joined the ends of aluminum wire, I used only one piece and welded the two ends, making it into a circular piece. Several samples of this were made by me and placed in the hands of the company officials.”
I was sent to Leeds to weld sections of the trolley wire the other company had made, and to London to weld telegraph wires of aluminum which were used in another experiment.”
“I determined that I should protect my process by patent, and communicated with the patent and department. The London Gazette reported my action on Friday, and on Saturday I was discharged.”
“In 1901 I came to America, arriving on my 41st birthday anniversary, February 28th. I went to New Kensington, where the Pittsburgh Aluminum Co. had moved a plant from the Boston area, and where I did the first aluminum welding ever done in America.
“I was promised a job, a salary and royalty, and the firm agreed to patent my process for me. I guess I was too gullible. At the request of a superior, I taught another man how to weld.
“Soon after that my services were terminated and the promises made to me were not kept. I returned to England, but came back to America exactly two years from my first landing here, on February 28, 1903. With Charles Garretson I went to Quincy, Mass., where I met Leon Ward, and learned the company he was with had been purchased by Doylestown people, and was making final plans to move to Doylestown.”
“He offered me a job at $10 a week until the move took place, and $18 a week at Doylestown. He actually paid me $12 a week from the start, which was what I earned to support my wife and family of six children in England.”
In Doylestown Evans and Larry Farrell who lived in Wooster many years, built a homemade electric system to supply lights to the plant, the first electric lights in Doylestown.
Evans later purchased the home where the family has lived for nearly half a century, leaving it only temporarily while he was in Wooster and later while he was superintendent of a plant in Saginaw, Michigan.
When the Blakes bought the Buckeye and moved it to Wooster in 1912, Evans and his sons, Harry, Walter and Fred, and his son-in-law, James Kirk, went to Wooster to work. After a few years, however, he was induced to return to Doylestown where local citizens had arranged to start a new aluminum company. He was with that company until it was in full operation, but left it later to go to Saginaw, Michigan.
The Aluminum welding process he invented was actually never patented, either in England or in the U.S., but its development has played a large part in the manufacture of aluminum utensils, and in other uses made of aluminum. It has been greatly improved upon since. The blow torch method which Evans discovered was followed by acetylene welding, and later by electric welding. In more recent years induction welding has been used successfully by Buckeye in Wooster and by other firms, and the newest system is a gas welding process using natural gas.
Evans looks back over the years in which the development of the aluminum industry has grown to its present proportions to the time when it was actually born.
With only six years to go to reach the century mark, he continues in vigorous health and talks with authority on the various processes which have aided in its expansion. He is Doylestown’s oldest citizen.
One of his sons, Walter, who is town marshal, also continued to live in Doylestown.
Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser
Saturday, April 9, 1881 Page 7 column 6
SILVERDALE
Colliney Accident-On Tuesday morning a serious accident happened to a young man named Samuel Evans, aged twenty-two, while following his employment at the Grove Colliery, Knutton, belonging to Memsrs. Sh???ier and Co. The unfortunate man was at his work as a loader, when a fall of dirt took place, smaking his ankle, and breaking his leg in two places. On examination by Doctors Yales (Newcastle) and Lewis, and Mr. Coghill (Silverdale), it was found necessary to take off the leg just below the knee, the operation being performed by the same gentleman. The young man is in a favorable condition.
Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser
Saturday, November 12, 1881 Page 5 column
North Staffordshire Miners' Permanent Relief Fund
Samuel Evans, a young man who had been injured at Stainer and Co.'s, Silverdale, made an application under Rule 33 for a lump sum in lieu of weekly pay. The committee made a grant of L20, which he accepted.
Samuel Evans
DOYLESTOWN-Samuel Evans, 95, died Sunday at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Clarence Ross of Portage St., with whom he had lived several years. A native of Silverdale, England, Mr. Evans lived the past 50 years in Doylestown. He was a former employee of the Barberton water department, a member of the Doylestown Methodist church, and the Masonic Lodge in Whittmore, Michigan. Surviving are three sons, Walter of Doylestown, Fred of Hemlock, Michigan, and Harry of Wooster; two daughters, Mrs. Ethel Kirk of Akron and Mrs. Mary (Molly) Ross of Doylestown; a brother, Fred of Burmingham, England; 16 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren. Services are in charge of the Monbarren funeral home.
Services will be Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the Monbarren funeral home with Rev. A.M. Burkhardt officiating. Burial will be in Chestnut Hill cemetery. Friends may call after noon on Tuesday at the funeral home.
Akron Beacon Journal
April 6, 1936
He's Jack of All Trades, Is this Tester of Meters
Miner, Preacher, Inventor, Reporter, That's Samuel Evans
Life for Samuel Evans is one grand adventure, (missing a paragraph)
Wasn't it but yesterday, figuratively speaking, that he was a newspaper reporter in the bonny town of Staffordshire, England, where they wrote all copy in a flowing Spencerian hand in a day when typewriters were unknown.
Wasn't it but yesterday that he was discovering a means of welding aluminum and proudly, getting his patents for the process in London, the first man, in the world, he claims, to have invented this method?
And, come to think of it, there were the years he spent as a Methodist minister. First in England and then in a little parish in Michigan.
Worked In Mines
Not to mention his boyhood in the mines of the english coal towns, in a day when child labor laws were unknown. "Oh, it's a fair life with its share of sunshine and shadow." Samuel Evans has a wooden leg, "but that's nothing to bother about, "he says cheerfully. He also is minus two fingers whicfh he lost in the Buckeye aluminum factory in Doylestown, but that fact doesn't seem to worry him, either. "It's been a long life and lots o' changes," He says. "Starting when I was 7 years of age and went to work in an English silk factory."
Became Expert
"Then I can remember, when I was 10 years old, my mother leading me across a bridge to the mines. I started work at 10 o'clock at night and worked all night long. I was assigned to driving a horse in the mine. It was a vicious horse and this scar on my cheek is a reminder of where it kicked me." But shomehow throughout the years of his checkerboard life, Evans kept sutdying and studying. As a result he rose steadily until he was an exper on aluminum welding, an authority on mining and geology, an expert shorthand student, a minister. After coming to America he worked at the Aluminum Corp. of America, later at the Goodyear, the Buckeye aluminum and the boxboard factory. Evans is 77, living with his wife in Barberton. He has three grown sons.
Samuel Evans who is 91 is the oldedst Doylestown resident. He was born in England. (missing a section)
born February 28, 1858. His reason for coming to America was rather unusual. He was the first man to develop a process for welding aluminum, and the Aluminum Co. of America sent for him to come to New Kensington, PA., to demonstrate. This was in 1901.
He returned to England and in 1903 came back again, this time at the request of the Buckeye Aluminum Co. of Quincy, Mass., which then moved to Doylestown and later to Wooster. As far as he knows, the welding process has never been patented. A year later he bought his wife, the former Sarah Alice Morris, and his family to Doylestown from England. Five of his six children are living. They are Mrs. Clarence Ross (Molly) with whom he makes his home, Walter who is Doylestown's marshal, Mrs. Ethel Kirk of Arkron, Fred of Saginaw, Mich., and Harry of Wooster, Mrs. Evans has been dead for two years. There are 16 grandchildren and 15 great grandchildren.
Mr. Evans has been a member of the Masonic Lodge for 45 years and has retained his membership in the Methodist church. In his younger years he was very active in church affairs and loved to sing. He has always been ardently opposed to "saloons" and liquor traffic."
Put to work in a coal mine at the age of eight, he received little formal schooling. But through his own efforts he is well educated. His library contains nothing but technical books of various kinds, and even when his children were grown up and he was between 50 and 60 years of age, he attended night classes.
When he was 21 he was paymaster in a coal mine in England, and was injured in a cave in, losing a leg. At that time artificial limbs were unsatisfactory because they were stiff. So he carved his own wooden leg and foot, includinga a spring arrangement at the ankle so he could bend it. He has never worn any other kind.
Always an ambitious man, Mr. Evans believes he will live another ten years. His friends would like to see him achieve his ambition.
Monday, May 5, 1952
Man Who Was First To Weld Aluminum Tells Of Process He Invented, Brought To U.S.
By E.H. Hauenstein
DOYLESTOWN - Samuel Evans, 94, who came to Doylestown when the Buckeye Aluminum Co. began manufacturing operations here in 1903, was referred to in a recent Buckeye anniversary article as the man who had brought the process of welding aluminum to America from England.
“I not only brought it to this country, I invented it,” he said at the North Portage St. home which has been the family residence for practically half a century, and where he lives with his daughter, Mrs. Clarence Ross.
Mr. Evans, before he worked as a mechanic in the aluminum field, operated a small jewelry and watch repair shop in the town of Milton, in Staffordshire, England.
An Ohio man, Charles M. Hall, had perfected a process of refining aluminum by the use of electricity, and had it patented. He went to Andrew Mellon with it at Pittsburgh, and not long afterward the process was used in a plant in Cuyahoga Falls. Hall, it seems was not content with his status, made arrangements for the use of his process with the British Aluminum C. Court litigation followed over patent rights, and the American company was the victor.
The manager of the British Aluminum Co. plant in Milton went to Evans and asked him to join the company to do some experimental work which required the mechanical skill he had gained as a watchmaker.
Another British company at that time was making a test of the use of aluminum for manufacturing trolley wire.
“Before that,” Evans recalls, “the only known way to put two pieces of aluminum together was by soldering with the use of pure tin. It adhered, but would not stay together very long. Some chemical reaction causing the joint to come loose. “
“One day I was working with two pieces of aluminum wire, and decided to try welding. With a blowtorch, I heated the two ends, and pushed them together. When the piece had cooled, I removed the surplus, and it looked just like one wire.
“I took it to the manager and asked him to examine it. He didn’t notice the weld, and asked me what I wanted him to observe. I told him that the wire he was looking at had been two pieces, which I had put together. He saw the significance of what I had accomplished, and telegraphed to London. Next day four directors of the British Aluminum Co. came to Milton to see me do it. To prove that I had actually joined the ends of aluminum wire, I used only one piece and welded the two ends, making it into a circular piece. Several samples of this were made by me and placed in the hands of the company officials.”
I was sent to Leeds to weld sections of the trolley wire the other company had made, and to London to weld telegraph wires of aluminum which were used in another experiment.”
“I determined that I should protect my process by patent, and communicated with the patent and department. The London Gazette reported my action on Friday, and on Saturday I was discharged.”
“In 1901 I came to America, arriving on my 41st birthday anniversary, February 28th. I went to New Kensington, where the Pittsburgh Aluminum Co. had moved a plant from the Boston area, and where I did the first aluminum welding ever done in America.
“I was promised a job, a salary and royalty, and the firm agreed to patent my process for me. I guess I was too gullible. At the request of a superior, I taught another man how to weld.
“Soon after that my services were terminated and the promises made to me were not kept. I returned to England, but came back to America exactly two years from my first landing here, on February 28, 1903. With Charles Garretson I went to Quincy, Mass., where I met Leon Ward, and learned the company he was with had been purchased by Doylestown people, and was making final plans to move to Doylestown.”
“He offered me a job at $10 a week until the move took place, and $18 a week at Doylestown. He actually paid me $12 a week from the start, which was what I earned to support my wife and family of six children in England.”
In Doylestown Evans and Larry Farrell who lived in Wooster many years, built a homemade electric system to supply lights to the plant, the first electric lights in Doylestown.
Evans later purchased the home where the family has lived for nearly half a century, leaving it only temporarily while he was in Wooster and later while he was superintendent of a plant in Saginaw, Michigan.
When the Blakes bought the Buckeye and moved it to Wooster in 1912, Evans and his sons, Harry, Walter and Fred, and his son-in-law, James Kirk, went to Wooster to work. After a few years, however, he was induced to return to Doylestown where local citizens had arranged to start a new aluminum company. He was with that company until it was in full operation, but left it later to go to Saginaw, Michigan.
The Aluminum welding process he invented was actually never patented, either in England or in the U.S., but its development has played a large part in the manufacture of aluminum utensils, and in other uses made of aluminum. It has been greatly improved upon since. The blow torch method which Evans discovered was followed by acetylene welding, and later by electric welding. In more recent years induction welding has been used successfully by Buckeye in Wooster and by other firms, and the newest system is a gas welding process using natural gas.
Evans looks back over the years in which the development of the aluminum industry has grown to its present proportions to the time when it was actually born.
With only six years to go to reach the century mark, he continues in vigorous health and talks with authority on the various processes which have aided in its expansion. He is Doylestown’s oldest citizen.
One of his sons, Walter, who is town marshal, also continued to live in Doylestown.
Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser
Saturday, April 9, 1881 Page 7 column 6
SILVERDALE
Colliney Accident-On Tuesday morning a serious accident happened to a young man named Samuel Evans, aged twenty-two, while following his employment at the Grove Colliery, Knutton, belonging to Memsrs. Sh???ier and Co. The unfortunate man was at his work as a loader, when a fall of dirt took place, smaking his ankle, and breaking his leg in two places. On examination by Doctors Yales (Newcastle) and Lewis, and Mr. Coghill (Silverdale), it was found necessary to take off the leg just below the knee, the operation being performed by the same gentleman. The young man is in a favorable condition.
Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser
Saturday, November 12, 1881 Page 5 column
North Staffordshire Miners' Permanent Relief Fund
Samuel Evans, a young man who had been injured at Stainer and Co.'s, Silverdale, made an application under Rule 33 for a lump sum in lieu of weekly pay. The committee made a grant of L20, which he accepted.
Samuel Evans
DOYLESTOWN-Samuel Evans, 95, died Sunday at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Clarence Ross of Portage St., with whom he had lived several years. A native of Silverdale, England, Mr. Evans lived the past 50 years in Doylestown. He was a former employee of the Barberton water department, a member of the Doylestown Methodist church, and the Masonic Lodge in Whittmore, Michigan. Surviving are three sons, Walter of Doylestown, Fred of Hemlock, Michigan, and Harry of Wooster; two daughters, Mrs. Ethel Kirk of Akron and Mrs. Mary (Molly) Ross of Doylestown; a brother, Fred of Burmingham, England; 16 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren. Services are in charge of the Monbarren funeral home.
Services will be Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the Monbarren funeral home with Rev. A.M. Burkhardt officiating. Burial will be in Chestnut Hill cemetery. Friends may call after noon on Tuesday at the funeral home.
April 6, 1936
He's Jack of All Trades, Is this Tester of Meters
Miner, Preacher, Inventor, Reporter, That's Samuel Evans
Life for Samuel Evans is one grand adventure, (missing a paragraph)
Wasn't it but yesterday, figuratively speaking, that he was a newspaper reporter in the bonny town of Staffordshire, England, where they wrote all copy in a flowing Spencerian hand in a day when typewriters were unknown.
Wasn't it but yesterday that he was discovering a means of welding aluminum and proudly, getting his patents for the process in London, the first man, in the world, he claims, to have invented this method?
And, come to think of it, there were the years he spent as a Methodist minister. First in England and then in a little parish in Michigan.
Worked In Mines
Not to mention his boyhood in the mines of the english coal towns, in a day when child labor laws were unknown. "Oh, it's a fair life with its share of sunshine and shadow." Samuel Evans has a wooden leg, "but that's nothing to bother about, "he says cheerfully. He also is minus two fingers whicfh he lost in the Buckeye aluminum factory in Doylestown, but that fact doesn't seem to worry him, either. "It's been a long life and lots o' changes," He says. "Starting when I was 7 years of age and went to work in an English silk factory."
Became Expert
"Then I can remember, when I was 10 years old, my mother leading me across a bridge to the mines. I started work at 10 o'clock at night and worked all night long. I was assigned to driving a horse in the mine. It was a vicious horse and this scar on my cheek is a reminder of where it kicked me." But shomehow throughout the years of his checkerboard life, Evans kept sutdying and studying. As a result he rose steadily until he was an exper on aluminum welding, an authority on mining and geology, an expert shorthand student, a minister. After coming to America he worked at the Aluminum Corp. of America, later at the Goodyear, the Buckeye aluminum and the boxboard factory. Evans is 77, living with his wife in Barberton. He has three grown sons.
Samuel Evans who is 91 is the oldedst Doylestown resident. He was born in England. (missing a section)
born February 28, 1858. His reason for coming to America was rather unusual. He was the first man to develop a process for welding aluminum, and the Aluminum Co. of America sent for him to come to New Kensington, PA., to demonstrate. This was in 1901.
He returned to England and in 1903 came back again, this time at the request of the Buckeye Aluminum Co. of Quincy, Mass., which then moved to Doylestown and later to Wooster. As far as he knows, the welding process has never been patented. A year later he bought his wife, the former Sarah Alice Morris, and his family to Doylestown from England. Five of his six children are living. They are Mrs. Clarence Ross (Molly) with whom he makes his home, Walter who is Doylestown's marshal, Mrs. Ethel Kirk of Arkron, Fred of Saginaw, Mich., and Harry of Wooster, Mrs. Evans has been dead for two years. There are 16 grandchildren and 15 great grandchildren.
Mr. Evans has been a member of the Masonic Lodge for 45 years and has retained his membership in the Methodist church. In his younger years he was very active in church affairs and loved to sing. He has always been ardently opposed to "saloons" and liquor traffic."
Put to work in a coal mine at the age of eight, he received little formal schooling. But through his own efforts he is well educated. His library contains nothing but technical books of various kinds, and even when his children were grown up and he was between 50 and 60 years of age, he attended night classes.
When he was 21 he was paymaster in a coal mine in England, and was injured in a cave in, losing a leg. At that time artificial limbs were unsatisfactory because they were stiff. So he carved his own wooden leg and foot, includinga a spring arrangement at the ankle so he could bend it. He has never worn any other kind.
Always an ambitious man, Mr. Evans believes he will live another ten years. His friends would like to see him achieve his ambition.
Monday, May 5, 1952
Man Who Was First To Weld Aluminum Tells Of Process He Invented, Brought To U.S.
By E.H. Hauenstein
DOYLESTOWN - Samuel Evans, 94, who came to Doylestown when the Buckeye Aluminum Co. began manufacturing operations here in 1903, was referred to in a recent Buckeye anniversary article as the man who had brought the process of welding aluminum to America from England.
“I not only brought it to this country, I invented it,” he said at the North Portage St. home which has been the family residence for practically half a century, and where he lives with his daughter, Mrs. Clarence Ross.
Mr. Evans, before he worked as a mechanic in the aluminum field, operated a small jewelry and watch repair shop in the town of Milton, in Staffordshire, England.
An Ohio man, Charles M. Hall, had perfected a process of refining aluminum by the use of electricity, and had it patented. He went to Andrew Mellon with it at Pittsburgh, and not long afterward the process was used in a plant in Cuyahoga Falls. Hall, it seems was not content with his status, made arrangements for the use of his process with the British Aluminum C. Court litigation followed over patent rights, and the American company was the victor.
The manager of the British Aluminum Co. plant in Milton went to Evans and asked him to join the company to do some experimental work which required the mechanical skill he had gained as a watchmaker.
Another British company at that time was making a test of the use of aluminum for manufacturing trolley wire.
“Before that,” Evans recalls, “the only known way to put two pieces of aluminum together was by soldering with the use of pure tin. It adhered, but would not stay together very long. Some chemical reaction causing the joint to come loose. “
“One day I was working with two pieces of aluminum wire, and decided to try welding. With a blowtorch, I heated the two ends, and pushed them together. When the piece had cooled, I removed the surplus, and it looked just like one wire.
“I took it to the manager and asked him to examine it. He didn’t notice the weld, and asked me what I wanted him to observe. I told him that the wire he was looking at had been two pieces, which I had put together. He saw the significance of what I had accomplished, and telegraphed to London. Next day four directors of the British Aluminum Co. came to Milton to see me do it. To prove that I had actually joined the ends of aluminum wire, I used only one piece and welded the two ends, making it into a circular piece. Several samples of this were made by me and placed in the hands of the company officials.”
I was sent to Leeds to weld sections of the trolley wire the other company had made, and to London to weld telegraph wires of aluminum which were used in another experiment.”
“I determined that I should protect my process by patent, and communicated with the patent and department. The London Gazette reported my action on Friday, and on Saturday I was discharged.”
“In 1901 I came to America, arriving on my 41st birthday anniversary, February 28th. I went to New Kensington, where the Pittsburgh Aluminum Co. had moved a plant from the Boston area, and where I did the first aluminum welding ever done in America.
“I was promised a job, a salary and royalty, and the firm agreed to patent my process for me. I guess I was too gullible. At the request of a superior, I taught another man how to weld.
“Soon after that my services were terminated and the promises made to me were not kept. I returned to England, but came back to America exactly two years from my first landing here, on February 28, 1903. With Charles Garretson I went to Quincy, Mass., where I met Leon Ward, and learned the company he was with had been purchased by Doylestown people, and was making final plans to move to Doylestown.”
“He offered me a job at $10 a week until the move took place, and $18 a week at Doylestown. He actually paid me $12 a week from the start, which was what I earned to support my wife and family of six children in England.”
In Doylestown Evans and Larry Farrell who lived in Wooster many years, built a homemade electric system to supply lights to the plant, the first electric lights in Doylestown.
Evans later purchased the home where the family has lived for nearly half a century, leaving it only temporarily while he was in Wooster and later while he was superintendent of a plant in Saginaw, Michigan.
When the Blakes bought the Buckeye and moved it to Wooster in 1912, Evans and his sons, Harry, Walter and Fred, and his son-in-law, James Kirk, went to Wooster to work. After a few years, however, he was induced to return to Doylestown where local citizens had arranged to start a new aluminum company. He was with that company until it was in full operation, but left it later to go to Saginaw, Michigan.
The Aluminum welding process he invented was actually never patented, either in England or in the U.S., but its development has played a large part in the manufacture of aluminum utensils, and in other uses made of aluminum. It has been greatly improved upon since. The blow torch method which Evans discovered was followed by acetylene welding, and later by electric welding. In more recent years induction welding has been used successfully by Buckeye in Wooster and by other firms, and the newest system is a gas welding process using natural gas.
Evans looks back over the years in which the development of the aluminum industry has grown to its present proportions to the time when it was actually born.
With only six years to go to reach the century mark, he continues in vigorous health and talks with authority on the various processes which have aided in its expansion. He is Doylestown’s oldest citizen.
One of his sons, Walter, who is town marshal, also continued to live in Doylestown.
Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser
Saturday, April 9, 1881 Page 7 column 6
SILVERDALE
Colliney Accident-On Tuesday morning a serious accident happened to a young man named Samuel Evans, aged twenty-two, while following his employment at the Grove Colliery, Knutton, belonging to Memsrs. Sh???ier and Co. The unfortunate man was at his work as a loader, when a fall of dirt took place, smaking his ankle, and breaking his leg in two places. On examination by Doctors Yales (Newcastle) and Lewis, and Mr. Coghill (Silverdale), it was found necessary to take off the leg just below the knee, the operation being performed by the same gentleman. The young man is in a favorable condition.
Staffordshire Sentinel and Commercial & General Advertiser
Saturday, November 12, 1881 Page 5 column
North Staffordshire Miners' Permanent Relief Fund
Samuel Evans, a young man who had been injured at Stainer and Co.'s, Silverdale, made an application under Rule 33 for a lump sum in lieu of weekly pay. The committee made a grant of L20, which he accepted.
Samuel Evans
DOYLESTOWN-Samuel Evans, 95, died Sunday at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Clarence Ross of Portage St., with whom he had lived several years. A native of Silverdale, England, Mr. Evans lived the past 50 years in Doylestown. He was a former employee of the Barberton water department, a member of the Doylestown Methodist church, and the Masonic Lodge in Whittmore, Michigan. Surviving are three sons, Walter of Doylestown, Fred of Hemlock, Michigan, and Harry of Wooster; two daughters, Mrs. Ethel Kirk of Akron and Mrs. Mary (Molly) Ross of Doylestown; a brother, Fred of Burmingham, England; 16 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren. Services are in charge of the Monbarren funeral home.
Services will be Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the Monbarren funeral home with Rev. A.M. Burkhardt officiating. Burial will be in Chestnut Hill cemetery. Friends may call after noon on Tuesday at the funeral home.
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