Dear Neil & Everyone,
I've been "viewing" the CARRIER list for some time now, mostly hoping to
find some information and/or connections to my g-g-grandfather W. IRVING
CARRIER (b. 18 Feb 1842, d. 19 Jul 1920) who married ADORA A. REYNOLDS 21
Dec 1869. I'm also looking for information and/or connections to his father
ASEL CARRIER (aka ASAHEL B. CARRIER) who was married to LYDIA CLARK. In
addition, I'm looking for ASEL's father.
I've not had much to "contribute" to the list until now. I've
procured a
copy of a book "FATHER OF AIR CONDITIONING" the story of Willis Haviland
Carrier by Margaret Ingels, written in 1952. My main reason for purchasing
this was for the information contained in the first chapter, which I've
transcribed below for the edification of any CARRIER list members also
interested in or related to THOMAS CARRIER. Hopefully there might be an
additional tidbit of information contained herein that someone might not
already have.
I welcome any items of interest anyone might be able to share with me
regarding my family members written above.
TRANSCRIBED FROM "FATHER OF AIR CONDITIONING" Chapter One
"Willis Haviland Carrier, the father of air conditioning, was born on a
farm near Angola, in the western part of New York State, on November 26,
1876. He once described his forebears as "a rugged and adventurous people,
with courage to try the unknown"--qualities which he himself possessed in no
small measure."
"The first Carrier in America was Thomas, who arrived in Massachusetts
around 1663. There is historical evidence that he was born in Wales in 1622
and that he was a political refugee who assumed the name "Carrier" on coming
to America. One story is that he was Richard Whaley, a political leader
when Charles I of England was beheaded. Another holds that his last name was
Morgan and that he was one of the king's bodyguards, seven feet four inches
tall."
"New England town records embody traditions handed down about him: that
he was fabulously fleet of foot even after he was more than one hundred
years old; that he would carry corn on his shoulder eighteen miles to a
mill, walking very fast and stopping only once en route; and that up to his
death, which came when he was 113 years old, he still walked erect and was
neither gray nor bald."
"Thomas Carrier married Martha Allen, who was his equal in all except
longevity. She was a daughter of Andrew Allen, a first settler of Andover,
Massachusetts. Abbot's "History of Andover" describes her as "plain
and
outspoken in speech, of remarkable strength of mind, a keen sense of
justice, and a sharp tongue." After standing up against the Andover town
fathers in a boundary dispute, she was accused of being a witch. Two of her
sons, aged thirteen and ten, were hung by their heels until they too
testified against her. Cotton Mather denounced her as a "rampant hag" whom
the Devil had promised "should be the queen of Hell." She was arrested,
convicted and, on August 19, 1692, hanged on Salem's Gallows Hill. Later it
was recorded that of all the New Englanders charged with witchcraft, "Martha
Carrier was the only one, male or female, who did not at some time or other
make an admission or confession."
"The Carriers lived in New England until 1799 when Willis Carrier's
great-grandparents, then bride and groom, joined an ox-team train of
settlers pushing west through the Mohawk Valley. They settled in Madison
County, New York, and then in 1836 moved on west again to Erie County.
There they purchased the farm that became the birthplace and childhood Home
of Willis Carrier. This father was Duane Carrier, who taught music to the
Indians, tried running a general store, was for a short time a postmaster,
then settled down to farming and married Elizabeth Haviland. Her
forefathers had settled in New England in the seventeenth century and she
was a "birthright" Quaker==the first in her family to marry outside her
faith."
"Willis Carrier grew up as the only child in a household of adults. In
addition to his parents this included his grandfather, grandmother, and
great-aunt. He played alone, made up games, many of which seemed to revolve
around mechanics. Once, after seeing the statue of a fawn on an aunt's
parlor table, the boy for weeks made plans to create an entire estate of
animals. "I was going to put machines in them so they would work," he later
recalled. "The whole estate would be made up of automatons, though I did
not know that word at the time. I thought of it by the hour. The grown-ups
to whom I tried to tell the plan would not listen, except the hired man."
"By the time he was seven, Willis would lose himself doing self-assigned
problems in the evening, after he had finished his share of the farm work.
One of the first problems he tackled was a perpetual-motion machine. When
he was nine his arithmetic class in the one-room school at Evans Center
reached fractions and Willis faced what seemed to him an insurmountable
barrier. He could not grasp the meaning of fractions. When his mother
noticed he was acting worried she found what was wrong and took action,
which Carrier in later life called the most important thing that ever
happened to him."
"My mother told me to go to the cellar and bring up a pan of apples. She
had me cut them into halves, quarters, and eighths, and add and subtract the
parts. Fractions took on meaning, and I was very proud. I felt as if I'd
made a great discovery. No problems would be too hard for me after
that--I'd simply break them down to something simple and then they would be
easy to solve. From then on I worked on arithmetic far beyond my class
assignments. Once I worked almost a year to get the answer to one problem,
but it did not shake my faith in the method my mother taught me. She opened
up a new world to me and gave me a pattern for solving problems that I've
followed ever since. In one-half hour she educated me!"
"Carrier always said that what talent he had in mechanics "I inherited
from my mother." Once she fixed an alarm clock "and alarm clocks were not c
ommon then." At another time she told him about a paper mill she had
visited as a girl. Her description was so accurate that years later, when
Carrier made his first visit to a paper mill in order to design an air
conditioning system, he felt as if he had been there before."
"Willis's mother died when he was eleven years old. For a while his Aunt
Abbey, who was his father's sister, lived with the family. Once in trying
to help her with the churning, Willis upset a bucket of sour cream hanging
in the well. When he and his father cleaned the well the pump was removed.
Willis's aunt made an indelible impression upon him by explaining how the
pump worked and stating that "the atmosphere exerts a pressure of about
fifteen pounds per square inch." Years later Willis Carrier observed: That
was the first time I ever heard of atmospheric pressure, but I did not
realize then that air is elastic. That fifteen pounds pressure is a number
I'd never forget even if I'd not made air my main interest through the
years."
"There are many other incidents in Willis's boyhood which evidenced a
mechanical aptitude and a scientific approach to life. One schoolmate
recalled that the boy, when helping his father prune grapevines, "worked
geometry in the snow." There is also the story that when he was fourteen
Willis fixed an old clock whose pendulum support had broken. Another
anecdote relates that when a new thresher was delivered, knocked-down from
the manufacturer, young Willis was equal to the job of assembling it."
"When the farm work was finished in the fall of 1890, Willis entered
Angola Academy, later called Angola High School. The next four or five
years he called "the roughening period of my life." Each morning he was up
at five o'clock. He and his father and a hired man milked twenty-four cows.
Willis then delivered the cans of milk to the railway milk stop at Pike's
Crossing by wagon, or, if the snow was deep, by bobsled. He would then
drive home, have breakfast, and walk a mile across the fields to school. A
classmate recalled that "Willis used to play baseball, skate, swim in Lake
Erie, and box with us boys almost every day; but when milking time came, he
went home."
The rest of Chapter One deals with Willis's young life. If anyone is
interested in having me transcribe more, please let me know and I'll fit it
into my schedule. On a personal note and an interesting aside, when I was
young knowing that my maternal grandmother was a CARRIER and that my father
worked for CARRIER AIR CONDITIONING, I always thought that he worked for the
"family" company. Later I realized (what I thought at that time) the
"error" of that assumption. Now, after several years of genealogical
research, I should have stuck with my childhood assumption...in a very
distant way Dad did work for a company that was founded by a distant member
of my mother's family!
That's all for now!
Debbie Johnson