Hussey, Obed

Born: 1790-10-07 Hallowell, Maine

Died: 1860-08-04 New Hampshire

Obed Hussey was a seaman, whaler, draftsman, inventor, farmer, and Quaker. He lived first in Portland, Maine, then in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1856, he married Eunice B. Starbuck, with whom he had two daughters. Over the course of his life, he invented a horse-powered corn husking machine, a mechanical sugar cane crusher, a machine for making artificial ice, and machines for grinding hooks and eyes as well as corn and corn cobs. In 1832, while living in Baltimore, he developed his most well-known invention—a kind of mechanical harvester called a reaper. After testing the machine in Cincinnati, Ohio, he obtained a patent for it in December 1833. By 1841, despite competing with fellow reaper manufacturer Cyrus H. McCormick, Hussey had sold his reapers in five states. In 1857, he sued McCormick for patent infringement, eventually winning the case in the U.S. Circuit Court, Northern District of Illinoisl. Further improvements in reapers over time pushed him out of the reaper market by 1858, after which he shifted his attention to inventing a steam-powered plow. He died soon after in Exeter, New Hampshire, while retrieving a glass of water for a fellow train passenger during a stop, falling between two rail cars, and being run over by the wheels.

Maine, U.S., Birth Records, 1715-1922 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2010); The American Annual Monitor for 1861; or, Obituary of the Members of the Society of Friends in America for the Year 1860 (New York: Samuel S. Wood and William Wood, 1861), 4:85; Obed Hussey, “Barney Genealogical Record,” Nantucket Historical Association,https://genealogy.nha.org/getperson.php?personID=I26352&tree=barney, accessed 24 May 2024; Mary Hussey, Gravestone, Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, MD; Martha Hussey, Gravestone, Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, MD; William Wade Hinshaw, ed., Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy (Ann Arbor, MI: n.p., 1940; repr., Baltimore, MD: Genealogical, 1991), 3:180; Herbert N. Casson, The Romance of the Reaper (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1908), 35-38; Follett L. Greeno, ed., Obed Hussey: Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap (Rochester, NY: The Rochester Herald, 1912), 4, 5-6, 9, 12, 17; William T. Hutchinson, Cyrus Hall McCormick: Seed-Time, 1809-1856 (New York: Century, 1930), 119, 450-51; Obed Hussey, Gravestone, Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, MD; New Hampshire, U.S., Death Records, 1650-1969 (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2021).