Henry Leavitt Ellsworth

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Henry Leavitt Ellsworth (November 10, 1791 - December 27, 1858) was a U.S. administrator.

Ellsworth was born in Windsor, Connecticut, a son of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth and Abigail Wolcott, graduated from Yale University in 1810, and studied law at Litchfield Law School. On June 22, 1813, he married Nancy Allen Goodrich, daughter of Judge Elizur Goodrich and Anne Willard, with whom he had three children. Later in life, he had two subsequent wives, Marietta Mariana Bartlett and then Catherine Smith. Ellsworth was named in part for his grandmother's family, the Leavitts of Suffield, Connecticut.^[1] After studying law under Judge Gould in Litchfield, Connecticut, he settled first at Windsor and then at Hartford, where he remained eight or ten years.

In 1832, he traveled west as U.S. Commissioner of Indian Tribes in Arkansas and Oklahoma, appointed to oversee the removal of Native Americans to Oklahoma, accompanied on the expedition by three companions: noted author Washington Irving who recorded his impressions in A Tour on the Prairies; Charles La Trobe, an Englishman, mountaineer and travel writer who later served in the British diplomatic corps in the West Indies and Australia; and Swiss Count Albert Pourtales.^[2]

In 1835, Ellsworth was elected mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, but had served only a month when he was appointed the first Commissioner of the U.S. Patent Office, an office he held for ten years -- from 1835 until 1845. His twin brother William W. Ellsworth was Governor of Connecticut from 1838 to 1842, and served as a U.S. Congressman from Connecticut as well. William Wolcott Ellsworth was married to the daughter of Noah Webster, a farmer's son who began publishing dictionaries.

In this role as Commissioner, he found one third of the floor-space in his office occupied by over 60 models of inventions; he moved them to a separate room. He also found that no list of patent applicants had ever been drawn up, a deficiency he corrected.

Acting as Patent Commissioner, Ellsworth made a decision that would profoundly affect the future of Hartford and Connecticut. The young Samuel Colt, struggling to establish a firm to manufacture his new revolver, was aided by Ellsworth, who in 1836 made the decision to issue Colt U. S. Patent No. 138. On the basis of Ellsworth's decision, Colt was able to raise some $200,000 from investors to incorporate the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, the forerunner of the mighty Colt arms manufacturing empire.^[3]

In today's world Ellsworth would be described as an early technology adapter. He became so interested, for instance, in a new-fangled invention by Samuel Morse called the telegraph that he obtained a $30,000 grant from Congress to test the possibilities of the technology.^[4]

From Ellworth's exposure to the West and knowledge of inventions, he prophesied late in life that the lands of the West would be cultivated by means of steam plows. This prophecy was introduced in the probate of his will in an attempt to prove that he was of unsound mind.

A comment of his relating to the increased workload at the patent office, taken out of context and embellished, was apparently the source of the urban legend that a patent office official (Charles H. Duell in some versions) claimed that everything which could be invented has been invented.^[5]

Following Ellworth's stint in the Patent Office, he settled in Lafayette, Indiana, acting as an agent for purchase and settlement of public land, but in 1857 returned to Connecticut. Ellsworth later served as an early president of the Aetna Insurance Company. He was an early benefactor of Yale College, donating some $700,000 to his alma mater.^[6]

Ellsworth died, aged 67, on December 27, 1858 in Fair Haven, Connecticut. His papers are collected in the Yale University Library.

[edit] References

1. ^ The History of the Descendants of John Dwight, of Dedham, Mass., Benjamin Woodbridge Dwight, New York, 1874
2. ^ The Journal of the Union Mission, Hope Holway, University of Oklahoma
3. ^ Gunmaker to the World, Ellsavorth S. Grant, American Heritage Magazine, June, 1968, americanheritage.com
4. ^ The Story of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, patentmodelassociation.com
5. ^ Samuel Sass (May-June, 2003). "A Patently False Patent Myth still". Skeptical Inquirer. 
6. ^ The Connecticut Magazine: An Illustrated Monthly, Wiliam Farrand Felch, Vol. I, January, 1895, Hartford

[edit] External links

• [1] Henry L. Ellsworth Circular, 1837, Indiana Historical Society, Manuscripts & Archives
• [2] Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, National Agricultural Hall of Fame