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specialized trade, reveals approximately 269 active makers in the United rediscovering Cesar Chelor’s planes already in their collections and
States. 69 of those were from Massachusetts, following a path Cesar are working with scholars to elucidate the details of his life and the lives
Chelor helped make possible and profitable. of other Black craftspeople in early America. These worthy efforts
Chelor also charted a course followed by other Black planemakers in prove that even the humblest of objects can transform our understanding
the early nineteenth century, such as John A. King and John Teasman, of history.
who worked in Newark, New Jersey between 1835 and 1837. In New
York City, George Bale was active between 1842 and 1860. Women Erica Lome, Ph.D., is currently the Peggy N. Gerry Curatorial Associate at the
Concord Museum, sponsored by the Decorative Arts Trust. She holds a doctorate in
also supervised the manufacture of wooden planes. Charlotte White of history from the University of Delaware and a MA in decorative arts, design history,
Philadelphia was active in 1840 and Catherine Seybold of Cincinnati and material culture from the Bard Graduate Center.
was active between 1853-55; both
took over the businesses of their
late husbands. The last docu- iron or blade
mented planemaker who worked
by hand was Edward Carter of handle
Troy, New York who gave up the wedge or toe
craft in 1903.
Credit for the survival of Cesar eye
Chelor’s legacy must be paid to striking cheek
the tool collectors, many of them button
historians, belonging to the Early
American Industries Association.
Richard DeAvila wrote several
articles on the Nicholson-Chelor
connection for the EAIA’s journal
in the 1980s. Fellow EAIA member
David V. Englund assembled the heel
largest collection of Nicholson
and Chelor planes, encompassing
248 planes by these three makers,
which he bequeathed to Colonial body or stock
Williamsburg in 2016. The acqui-
sition of the England Collection
will culminate in an exhibition of sole
early American tools in 2023. toe
Across the nation, museums are Anatomy of a wooden jack plane. Courtesy of workingbyhand.wordpress.com

Inventor Garrett Morgan: the Three-Light
Traffic Signal, the Gas Mask, and More

Garrett Morgan (1877-1963) had only a
5th grade education when he started
working as a sewing machine mechanic
and handyman in Cincinnati. That was
the beginning of Morgan using his
natural engineering talent and sparked
the inventor within, who would go on to
invent several products that helped not
only the public at large, but the military,
medical, and personal care fields.
As the seventh of 11 children,
Morgan was the son of a former slave
and of a daughter of a Baptist minister.
He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where
he worked as a handyman. He hired a
private tutor to improve his education.
His first patent was awarded for an
improved sewing machine he invented. From there, his growing
businesses flourished as ideas flowed from his analytic brain.
Morgan started the G.A. Morgan Hair Refining Company thanks to
a new hair straightening cream he developed. He patented the first
automatic three-way traffic signal system, which he eventually sold to
General Electric. Garrett Morgan was also the first Black man in
Cleveland, Ohio, to own a car.
There was some resistance to Morgan’s devices among buyers,
particularly in the South, where racial tension remained palpable. To
counteract the tension, Morgan hired a white actor to pose as “the
inventor” during presentations of his safety hood, and Morgan would
pose as the inventor’s sidekick, disguised as a Native American man
named “Big Chief Mason,” and, wearing his hood, would enter areas
otherwise unsafe for breathing. The tactic was successful; sales of the
device were brisk, especially from firefighters and rescue workers.
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