Happy Bod Day! Washburn University will celebrate Ichabod Washburn’s 211th birthday at 2:11p.m., Wednesday, Aug. 12, main level lobby, Memorial Union, Washburn University. This event is open to the public.
At age nine, young Ichabod was apprenticed first to a harness maker and later to a blacksmith. In between the apprenticeships, he worked for a year in a cotton mill. While working in the mill, he became interested in machinery and wanted to work in a machine shop, but his guardian discouraged him, saying that the country would soon be so full of factories there would be no more need for machinery to be made. At age 15 he was sent to a blacksmith in Leicaster, Mass. 80 miles from home.
After Washburn’s apprenticeship ended at age 20, he worked at several blacksmith jobs for about a year until he learned of a job in Worcester, Mass., for a smith who could forge machinery. Soon he moved on to another job manufacturing lead pipes and machinery for woolen mills. Washburn soon bought out the boss, the company expanded rapidly and he took a partner, forming the firm of Washburn and Goddard. Washburn began experimenting with making wire. Not much was being manufactured in the United States and the machines were slow and crude. He made improvements and soon invented a new machine, thus becoming the Father of the Wire Industry.
Washburn and Goddard had an amicable parting of the ways, and Washburn joined with his twin brother Charles in business. Several years later he added his son-in-law PL Moen.
Washburn and Moen Manufacturing Company supplied piano wire, telegraph wire, telephone wire, suspension cable for bridges, needles for the new sewing machines and it was Washburn’s idea to use wire instead of expensive whalebone for the hoop skirt fad in the 1950s and 1960s. Washburn and Moen also acquired the patent on barbed wire.
The invention of the telegraph promoted a need for galvanized wire, a process that Washburn also perfected. By 1865, Washburn and Moen Manufacturing was the largest wire mill in the world, employing nearly 3,000 men. This company later became part of U.S. Steel Corporation.
Washburn was a faithful churchgoer, first a Baptist and later a Congregationalist, being made a deacon. He contributed money for the building of churches, a hospital, ALSO Worcester Tech Institute.
In October 1868, Washburn generously gave then Lincoln College, Topeka, Kan. a donation of $25,000. In gratitude for his generous donation, the Board of Trustees changed the name of the college from Lincoln to Washburn College. Washburn died Dec. 30, 1868 from complications of a stroke. His widow, however, continued to make smaller donations to Washburn College until her death in 1875.
In 1938, alumnus Bradbury Thompson brought the “heroic” Ichabod figure to life in the graphical symbol of a man with a top hat and tails carrying a book. In the 1938 Kaw yearbook, Thompson wrote, “It is not intended that only one picture should represent Ichabod, for he adapts himself to any situation . . . but if he is to live, he must keep his essential characteristics of courageous spirit, democratic courtesy, kindness and the studious love of truth.”
