Excerpts from SKETCHES OF THE LEADING CITIZENS OF CAYUGA COUNTY NEW YORK
BOSTON BIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW PUBLISHING COMPANY 1894
Cyrenus Wheeler Jr. is my 3rd cousin 4x removed
HON. CYRENUS WHEELER, JR., was a well-known inventor of harvesting machinery and ex-mayor of the city of Auburn, N.Y. He was born on March 21, 1817, at Seekonk, Bristol County, Massachusetts. This town was set off from Rehoboth in 1812 and became a separate town.
The Wheelers were active participants in all the stirring events in the history of Rehoboth, with five persons of the name from that town appearing on the muster rolls of the Revolution. The town records show that James Wheeler had a son born to him in 1697, named James Wheeler, Jr., and he had a son Jeremiah, born 1731, who had Jeremiah, Jr., born 1753. Cyrenus Wheeler, father of the subject of this sketch and a son of Jeremiah, Jr., and Elizabeth (THURBER) Wheeler, was born at Rehoboth, August 13, 1791, and died at Venice, N.Y., July 4, 1887, lacking only thirty-nine days of being ninety-six years of age. His educational advantages were limited and confined to the town school and mainly to the short winter terms. At an early age, he was apprenticed to learn the machinist’s trade, which he acquired in the thorough manner in which it was taught and practiced in those early days, seven years being the term of service.
In April 1816, he was united in marriage with Thirza D. Evans, a daughter of William and Meribah (Dillingham) Evans of Berkley, Bristol County, Mass. With her, he enjoyed a happy married life of nearly sixty-eight years, her death occurring February 13, 1884, when she was eighty-seven. To this couple were born five children, two sons and three daughters, of whom Cyrenus Wheeler, Jr., is the eldest.
Having obtained an elementary education, Cyrenus Wheeler, Jr., when still young, entered the machine shop and factory and, at an early age, became familiar with the use of tools and machinery operations. In the new occupation of farming, begun in Cayuga County in the spring of 1835, he also became proficient, but the mechanical and inventive traits of his character would assert themselves, and in a few more years, he was spending more time devising and constructing labor-saving implements and machines than in the cultivation of the land.
In 1852, his attention was directed to the question of a machine for mowing grass and harvesting grain, and in the summer of 1853, he commenced practical experiments in the field. The first machine was constructed at Poplar Ridge, Cayuga County, and was tried on his farm, one mile south of that place, in stout grass thoroughly wet by recent rains. This trial was pronounced a perfect success by everyone present at the time. The cutting apparatus of the machine consisted of a series of double-edged pivoted shears or cutters, which worked well at all times in wet grass but failed to work satisfactorily in dry, gummy grass so that the hussy open guard and scalloped cutter was substituted for the pivoted shears. Before the invention of Mr. Wheeler, mowing and reaping machines were of the type known as “stiff or rigid bar machines “ and had a single wheel for supporting the framework and imparting motion to the cutters. He added another wheel to support the framework of the machine and connected the cutting apparatus to the frame. This was done by an arrangement of hinges and pivots at right angles to each other so that the cutting apparatus would conform to the undulations of the ground uninfluenced by the motions of the supporting wheels of the machinery. He was the first man to put a hinged cutter bar on a mowing or reaping machine, and this he controlled by a patent for twenty-one years, fourteen years of the natural life of a patent, and an extension of seven years. He was also the first man to put a reaping attachment to a hinged bar machine. He further devised and applied at the same time levers, by which the driver in his seat could raise the cutting apparatus to pass obstructions and elevate or depress the points of the cutters to cut lodged and tangled grass or grain or a higher stubble, as desired. Through his system of hinging the cutting apparatus to the frame, it could be folded to the side of the mainframe so that the machine could be transported with the same facility as a cart. In the following year, he added a platform, reel, and raker’s seat, making it a combined machine, adapted to the double purpose of mowing grass and cutting grain, and provided with a system of gearing of his devising convenient for boxing and protecting from dirt. A self-rake was, with other improvements, from time to time added to the machine and protected by patents, forty-four having been obtained by him for improvements in harvesting machinery.
From 1853 to the present time, more than one and one-half million machines, containing improvements embraced in his patents, have been constructed.
Part of his patents can be seen below. His machine prior to 1860 was known simply as the Wheeler machine, after which up to 1874 it was called the “Cayuga Chief”; from 1874 to the present time, it has been known as the “Wheeler,” and, as now manufactured extensively by D. M.Osborne & Co., Auburn, N.Y.
Cyrenus had do defend his patents many times in Federal court and was highly successful. One of the cases was in 1872 when he sued the Clipper Mower, Etc., Company and won.
In 1881, he was elected Mayor of Auburn. In 1883, he was reelected, and again in 1885, making six years of continuous service. In the spring of 1889, reluctantly accepting a fourth nomination for the same office, he was elected by a large majority and, in March 1891, finished the eight years’ service.
“OLD WHEELER”
Auburn NY City Hall
“Old Wheeler” bell in the bell town of the Auburn NY City Hall
In 1881, the first year of his four-term mayoralty, Cyrenus Wheeler, Jr. had installed a 3-ton bell in the Auburn City Hall tower. Decades later, when a new City Hall was built in the 1930s, the bell, by then named “Old Wheeler,” was moved to its current location atop the new City Hall building.
Gradually, a ritual began: Upon the death of a military veteran or public official, if a grieving family is open to the honor, the funeral procession will pull up in front of City Hall, and “Old Wheeler” rings out 12 times in tribute to the dead.