Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1857-04-25
From Frederick Douglass Paper.
AARON ROBERTS, THE BLACK INVEN.
TOR.

-
Nh. EDITOR The are two points in relation to
blacks, in which the whites are, almost universally
agreed. Shey deny our capacity for mechanical
invention and they exclude us from opportuui-
ties to exercise such inventive faculty as we may
possess. Yet, occasionally, a black inventor will
start up, and miraculously prove our claim to me
chanical genius. Such a man is Mn. AARON Rob
ERTs, of Philadelphia.
lie was born a slave near Trenton, in New Jer-
sey, in 1898: at l6, he was bound to the proprie.
tor OF the celebrated Touring mills at Trenton,
where he remained until no was twenty.one: By
some means or other he found his way from driv.
ing teams and loading, into the management OF
the mill itself, at the age Of II years: he grew to
the machinery and the machinery grew to him if
it screachcd and things went a Try, his nimble fin
gers and cunning head put things to rights with
the ease Of an expert: he knew every cog and
crank, and each cog and crank knew him. At
twenty-one, the owner of the mill dismissed him,
because he had taken to cotton spinning and Civ
en- up Touring: and in dismissing him he dismiss
ed his own fortune and crushed a genius that
would have rivaled WHITNEY or ARKwRIGnT.
Young Roberts started out seeking employ as a
miller: but his black skin was offered opportunity
to handle bags or drive a team.it was preposterous
to suppose that he could understand the machinery
Of a Touring mill Wasn't be black 50 he was
spurned from mill to mill, until finally, in despair,
or, urged by the occult influences that "shape our
ends" he drifted on board the new steamer Ful-
lUHI III lOlJ- ~, TINE HrSt steamship tDlt ever sail
ed boldly on the ocean, and took a job as cabin
hoy. Henry EckfOid and Durham were Of the
prOprietors. And one cannot help contrasting
Ecktord, the nations boast, the great naval Arch
tect Of his day, with the poor. d~espised black cab.
in boy, "a pot wrestler and dish wiper" with q
genius to the !ull as graSping, and an invention as
cunning! There is no part Of the machinery of
the ship which Mr.. Roberts cannot now-after an
interval o! nearly forty years-accurately describe.
The boiler was OF thick copper, square as a vat,
and cost forty thousand dollars in London. This
steamship carried passengers only from New York
to Charleston, HAVANA, and New Orleans. In
stormy weather they stopped the engine and used
sails on y, for fear of straining the machinery
just as the old nayigators used to furl sails and
drop anchor at night when crossing the Atlantic!
From 1920 until the other day Mr.. Roberts
found such vocation as servant or porter, as is
melted out to the colOred man in the free States. -
About ten years ago his early love came back to
him; his love for invention followed him to his
~sleepless couch, and one continuance after another
was perfected in his busy brain wherever ne
happened to be employed, if any difficult jolt
turned up, detying the ingenuity and mechanical
contrivance of the entire establishment, he wa.
always, appealed to as a last resort, and never
in vain the eternal relations of contrivance:
to overcome difficulties lay scattered about it
his brain and came readily at call. To use hi
own words the idea 'came to him all at once.''
The results of the last ten. years of cositatior
are a contFivance for replacing ~railcars on tn
I track (portable) An apparatus to prevent yes
sells from being driven ashore in the heavies
gale: and lastly an apparatus for throwing waite
on fires in every or any story Of the highest build
ings.
This last apparatus has been f,vorably notice,
BY the Franklin institute of Philadelphia, by tn
Chief Engineers of New York and Brooklyn an
by several of our city papers. The invention
nec, simple and adequate,