Mr. C. Newcomb is a native of New York State, having been born on the twenty-fourth of June, 1850, in the town of Hobart, Dela ware County. His father, a well-to-do citizen of that place, was a pattern maker by trade, and had six children - three girls and three boys.
Charles Nelson Newcomb received a common school education. He did a good deal of work for his father at odd times-getting his first insight into carpentry in this way—and left his home at the age of fourteen, going to Dixon, Illinois, where he had an uncle by the name of John Shoemaker. It was necessary for him to make his own way in the world and to better bis education he attended a night school in Dixon and took a business course during one winter. Up to this time he had been farming and doing whatever came to his hand in the line of carpentry. He finished his apprenticeship in the City of Lansing, Michigan.
Believing that farther west he would find better opportunities for making money, he then went to the town of Schuyler, Nebraska. This was during the panic of 1873, but in spite of the scarcity of money and the difficulties under which business was being carried on, he began at once to take building contracts and in a short time had accumulated a snug little sum of money. In the fall of 1875 he left Schuyler and came east as far as Lewis, Cass County, Iowa, where he continued the business of contracting until 1879, and then began the manufacture of wagons, which he continued in the town of Lewis for three years with very fair success. From the spring of 1884 to 1886 he was in Omaha, where he also engaged in business as a building contractor.
It was while engaged in the manufacture of wagons in Iowa and while contracting at Omaha that Mr. Newcomb invented the flying shuttle rag carpet loom, which he has been manufacturing so extensively for several years. Between 1884 and 1887 he gradually drifted from the wagon business into the loom business and in the latter year, in order to secure capital which would enable him to establish a factory, he sold the right to manufacture his loom in the States of Nebraska, Kansas and Western Iowa. With the capital thus obtained he was enabled to engage more extensively in the manufacture of looms and endeavored through correspondence to sell them in territory outside of that which he had disposed of. In 1889 he concluded to locate farther east and accordingly removed to Davenport. The machines were for a time manufactured at Tipton, Iowa, and Davenport was his distributing point. In the fall of 1890 he persuaded the men who made his machines for him in Tipton to remove to Davenport and establish themselves permanently here. In the course of a year Mr. Newcomb had made enough money to buy out the proprietors of the shop, and he leased a piece of ground on Warren Street, where he manufactured the looms for a time, afterward removing the factory to the corner of Fifth Street and Western Avenue, making sales throughout the United States exclusively by correspondence. His plant is now valued at twenty-five thousand dollars and he has in his employ about thirty people all the time. Through all of Mr. Newcomb's struggles to obtain a foothold and to get himself established in the manufacture of the looms he invented, he never lost faith in the value of his invention, and his subsequent success has justified his anticipations.
Almost every one with whom he has talked upon the subject laughed at the idea of manufacturing rag carpet looms, inasmuch as the opinion held by most people is that looms of this kind have practically passed the season of their usefulness. Mr. Newcomb, however, had a better knowledge of such things than had the people who laughed at his proposition; and he had also perseverance and determination. Since he came to Davenport a few years ago to reside permanently, he has taken a prominent position among the business men and manu facturers of the city. He is public-spirited, energetic and wide awake, has the esteem and confidence of the people, and is looked upon as a worthy and substantial citizen, although still a young man.
He was married June 8, 1879, at Lewis, Iowa, to Miss Mattie E. Vaughn, a daughter of Amos Vaughn, who was a farmer and stock dealer. Mr. and Mrs. Newcomb have two children: George, born January 23, 1881, and Edith, born May 20, 1885.
BIOGRAPHIES