Henry Alonzo House

Henry Alonzo House (April 23, 1840 – December 18, 1930) was an American inventor who developed machinery and processes that have had a lasting impact on several industries.

House was born in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest son of Ezekiel House, an architect and builder, and Susannah King. His father was an architect and builder, and at that time was assisting his brother Royal Earl House in perfecting and getting capital interest in his new Printing Telegraph.

In the spring of 1846 the House family moved to Little Meadows, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where they built a home on the side of a hill which was known as the Castle. There was a natural spring nearby, which was piped into the house to give running water, an unusual thing for those days. At that time there was no railroad to that part of the country, so in order to move their household goods from New York, they boarded a barge which was towed by steam up the Hudson River to Troy where it was taken through the lock into the Erie Canal and towed by horses to Ithaca on Lake Cayuga, New York. The last part of the trip was made by ox teams and the whole journey took over a month.

In 1852 the family moved to Owego, New York, where there were better educational facilities. Here they lived by the Susquehanna River. The boys James and Henry built a boat and rigged it up like the side wheelers they had seen on the Hudson River. This they used to take people up the river on excursions and also to carry produce down the river, thus earning money with which to pay their father for the material used to build the boat.

Ezekiel House left Owego in the spring of 1854 as he had taken a contract to build a county court house in the suburbs of Rockford, Illinois. Henry and his brother went to Rockford in the fall and started in business with their father. In 1857 Henry took a position with his father who was superintending the raising and reconstructing of the old city hall in Chicago. While working on a building in New York, Henry had the misfortune of having the extension muscle of his right hand severed by a chisel which dropped from a scaffold. This incapacitated his doing any carpentry work for several months. During this enforced idleness, he designed and patented an automatic gate.

When the Civil War broke out and Henry was rejected as a volunteer on account of his slightly crippled right hand, he turned his attention to making a button hole machine. He and his brother James entered into partnership with Mr. Seaman and in 1862 they perfected an automatic buttonhole sewing machine. It was then tested in a clothing shop in New York on army overcoats and capes, where its average was from 1,000 to 1,200 buttonholes per day. This caused hard feelings among the hand buttonhole workers, and one day during the noon hour they smashed the machine. However, the next morning another machine was working in its place. All together there were over one hundred thousand button holes made there. The patents were taken over by the Wheeler and Wilson Manufacturing Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. While House was in Washington, D.C., looking after the patent application, he met Abraham Lincoln, for whom he cast his first vote.

In November 1862, he again returned to Little Meadows and married his cousin Mary Elizabeth House, daughter of William House, a miller. As his mother was very ill they hurried to Brooklyn where his mother died on November 28, 1862.

He then took his bride to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he was engaged by Wheeler and Wilson to superintend the making of his buttonhole machine. In the Spring of 1863 his father Ezekiel House died in Brooklyn. During that year four patents were issued for the automatic buttonhole sewing machine. In 1867 House represented the company at the Paris Exposition Universelle, which opened in France in May 1867.