Joseph Jenckes ★

1590s–1630s

Born around 1599 near St. Anne, Blackfriars, London, and baptized there on 26 August 1599. A cutler in London and later Hounslow, he marked his blades with a thistle. Married at Horton, Buckinghamshire, on 5 November 1627.

1640s–1650s

Emigrated to Massachusetts and by 1645 was at Lynn, working at the Hammersmith Ironworks at Saugus, where in 1646 he received the first machine patent granted in North America. Married again in New England around 1650. By tradition he cut dies for the colony's coinage in 1652, and in 1654 Boston approved him to build fire engines.

1680s

Died at Lynn on 16 March 1683.

A Cutler's London Trade

Joseph Jenckes was born around 1599 near St. Anne, Blackfriars, in London and, following his father, became a member of the Company of White Bakers as a young man while working as a cutler — a maker of knives and blades — in London and later Hounslow, Middlesex, likely drawn there by a community of German cutlers whom King Charles I had brought to England to make swords. Joseph marked his own blades with a thistle, trained at least three apprentices, and once complained that a rival cutler's pomegranate mark looked too much like his own and was costing him business; a sword he made was still held by the Powysland Museum in Wales as late as the 1950s.

America's First Patent

Joseph emigrated to Massachusetts and settled by 1645 in Lynn, where he worked with John Winthrop Jr. to run the Hammersmith Ironworks at Saugus — the first successful ironworks in America. There, in 1646, the Massachusetts General Court granted him the first machine patent in North America, for a water-driven machine to make scythes, saw blades and other edged tools, and in 1655 a patent for an improved scythe that became known as the "American scythe." By tradition he cut the dies for the colony's first coins in 1652, though the evidence for it is only circumstantial, and in 1654, was approved by Boston's selectmen to build fire engines for the town. Joseph died in Lynn on March 16, 1683; his descendants include Nicholas Brown, the merchant for whom Brown University is named.