Palmer C. Perkins and the windmill: the patent of 10 August 1869

1869–1872 · A NEW YORKER'S PATENT, MADE IN MISHAWAKA

The patent: The first great Mishawaka patent belongs to a man who was not born here, and the geography is printed as the record gives it: Palmer C. Perkins was a New Yorker who had learned blacksmithing and ax making, bought the idle Bement axe factory in Mishawaka, and patented his windmill from this ground. The Patent Office's own list, as Scientific American printed it for the week ending 10 August 1869, carries the grant in one line: "93,472. — WINDMILL. — P. C. Perkins, Mishawaka, Ind." Letters Patent No. 93,472, "Improvement in Windmills," covered the solid wooden-wheel mill that carried his name — a wheel built as a solid disk of wooden sections rather than as open slats, ornamental as well as working, and manufactured, in the St. Joseph County Public Library's account carried on the city's marker, until after the First World War. The patent was reissued in 1872, on the axe-history record assembled from the trade and patent sources. The works the patent built are the Businesses section's entry — the joint-stock Perkins Wind Mill and Ax Company of 14 July 1873, the Bridge Street plant, the sales line that ran from 1,500 windmills in 1883 to 5,000 a year in 1899 — but the inventive fact stands on its own: a man who came to Mishawaka to buy a dead axe factory patented, from Mishawaka, one of the machines that pumped water across the Great Plains farm country the railroads were then settling. The doing is the city's, whatever the doer's birthplace, and this section's ledger keeps that rule in both directions. One superlative rides on the Perkins record and is carried at its carrier's strength: Gas Engine Magazine's company history pairs the 5,000-a-year figure with the judgment that Perkins had become the world's largest manufacturer of windmills; the judgment is the magazine's, and it is printed as its claim, not as this section's finding.

Sources:

1. Scientific American, "Official List of Patents" for the week ending 10 August 1869 — "93,472. — WINDMILL. — P. C. Perkins, Mishawaka, Ind.," the Patent Office's own list as the journal printed it.
2. Exploring Axe History, "The Mishawaka Axe and Windmills" (2023), as carried in the Businesses section of this history — patent No. 93,472 of 10 August 1869 and the 1872 reissue; Perkins's purchase of the Bement axe factory.
3. City of Mishawaka, Perkins Windmill marker (erected 2014), and the St. Joseph County Public Library account it carries, as carried in the Businesses section — the windmill patented in 1869 and manufactured until after the First World War.
4. Gas Engine Magazine, "Perkins Windmill and Engine Co." (Ogden Publications, 2025), as carried in the Businesses section — the sales line of 1,500 mills in 1883 and 5,000 a year in 1899, and the magazine's "world's largest manufacturer" judgment, printed as its claim.