A Claim That Fails, Printed as a Failure — the Birdsell Clover Huller

An invention claim for this ground that the record fails, with the part that stands printed beside the failure

Lead: The claim, in its tempting form: John Birdsell, inventor of the Birdsell Clover Huller, died in New Carlisle — therefore a New Carlisle inventor. It fails, strand by strand, and the failure is printed as a failure. John Comly Birdsell (1815–1894) did invent his clover huller — in 1855, on his farm in Monroe County, New York, where he obtained his patent and first built the machines. He built shops in South Bend in 1863 and moved to South Bend in April 1864, and the huller became a cornerstone of South Bend's manufacturing, litigated successfully in his hands to a $100,000 verdict in 1874. What stands for this town is the last line of his life only: he died of a stroke on July 13, 1894, at the home of Mrs. Egbert in New Carlisle, Indiana, and is buried in South Bend City Cemetery. That is a death-tie, the weakest grade this section uses, and it carries no invention with it: the huller is a New York invention and a South Bend manufacture. He is therefore NOT counted among this section's inventors, and the five-name residence list in the first article is kept clean of him. A second, smaller failure of the same kind is printed with it for the searcher's protection: the patent record's other "New Carlisle" inventors of the mid-twentieth century — Harlow B. Grow's ducted rocket propulsion patent of 1951 and Elvin K. Cable's rectifier and switch patents of 1964 and 1967 — are of New Carlisle, OHIO, and every researcher who runs this town's name through the patent record will meet them and must put them down again, as was done here.

Sources:

1. John Birdsell biography — born 1815; clover huller invented and patented 1855 in New York; South Bend shops 1863, removal to South Bend 1864; died July 13, 1894, at New Carlisle, Indiana; buried South Bend City Cemetery, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birdsell
2. Timothy Edward Howard, A History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (1907) — the huller invented on Birdsell's Rush Township, Monroe County, New York farm, patented 1855, and foundational to South Bend manufacturing, https://ldsgenealogy.com/IN/books/A-history-of-St-Joseph-County-Indiana-Volume-1-part-77.htm
3. Google Patents — US2547936A (Harlow B. Grow, New Carlisle, Ohio) and US3118102A (Elvin K. Cable, New Carlisle, Ohio), the Ohio namesakes excluded from this section's record, https://patents.google.com/patent/US2547936A/en and https://patents.google.com/patent/US3118102A/en