My Genealogy Hound

ALFRED WILKINSON. Inventive genius is a rare gift of nature, a blessing conferred directly upon the few, but its reflex effect is felt and enjoyed by the million. Inventors are the advance guard in the army of progress-the pioneers in the onward march of civilization. Their ideas worked out and put into practical use, have directly caused greater changes in civic life than all the military revolutions since the beginning of the Christian era. Light, heat, power, travel, even food, have been improved, and are improving under the genius of the inventor. It is through the combination of the inventor and the constructor, however, that the benefits of improvement must surely reach the masses. Alfred Wilkinson, the subject of this sketch, is a man of action as well of mind. His father was an inventor and a skillful mechanic as well, and that Mr. Wilkinson’s inclination turns with a natural fitness toward the line of invention and mechanical engineering is not at all surprising.

Alfred Wilkinson was born at Stockport, Chesshire, England, May 17, 1845. His parents were Joseph and Margaret (Lintott) Wilkinson. His paternal grandfather was a very well known clergyman of the Baptist church and a magistrate as well. He was a minister and colporteur of the church of Stockport, England, and was president of the Baptist Union Society, composed entirely of clergymen. For over fifty years he was an honored and respected magistrate and for a time was the high mayor of the city of Stockport. He was a gentleman of education and culture. His death occurred in 1884, at the age of ninety-six years.

Mr. Wilkinson’s father, Joseph Wilkinson, was born in 1806. He was educated for the Baptist ministry but before he had attained his majority determined to turn his attention to mechanical pursuits. He quickly made his mark. He was the inventor of a cook stove, to patent which he came to this country in 1856. He also invented an automatic oil cup for steam engines, which has been used extensively in all the civilized nations of the world. He was a staunch Union man during the war of the Rebellion and served as a private messenger under President Lincoln during the civil conflict. He afterwards published a book, entitled “Views on the War, by a Soldier.’’

Mr. Wilkinson’s mother was born in Sussex county, near London, England. She died in 1891, aged seventy-two years. She was the daughter of Richard and Sarah Lintott. Richard Lintott was an English army officer and retired with honors in 1859, and in the latter part of his life resided on a small farm in Sussex. They had only two daughters, both of whom are now deceased.

Alfred Wilkinson attended the schools of his birthplace in England and completed his common school education in Philadelphia, having come to this country with his parents in 1859. He also completed his mechanical education in that city, being given his credentials as an engineer in 1859. At the outbreak of the Civil war he enlisted in the United States Navy and was assigned to the gunboat “Octorara.” He served under Farragut in the battles in the vicinity of New Orleans and for meritorious service was promoted and made third assistant engineer. Mr. Wilkinson resigned from the navy on September 9, 1865, and returning to Philadelphia, was appointed mechanical engineer at the Port Richmond shops of the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company. A few years later he opened an office in Philadelphia for steam engineering, which business he conducted until 1891. In that year Mr. Wilkinson organized a stock company at Philadelphia for the manufacture of Wilkinson’s automatic stoker, which he had invented and patented. He was elected general manager of the works and treasurer of the company.

The manufactory, which is located at Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, and employs about forty men, is running steadily and is taxed to its utmost capacity to fill orders for the machine. The automatic stoker is an ingenious invention that feeds furnaces and cleans them of ashes. Ex-President Harrison used two of them in his residence and the Baldwin Locomotive Works employ seventeen, which feed and clean as many furnaces, ,while only requiring the attention of one man to keep them in order and work them properly. Mr. Wilkinson has invented several other useful machines and improvements to machinery, including a flexible metallic stuffing box, to take the place of packing piston rods; the Land engine ejector condenser for steam engines; a balance slide valve for steam engines, and a gas-consuming bridge wall for steam engines.

The plant is devoted to the manufacture of mechanical stokers, pressure regulators, pumps and engines as designed by Mr. Wilkinson, and bearing his name. The factory is a handsome structure, and the care and study which are evident in its location and arrangement testify to the mechanical ability of its designer and owner. The offices of the Wilkinson Manufacturing Company are in a separate building adjoining the shops, and the same care and taste in arrangement are shown there as in the portion devoted to manufacturing.

The main factory is two hundred and sixteen feet long and fifty feet wide. This is built of red brick with steel framework and superstructure. Extending to the south from this shop, and forming a wing at about the middle of its length are the boiler house and engine room. The steam generating set consists of a battery of two return, tubular boilers, each forty-eight inches in diameter and twelve feet long, having a rating of fifty horse-power each. Both these boilers are fitted with stoking devices. One has the Wilkinson Stoker and the other the Laird gravity furnace, both of which are the product of the Wilkinson Company.

The Laird gravity furnace consists of a series of grate bars, sloping at an angle of twenty degrees downward, from a point just within the arch of the boiler front. By the means of a pusher plate, actuated by a reciprocating water motor, the coal is fed from a hopper to the inclined grate, where it remains long enough to be coked. Then it is broken up and gravity carries it slowly down the incline. By the time it has reached the bottom of the grate, where the ash table is placed, combustion is practically complete.

The Wilkinson stoker, on the other boiler, is well known to the engineering world. It consists also of a series of grate bars sloping downward from the dead plate to the ash pit at an angle of twenty degrees from the horizontal. These bars, side by side, form a grate the full width of the furnace. Instead of being stationary, as in the gravity furnace, these bars are movable. Along the front of the boiler, extending the full width of the furnace, is a shaft, given a semi-rotary motion by a small but powerful water motor. To this shaft, by means of cranks and links, the grate bars are attached. These cranks are set alternately at ninety degrees with each other, so that, as one half the grate bars are moving forward, the other half are moving backward, thus distributing the coal just enough to keep it moving down the incline and to permit the air to pass through it freely, thus aiding combustion. Each grate bar is hollow, is stepped along its fire surface, and is perforated with a narrow slot along the riser of each step. Along the front of the furnace extends a steam pipe with small pipes leading into the end of each grate bar. These bars have flat machined surfaces for bearings at their upper and lower ends, and rest upon planed castings. These castings are likewise hollow and there are ports in the bearing surface of each bar, corresponding to ports in each bearing bar. Thus these hollow bearing castings become air trunks through which the pressure in all the hollow bars is equalized. When in operation, steam is admitted to the several small blast nozzles, and these induce a current of air into the hollow bars. This air pressure causes jets of air to spurt out through the slots in the grate surface directly under the bed of coal and furnishes all the draft necessary. The value of this device is that it can be used with any kind of fuel, since by no means can the air slots become clogged. On the boiler which is fitted with this stoker there is also a Wilkinson pressure regulator, which so controls the flow of steam to the induced air blast as to keep the pressure fairly constant.

Mr. Wilkinson, besides being an occasional contributor to mechanical and engineering journals, is the author of “Steam Economy,” a work issued in 1882, which gives the result of a series of practical tests made by him as a consulting engineer, and which has had a very large sale. He is a member of the Franklin Institute, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Manufacturers’ Club, Philadelphia, is an active member of the Baptist church, Philadelphia; is a member of Lu Lu Shrine-a Templar Mason, being a member of Roxboro Lodge, No. 135, Free and Accepted Masons; Jerusalem Chapter, No. 3, Royal Arch Masons, and Corinthian Commandery, No. 32, Knights Templar.

On April 22, 1866, Mr. Wilkinson was united in marriage with Mary J. Sykes, daughter of William Sykes, of Chester, Delaware county, who died August, 1880. They had two children, Emma S., who married William S. Hogan, of Philadelphia, and has two children, Dorothy and Alford W.; and Margaret Ellen, who died in 1874 at the age of two years. On January 8, 1891, Mr. Wilkinson married Lorenna J. Sloughfy, daughter of John and Amanda Sloughfy, of Mount Etna, Berks county, Pennsylvania.