C is for John Card, Inventor

Our ancestors were quite prolific inventors. Seems everyone was trying to come up with the latestes new gadget. If you ever want to look up any patents, skip the unwieldy, archaic search engine at the government site and go straight to Google Patents.

I searched for all the inventors from the county where I am Assistant County Historian and found quite a few. The fun thing is you can easily download the design.

The following patent was filed by John Card in 1835 from the town of Gainesville. At that time the town was still a part of Genesee County until Wyoming County was formed in 1842. Prior to his residence in Gainesville, John owned the first mill on Lot 40 in the town of Perry in 1820 along with his partner, Sylvester Lathrop. His Patent was for a Smut Mill.

I'd tell you to get that dirty thought out of your head, but, it's probably where it came from. A smut mill was a way to clean the grain from ... well... from the smut. Said smut being a fungus with foul smelling spores---which could very well be where we get the slang meaning for the word. Below is the picture of John's patent.

Stay tuned for more history tidbits throughout the month of April!

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