Clemens B. Rose

Clemens B. Rose (also spelled Clemons) was a carpenter and mechanic who developed a bit brace that was later manufactured by the Millers Falls Company. The son of Westall and Polly Rose, he was born in 1813, in Pownell, Vermont, and built a reputation as a contractor specializing in the construction of saw and cotton mills. While traveling in New York, he met and wooed Cordelia Wood. The couple married and had six children. The family eventually moved to Florence, Massachusetts, where Clemens became an employee of Hiram Wells & Company, a firm that manufactured circular sawmills, pumps and wrenches. The job was a supervisory one; Rose served as superintendent of the foundry and pattern shop.

Hiram Wells was a hard-driving man who had lost part of one hand in an industrial accident and who had a reputation for impatience. On the morning of June 11, 1859, when a recalcitrant ten-horsepower steam engine was giving the operation some trouble, Wells ordered its engineer, Frank Spear, to weigh down a safety valve in order to increase steam pressure on the balky machine. The command was unfortunate. A thirty-foot boiler connected to the engine exploded moments later. The force of the blast smashed an eight-inch thick brick wall—hurtling bricks through the air for ninety feet and moving heavy iron machinery three feet off base. Hiram Wells, Frank Spear and a machine operator seated nearby were killed. Clemens Rose, who had been standing alongside Wells at the rear of the boiler, was badly scalded and bruised.

A year or so after the explosion, the Rose family moved to Sunderland, Franklin County, Massachusetts, where Clemens became a farmer. The agricultural life must not have appealed to him, for in January of 1864, he purchased the Thomas E. Munsell fulling mill, a factory where cotton batting and wicking were manufactured. Rose paid $1,050 for the structure and an acre of land and began installing equipment for the manufacture of bit braces. Luck was not with him. A month after he bought the mill, a high wind blew the roof off the building. Rose persisted and later that year was issued a pair of patents for "improvements to bit braces." Although no examples of the tools described by the patents have been reported, it is likely that braces of some type were built, as the February 26, 1866, Greenfield Gazette and Courier noted that Rose was making arrangements to build bit braces at the Greenfield Tool Company. The arrangements with Greenfield Tool may never have come to pass, for a year later, the operation, now known as the Rose Bit Brace Company, was still located in Sunderland.

On April 16th, 1867, C.B. Rose was issued a patent for a brace with a ring-type chuck and metallic head. His invention looked promising, but the issue of the patent found him with little cause to celebrate—six days prior to the award, fire ravaged his factory. Although the home of T.E. Munsell—a structure adjoining the factory—was saved, the shop itself was completely destroyed. The cause of the fire could not be determined, but Rose was insured, and his policy covered two-thirds of the 6,000 dollar loss. Despite the setback, Rose persisted in the brace business and continued with his design work. In fall of 1868, he was awarded yet another patent—this time for a two-piece sweep handle.

Rose-patent braces were manufactured in Greenfield by an entity known as the Bit Stock Company. Research has yet to determine its ownership, although at some point, the rights to the patents passed into the hands of the partnership of W. Newton Nims and Pratt. In April 1869, the Greenfield Gazette and Courier noted that Clemens Rose had filed a lawsuit against the partners. The reasons for the suit remain unclear but were somehow related to a transfer of the patents. Edward Lester, a Nims & Pratt employee, acquired the rights to the Rose patents in June and sold them to the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company in August. Production of the Rose brace continued at the Nims & Pratt factory until the new Millers Falls plant came online in 1870. Millers Falls Mfg. produced braces featuring the Rose chuck until the mid-to-latter 1870s.

Illustration: author's photo.

Sources

On Hiram Wells: Clark, Christopher and Kerry W. Buckley, eds. Letters from an American Utopia: the Stetson Family and the Northampton Association, 1843-1847. Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. p. 190.
Rose family: Lockwood, John H. Western Massachusetts: a History, 1636-1925. Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1926. Vol. 4, p. 756.
Business details: "Greenfield items." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., April 26, 1869; June 28, 1869; August 16, 1869.
"Sunderland." Gazette and Courier. Greenfield, Mass., February 1, 1864; February 22, 1864; April 15, 1867.
On the explosion: Sheffeld, Charles A., ed. The History of Florence, Massachusetts: including a complete account of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. Florence, Mass. : [published by the editor], 1895. p. 109-110.

Patents

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