Q1901

Black Heritage

Jan E. Matzeliger - Inventor

Collins Cover Announcement 

JAN E. MATZELIGER

Matzeliger emigrated to the United States in 1874 and found work in several machine shops. Three years later he moved to Lynn, Massachusetts which was the "Shoe Capital of the World". He was taken with the prospect of inventing a machine to replace the time-consuming hand process of shaping and fastening soles to the leather tops of shoes. Most workers in the industry believed that a machine could never be perfected for this particular function.

Working alone at night, Matzeliger experimented and, by trial and error, he completed his first model in 1880. Several years later his fourth patented model was able to make an entire shoe in one minute and an entire industry was revolutionized. As fate would have it, he became ill in 1886 and died in 1889 never realizing the full impact that his invention would have on a major U.S. industy.

My hand-painted cachet shows the inventor working alone at night trying to perfect one of his machine designs. It captures the loneliness that Matzeliger must have endured night after night and yet also depicts the bulldog determination that drives men of vision and new ideas. The cluttered stockroom of a Massachusetts shoe factory is illuminated by a single light on an 1880's night. That light shines on an immigrant who over a hundred years ago was pursuing the American dream. A single stamp in the on-going Black Heritage Series is canceled on Day of Issue with a Lynn bullseye postmark.

The greatness of our country was fashioned in large measure due to the contributions of the workers and innovators of our early shops and factories. Jan E. Matzeliger was such an American. Item #Q1901. $9.25.