H. H. Palmer and Company

One of the most prolific patent holders was H. H. Palmer and Company of Rockford, Illinois. They manufactured two popular barrel churns; the Acme Bail Churn and the Boss Churn. We have also seen a Fairy Churn manufactured by H. H. Palmer and Company but it is not as common as the Acme Bail and the Boss Churn. An 1887 advertisement claimed that 150,000 H. H. Palmer and Company barrel churns were in use in the U. S. and Canada. The counter weight on some of their barrel butter churns listed 10 patent dates. All these patents were either granted to Samuel Palmer or assigned to Henry Palmer. The dates of these patents were September 2, 1879, June 1, 1880 (reissue of a Sept 4, 1877 patent), February 21, 1882, February 21, 1888, two patents on December 17, 1889 and four patents on December 31, 1889. The Palmers were granted additional patents throughout the 1890's. Also as mentioned above, H. H. Palmer and Company literature claimed they owned a half interest in John McDermaid's original October 24, 1876 patent. An 1891 H. H. Palmer and Company price sheet listed the price for a 5 gallon churn like the one pictured here as $8.00. One sees the great effect that Sears and Wards had on prices as just a few years later competition from these mail order houses had pushed the price on the same churn to $3.00 and below.

Even though H. H. Palmer and J. McDermaid shared McDermaid's 1876 patent they were fierce competitors located in the same little town. In 1892, H. H. Palmer sued J. McDermaid in court. Palmer claimed that butter churns manufactured by McDermaid were infringing on three of his patents, one dated February 21, 1888 and two dated December 31, 1889. The court decided in McDermaid's favor, concluding that none of the Palmer patents covered any novel features. In fact a patent granted to William Dobson, a third churn manufacturer also from Rockford, Illinois, on July 5, 1881 covered all the features that H. H. Palmer was calling their ideas. We see this often in early patents. Often the ideas described in the patents were not new or unique but manufacturers still applied for patents to validate or approve their products.