John Theodore Bigelow (1832-1867)

He succeeded his father as a nail manufacturer and renamed the company J.T. Bigelow & Co. He married the sister of John A. Pillow who became his business partner along with Randolph Hersey who had served his apprenticeship under his father, Thomas Dean Bigelow. Randolph Hersey remembered him as follows: "He was thoroughly upright in all his dealings and one of the most unassuming and kindly disposed persons I ever had to do with. He died of consumption; he had no children. Mr Bigelow's grandfather was the first manufacturer of cut nails in Montreal and the first in Canada. He began on a very small scale - one machine and it was called a "horsehead" from the peculiar shape of the cutting lever. This machine was worked by horsepower. The workshop, for it was nothing more, was located on Bleury Street near the S. W. corner of Sainte-Catherine St, and where Almay's new store is building. Mr Bigelow used to go to a hardware store, buy a bundle of hoop iron of desired width, take it home on his back and make it into nails. The nail blanks were cut diagonally across the plate; by this method a point was made to the nail. After it was cut, the blank could be picked up, put into a vice and headed by hand or foot power. Soon after, nail machines were invented to cut, grip and head automatically, which was adopted by Mr Bigelow. Subsequent to this last method, a man by the name of Reed of Bridgewater, Mass., invented what is called the "Reed Machine." It was a perfect machine for the purpose and continues to be used to this day wherever cut nails are made."