McCoy, Elijah, 1844-1929

Elijah J. McCoy; born May 2, 1844, Colchester, Ontario, Canada; died October 10, 1929 (aged 85), Detroit, Michigan, United States; born free in 1844 in Colchester, Ontario, Canada to George and Mildred (Goins) McCoy. They were fugitive slaves who had escaped from Kentucky to Canada via helpers through the Underground Railroad. George and Mildred arrived in Colchester Township, Essex, Ontario Canada in 1837 via Detroit. Elijah McCoy had eleven siblings. Based on 1860 Tax Assessment Rolls, land deeds of sale, and the 1870 USA Census it can be determined the George McCoy family moved to Ypsilanti, Washtenaw, Michigan in 1859-60; educated in black schools of Colchester Township; At age 15, in 1859, Elijah McCoy was sent to Edinburgh, Scotland for an apprenticeship and study; certified in Scotland as a mechanical engineer; When Elijah McCoy arrived in Michigan, he could find work only as a fireman and oiler at the Michigan Central Railroad. In a home-based machine shop in Ypsilanti, Michigan McCoy also did more highly skilled work, such as developing improvements and inventions. He invented an automatic lubricator for oiling the Steam engines of locomotives and ships, patenting it in 1872 as "Improvement in Lubricators for Steam-Engines" (U.S. Patent 129,843); McCoy continued to refine his devices and design new ones; 50 of his patents dealt with lubricating systems; After the turn of the century, he attracted notice among his black contemporaries. Booker T. Washington in Story of the Negro (1909) recognized him as having produced more patents than any other black inventor up to that time. This creativity gave McCoy an honored status in the black community that has persisted to this day. He continued to invent until late in life, obtaining as many as 57 patents; He formed the Elijah McCoy Manufacturing Company to produce his works; This popular expression, typically meaning the real thing, has been incorrectly associated with Elijah McCoy's oil-drip cup invention; McCoy married Ann Elizabeth Stewart in 1868; she died four years later; He married for the second time in 1873 to Mary Eleanor Delaney. The couple moved to Detroit when McCoy found work there. Mary McCoy (b. - d. 1922) helped found the Phillis Wheatley Home for Aged Colored Men in 1898; Elijah McCoy died in the Eloise Infirmary in Nankin Township, now Westland, Michigan, on October 10, 1929, at the age of 85, after suffering injuries from a car accident seven years earlier in which his wife Mary died; 2001, McCoy was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Alexandria, Virginia; 2012, the Elijah J. McCoy Midwest Regional U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (the first USPTO satellite office) was opened in Detroit, Michigan;