Excerpt from Personal Reminiscences of Samuel Harris

I was born in the village of Hartford (one mile up White River from White River Junction), Vermont, on the 1sth day of September, 1836. My father was Edward Pratt Harris, a native of Massachusetts. My mother was Elizabeth Sanborn Gillett, a native of Vermont My father graduated at Dartmouth College in the year 1826. Afterwards he founded the academy at Bradford, Vt. He studied law, and was admitted to practice about the year 1832. He practiced law in White River Junction, Vt., until the spring of 1837, when he went west to find a home.

He located in Rochester, Mich., and sent for my mother in the summer. She started from Vermont about the Ist of September, and reached Detroit on a steamboat called the Missouri about the 20th of September, 1837. She arrived at Rochester the next day with my brother, Edward Wright Harris, who was then about seven years old, and myself, a little over one year old.

Father and mother lived in Rochester until the year 1868, when father died, and soon after mother came to live with me in Washington, D. C. My brother and myself were sent to the district schools until we were old enough to attend the academy. My healthwas not good, and I was not strong enough to attend school regular, so my education did not get beyond natural philosophy, geometry, and a few such studies. My whole bent was mechanics. I loved tools, and loved to be at work with them. Steam engines were my favorites. Natural philosophy and geometry, and such other studies as would help me in mechanics, came easy to me. In these classes I was always at the head; in all others I was at the foot. When I was twelve years old I made a very good model of a steam engine of brass. The cylinder was 2-inch stroke and of an inch bore. I used this to drive a small lathe I made, and used to do sewing machine repairing and gun work. In the fall, after I was sixteen. I was study ing steam and its various applications and modes of producing power from it. I believed that the whole power of steam was exerted in giving velocity to its particles. I then tested its power on a reaction wheel, but found I got but a small portion of the power caused by the great velocity of steam over what would be safe to run the wheel at. I then placed another wheel with an over-hanging rim just outside the reaction wheel, with buckets on the inside of the rim. I gained as much power from the outer wheel as I had from the reaction wheel, and actually increased the power of the reaction wheel by having a solid for the steam to strike against. Soon after the war I patented the combination and called it Harris' Rotary Steam Engine.

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