{"id":29865,"date":"2018-03-16T10:18:19","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T14:18:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=29865"},"modified":"2021-04-22T13:40:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T17:40:46","slug":"genealogy-discoveries-my-cousin-william-mayall-invented-a-corn-sheller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/genealogy-discoveries-my-cousin-william-mayall-invented-a-corn-sheller.html","title":{"rendered":"Genealogy Discoveries: My Cousin William Mayall Invented a Corn Sheller!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently a kind genealogist<\/a> reached out to me and sent me two old family photos of Charles Alfred Mayall (1863- )<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Frank Emerson Mayall (1861- )<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Today while researching my great-grandparents Robert Starbird<\/a> (1782-1870) and Abigail Haskell<\/a> (1803-1861), I decided to turn my attention to their son-in-law William Milliken Mayall<\/a> (1820-?), who married their daughter Eunice A. Starbird (1829-1910)<\/a> and was the uncle of Charles and Frank Mayall.<\/p>\n

I began by searching GenealogyBank for William\u2019s first and last names in Maine records specifically, because I know from my notes that William and Eunice were both born there and married in Gray, Cumberland County, Maine, on 10 April 1851.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Among the three search results, I found a very interesting Maine Farmer<\/em> article about patents that gave me a great clue as to what William\u2019s profession was.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Source: GenealogyBank, Maine Farmer (Augusta, Maine), 27 November 1869, page 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, William was an inventor.<\/p>\n

A quick search of Google Patents<\/a> helped me locate William\u2019s corn sheller patent, which is described as follows:<\/p>\n

\u201cThreshing apparatus specially adapted for maize; Threshing apparatus specially adapted for particular crops other than cereals for maize, e.g. removing kernels from cobs.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Source: Google Patents, US96938A, 1869-11-16, Status: Expired – Lifetime, https:\/\/patents.google.com\/patent\/US96938<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also accompanying the description of William\u2019s patent was a drawing of the design.<\/p>\n

\"Illustration:<\/a>
Source: Google Patents, Patent No. US96938A, 1869-11-16, Status: Expired – Lifetime, https:\/\/patents.google.com\/patent\/US96938<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Small world \u2013 there are clues everywhere. From the kindness of a stranger<\/a> to uncovering interesting details of each of our family histories.<\/p>\n

Day by day I am able to discover and piece together the stories of my family and connect and extend the family tree.<\/p>\n

Genealogy Tip:<\/em><\/strong> Examine every article \u2013 even the smallest reference can reveal just how resourceful and inventive your relatives were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article by Thomas Jay Kemp about researching his 19th century cousin William Mayall and discovering he invented a machine to shell corn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12467],"tags":[12,21423,2020],"class_list":["post-29865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inventions-patents","tag-genealogy","tag-inventors-and-inventions-or-patents","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/illustration-0316-2018-featured-graphic-corn-sheller.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77651,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29865\/revisions\/77651"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}