


HIs curiosity satisfied, he did not immediately pursue his idea because he did not realize the significance of his conclusion. People are reading: Virginia's best awards and upcoming Staunton festivals - The buzz “From this I saw that it could not make a stitch similar to handwork, but must have some other mode of fastening the thread on the underside and, among other possible methods of doing this, the chain stitch occurred to me as a likely means of accomplishing the end.”

“I first discovered that the needle was attached to a needle arm, and consequently could not pass entirely through the material, but must retreat through the same hole by which it entered,” he later wrote of his observations. Finding himself yet again in debt, he sold his interest in that business as well. Finding himself deep in debt, he departed Lexington in the early 1850s for Pocahontas County, now in West Virginia, as a partner in another carding business. Armed with great curiosity and an iron-clad work ethic, Gibbs toiled at various occupations and in several different locations, including operating his own a carding mill in Lexington.

Gibbs worked for his father at his wool-carding mill until it burned in 1845, then left home, at age 16, to go out on his own. The answer lies with another resident named James Edward Allen Gibbs, the son of Richard and Isabella Gibbs, who was born in northern Rockbridge Augpractically next door to the McCormick farm, and who in 1858 perfected the modern-day sewing machine. Just across the Augusta County line in Rockbridge lies the little town of Raphine, which is known as the home of Cyrus McCormick, co-inventor (along with his slave, Jo Anderson) of the reaper, which revolutionized American agriculture.īut few today realize that the name “Raphine” is derived from the ancient Greek word “Raphis,” which translates as “to sew.” So why is a small, sleepy Rockbridge settlement named for sewing?
