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(Nott) Emery, born July 14, 1792, and
traveled in an ox-cart to Mexico, Oswego
county. New York, at a time when there
were but three houses in that settlement.
Undeterred by this, however, he built
the fourth house and made the place his
home, following his calling, which was
that of a farmer. He married (first) January
2, 1820, Catherine Shepard, who was
born August 19, 1795, in Alstead, New
Hampshire, and died July 27, 1854. The
death of Samuel Emery occurred January
24, 1876, in Mexico, New York. He and
his wife were members of the Presbyterian
church.
His son, Albert Hamilton Emery, was
born June 21, 1834, in Mexico, New York,
and was next to the youngest of eight
children. He grew up accustomed to a
farm environment, attending school during
the summer and winter from the age
of five years to that of ten, and also the
two winters when he was eleven and
twelve years old. From that time he attended
school no more until the winter of
1851, when he studied for three months
in the Mexico Academy, devoting special
attention to surveying. He had been,
meanwhile, employed on his father's
farm.
After studying surveying during the
winter of 1851, Mr. Emery worked at it
throughout the following summer, and
in the autumn of 1852 attended the academy
for another three months. In the
winter of 1852-53 he taught a school in
Union Settlement, and then engaged in
surveying on a proposed Syracuse & Par-
ishville railroad. He later worked at
surveying on the proposed Oswego &
Troy railroad. In the autumn of 1854 he
returned home and made a copy of a map
of Niagara Falls from the State Geologi-
cal Survey. This map, which was a fine
piece of draughtsmanship, was destined
to play an important part in shaping Mr.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY
2.S6
Emery's career. In the autumn of 1854,
desiring to perfect his knowledge of civil
engineering, he entered the Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York,
studying for five or six weeks before
the close of the winter session. The
course covered a period of four years, but
Mr. Emery was at the institute only a
little over two years and a half, not including
the year when he was absent on
account of an attack of typhoid fever. In
1858 he graduated with the degree of
Civil Engineer in the first section of a
class of forty-eight. He defrayed part
of the expense of his course by teaching
topographical drawing in the school, his
pupils including the graduating class.
The first professional work which engaged
the attention of Mr. Emery was the
erection of a church steeple in his native
town of Mexico, New York. This was
considered by local contractors almost
impossible, but Mr. Emery did not find
the task a difficult one. In the summer of
1859 Mr. Emery went to Washington and
took out two patents on cheese presses.
In the fall of 1859 he became acquainted
with G. B. Lamar, of Savannah, Georgia,
for whom he built a cotton packing press
and also designed two compressors for
compressing cotton. They had a capacity
of two thousand bales in twenty hours
with a pressure of five hundred tons on
each bale, but Mr. Lamar's needs changed
and the compressors were never built.
Later Mr. Emery formed a partnership
with Mr. Lamar, by the terms of which
he was to furnish the patents and Mr.
Lamar the money to build and sell cotton
packing presses and compresses. This
was in the autumn of 1859. The first press
was built in Brooklyn, whence it was
shipped South. They were planning to
put one hundred agents in the field, but
Mr. Lamar was conscious of the fast approaching
upheaval and desired to pro-