The Earle family : Ralph Earle and his descendants

Gen.] GENEALOGY. 225
Worcester, have also been mentioned. When this company was
formed Timothy K. was still in his minority, and neither of its members
had any practical experience in the business.* But Timothy K.
was endowed with a large share of that mechanical ingenuity which
had previously appeared in several members of the family. He was
quick of perception, apt to learn, industrious, energetic, and perse-
vering, and not devoid, withal, of a justifiable ambition ; while
Edward was a careful and prudent financier, who had acquired a
knowledge of mercantile principles and methods from his experience
in another line of business, and who possessed a constitutional calmness
and soundness of judgment, matured by years and improved by
practice.
Thus equipped at the beginning, Timothy K. devoted himself to
the work with a degree of assiduity and activity indicative not only
of a mind which " acknowledges no criterion but success," but pro-
phetic of the assurance of that success. It is not our intention, as
not necessarily our province, to give a detailed account of the busi-
ness of T. K. Earle & Co., or of the steps by which their establishment
was enlarged until it became, as it still continues to be, the
most extensive of its kind in the United States. Edward Earle retired
from it in 1S69, and his interest was purchased by his half-brother,
Thomas, who died in 1871. In 1872, Edwin Brown, of Worcester,
son-in-law of T. K. Earle, became a partner; and in 1880 a company,
under the name " The T. K. Earle Manufacturing Company,"
was organized, with T. K. Earle as president and Edwin Brown as
agent and treasurer. Of Timothy K. it has been justly said :
" Quick to recognize ability in others, and to appreciate what was
needed in his business, he always associated with himself employes
and mechanics of only the highest ability."
* In the " History of the American Card-Clothing Industry," by H. G. Kit-
tredge and A. C. Gould, it is stated (p. 16) in regard to Timothy K. Earle,
that " at sixteen years of age he commenced the business of card-making with
his uncle, Silas Earle, and in a few years purchased his business." The asser-
tion in the first clause of the quotation is wholly a mistake, of which there is
abundant proof. Timothy K. was never in business with his uncle Silas, not
even as an employe ; nor was he ever employed, during his uncle's life, in any
other card manufactory. After the death of Silas, his son Timothy, as stated
on page 115, sold his father's machinery to his cousin, Timothy K. Earle, and
Reuben Randall, and Randall's interest, after some transfers, went into the
hands of Edward Earle.
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