Obed Hussey was of Quaker stock, born in Maine in 1792 and early removed to Nantucket, Mass. When young, like all Nantucket boys, he had a desire to go to sea, and made one or two whaling voyages. He was of quiet and retiring disposition, studious, thoughtful, with a strong bent for studying intricate mechanical contrivances. Little is known of his early life and there is none living who knew him at that time. He was a skillful draftsman and incessant worker at different inventions all his life. He invented a successful steam plow, for which he obtained a medal in the West. He also invented a machine for grinding out hooks and eyes, a mill for grinding corn and cobs, a husking machine run by horse power, the "iron finger bar," a machine for crushing sugar cane, a machine for making artificial ice, and other devices of more or less note. His chief characteristic seems to have been an extremely sensitive, modest and unassuming personality. It was this reticence which has served to keep him in the background as the inventor of the reaper. He was unwilling to push himself forward, and his claim to distinction has had to rest solely upon the merits of his greatest invention. Mr. Hussey first began work on his reaper in a room at the factory of Richard B. Chenoweth, a manufacturer of agricultural implements, and the story of those early efforts is told by Sarah A. Chenoweth, a granddaughter of the latter: [Sidenote: Early Efforts] "As a child, it seemed that I had always known Mr. Hussey. I saw him every day of my life, for he lived in a room, the use of which my grandfather, Richard B. Chenoweth, a manufacturer of agricultural implements in Baltimore City, had given him at his factory. No grown person was allowed to enter, for in this room he spent most of his time making patterns for the perfecting of his reaper. I, unforbidden, was his constant visitor, and asked him numberless questions, one of which, I remember, was why he washed and dried his dishes with shavings. His reply was characteristic of himself, 'Shavings are clean.' [Sidenote: First Trial]