A history of the city of Rochester The Post-Express Printing Co. 1895

      Daniel Azro Woodbury was born in Baltimore, Windsor County Vt., 12 Apr, 1827. A mechanical engineer and inventor, he founded the steam engine works of D. A. Woodbury & Co., Woodbury, Booth & Co., W. B. Pryor and Woodbury Engine Co.

      The fame of the Woodbury steam engine has gone around the world carrying to the most remote quarters of the globe the name of the city where its manufacture was long one of the most important branches of industry. Daniel A. Woodbury, founder of the manufactory, was born at Baltimore, Windsor County, Vermont, April 12, 1827, and is a descendant of John Woodbury, who came to America from England in 1624. In 1840 he moved to Whitehall, New York, with his parents, Jonathan Woodbury and his wife Sally Frost. Four years later he left home to learn the machinist trade, his chosen occupation, and in 1848 he came to Rochester, where he has ever since resided. In 1851 he began the manufacture of steam engines in the Rochester Novelty Works building, 10-12 Hill Street, reducing the work to a system and devoting his attention entirely to that work. He introduced important improvements in the construction of steam engines and was one of the first to increase the speed and shorten the stroke of the piston, an innovation which has since become the universal practice. He also adopted ahead of nearly all other manufacturers the horizontal tubular boiler with return flues, a feature of great value in the steam boiler, and one which, in addition to other points of superiority in the Woodbury engine led to the marked success of its maker.

      D. A. Woodbury & Co. have one of the most remarkable Steam Engine establishments in the United States. In 1851 this firm astonished the makers of steam engines by publishing and offering a list of certain sizes, ranging from ten to thirty-five horsepower, at prices much below any that had ever been heard of before. This they were enabled to do by building a large quantity of each size at one time and confining their attention to one article of manufacture. Their workshops are conducted upon the English plan, each workman having a limited and uniform range of duty throughout the year. The principle upon which they commenced business secured the favor of the public, and their Engines are so popular both in the United States and in the Canadas, that though they designed to keep a largo stock of finished Engines on hand at all times, the demand has outstripped their facilities for manufacturing. Messrs. Woodbury & Co. are about erecting new and more commodious workshops.

      Mr. Woodbury's business was well established when he took his father and E. F. Woodbury, his brother, into partnership with him. James E. Booth and Henry H. Pryor subsequently became associated with him under the firm names of D. A. Woodbury & Company; Woodbury, Booth & Company; Woodbury, Booth & Pryor; and the Woodbury Engine company. In 1891 the business in this city was closed, the patterns, patents and good will of the company having been sold to the Stearns Manufacturing Company of Erie, Pennsylvania, where the engines covered by the Woodbury patents are still made under the old name.

Woodbury, Booth & Pryor Manufacturers of engines and boilers, 138, 140 And 142 Mill Street.

      Founded in 1875, one of the most extensive establishments in Rochester devoted to the building of horizontal stationary engines and boilers is that of Woodbury, Booth & Pryor, whose extensive shops, located on Mill street, consist of a number of substantial buildings erected by the firm and perfectly adapted to their business. The most important of these are the machine shop, a three-story stone structure 60x92 feet in dimensions; the stone boiler I shop, 44x78 feet, with a brick annex 80x20 feet; the foundry, the pattern shop and the| blacksmith shop. These buildings are all substantially constructed, and are supplied with a full equipment of the finest and most improved machinery. The products of the works are horizontal stationary steam engines and boilers. These are made in a number of sizes, in a thoroughly workmanlike manner, of the best materials and with strict regard to true mechanical principles. The object aimed at in the construction of these engines has been simplicity, strength, durability and perfection of operations, and the results attained seem to leave nothing to be desired. It is by no means our province to decide questions of superiority, but simply to state facts, and a prominent one in this connection is that these works have produced over 100,000 horse power of their horizontal stationary engines and toilers, which have been shipped to all parts of the United States, and in every instance have justified all claims made for them by the manufacturers. .

      This house was founded in 1851 by Mr. D. A. Woodbury, and it has grown to be one of the largest concerns of the kind in the Empire State. The individual members of the present are Messrs. Daniel A. Woodbury, Jas. E. Booth and Henry H. Pryor; they are among the best known and most prominent business men of Rochester, and their enterprise, which is a monument to their energy and ability, is a credit to the city forming the site of its operations.

      Woodbury, Booth & Co.

This company is known to have made steam engines in the 1860s. Frank H. Clement, an important maker of woodworking machinery, worked for them early in his career.

      The fame of the Woodbury steam engine has gone around the world carrying to the most remote quarters of the globe the name of the city where its manufacture was long one of the most important branches of industry. Daniel A. Woodbury, founder of the manufactory, was born at Baltimore, Windsor County,Vermont, April 12, 1827, and is a descendant of John Woodbury, who came to America from England in 1624. In 1840 he moved to Whitehall, New York, with his parents, Jonathan Woodbury and his wife Sally Frost. Four years later he left home to learn the machinist trade, his chosen occupation, and in 1848 he came to Rochester, where he has ever since resided. In 1851 he began the manufacture of steam engines, reducing the work to a system and devoting his attention entirely to that work. He introduced important improvements in the construction of steam engines and was one of the first to increase the speed and shorten the stroke of the piston, an innovation which has since become the universal practice. He also adopted ahead of nearly all other manufacturers the horizontal tubular boiler with return flues, a feature of great value in the steam boiler, and one which, in addition to other points of superiority in the Woodbury engine led to the marked success of its maker.

      Mr. Woodbury's business was well established when he took his father and E. F. Woodbury, his brother, into partnership with him. James E. Booth and Henry H. Pryor subsequently became associated with him under the firm names of D. A. Woodbury & Company; Woodbury, Booth & Company; Woodbury, Booth & Pryor; and the Woodbury Engine company. In 1891 the business in this city was closed, the patterns, patents and good will of the company having been sold to the Stearns manufacturing company of Erie, Pennsylvania, where the engines covered by the Woodbury patents are still made under the old name. Mr. Woodbury was always a staunch, somewhat independent, Republican, who never aspired to hold political office but represented the Second ward in the Common Council in 1860-2. His activities outside of his business have in the main been in the direction of church and Sunday school work. For nearly half of his life he has been a trustee and member of the executive committee of the Rochester Theological seminary. Mr. Woodbury's health became so impaired ten years ago that he gave up all business and has since passed much of his time in home and foreign travel. He was married in 1854 to Miss Minerva C. Boughton of Rochester, who died in 1892, leaving two sons, Willis E. and Edward J. Woodbury of this city. It is a tradition in the family that Peter Woodbury, an ancestor who was born at Sutton, Massachusetts, in 1736, was with two other members of the family in the battle of Bunker Hill, and that several of the members were soldiers in the Revolutionary war.

      Rochester owes much of its prominence as a manufacturing city to the excellent facilities it enjoys for receiving coal, iron and lumber at low rates of freight, by reason of the competing railroad lines centering here, the Erie canal and the close proximity of Lake Ontario. These advantages and the enterprising character of her business men have combined to build up here manufacturing establishments the peers of any in the character and extent of their operations.

      One of the most extensive establishments in Rochester devoted to the building of horizontal stationary engines and boilers is that of Messrs.. Woodbury, Booth & Pryor, whose extensive shops, located on Mill street, consist of a number of substantial buildings erected by the firm and perfectly adapted to their business. The most important of these are the machine shop, a three-story stone structure 60x92 feet in dimensions; the stone boiler shop, 44x78 feet, with a brick annex 80x20 feet; the foundry, the pattern shop and the blacksmith shop. These buildings are all substantially constructed, and are supplied with a full equipment of the finest and most improved machinery.

      The products of the works are horizontal stationary steam engines and boilers. These are made in a number of sizes, in a thoroughly workmanlike manner, of the best materials and with strict regard to true mechanical principles. The object aimed at in the construction of these engines has been simplicity, strength, durability and perfection of operations, and the results attained seem to leave nothing to be desired. It is by no means our province to decide questions of superiority, but simply to state facts, and a prominent one in this connection is that these works have produced over 100,000 horse power of their horizontal stationary engines and toilers, which have been shipped to all parts of the United States, and in every instance have justified all claims made for them by the manufacturers.

      This house was founded in 1851 by Mr. D. A. Woodbury, and it has grown to be one of the largest concerns of the kind in the Empire State. The individual members of the present are Messrs. D. A. Woodbury, Jas. E. Booth and Henry H. Pryor; they are among the best known and most prominent business men of Rochester, and their enterprise, which is a monument to their energy and ability, is a credit to the city forming the site of its operations.

     On the 31st of December, 1884, articles of incorporation of the Woodbury Engine Company, as successors to Woodbury, Booth & Pryor, engine and boiler manufacturers, were filed in the county clerk’s office, in Rochester, N. Y. The trustees and directors for the first year were named, as follows: D. A. Woodbury, J. E. Booth, Henry H. Pryor, W. A. Montgomery and W. J. Creelman. The capital stock by these articles is fixed at $115,000, divided into 1,150 shares of $100 each. The life of the charter is named at 50 years and the officers of the new company are: Henry H. Pryor, president; J. E. Booth, vice-president; W. A. Montgomery, secretary, and W. J. Creelman, mechanical engineer. Although the name of the firm and the form of the organization are new, there is reality but little change. D. A. Woodbury established the original engine and boiler business in 1851, and a year or two later admitted his father, Jonathan Woodbury, to partnership and also his brother, Edmund F. Woodbury, now a member of the firm Strong, Woodbury & Co., whip manufacturers. The style of the firm was D. A. Woodbury & Co., and that name continued up to 1865, when it became Woodbury, Booth & Co. Ten years later, it was changed to Woodbury, Booth & Pryor.

Information Sources

• October 1852 The Cultivator lists "Award of Premiums" from the 1852 State Agricultural Fair held at Utica, NY, including D. A. Woodbury & Co. of Rochester, who won a Silver Medal for his steam engine. From 1853 Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York, page 155: "Two stationary steam engines were examined, manufactured by D. A. Woodbury & Co., Rochester, N. Y. They deserved consideration for compactness and superior mechanism, but no new principle was contended for. The committee can only recommend them as a very perfect and cheap article of the steam engine. There was no competition. Silver Medal."
• 1860 Transactions of the New-York State Agricultural Society for the Year 1859. "Class 4. D. A. Woodbury, Rochester.—Steam engine well got up for this style of engine, and sold at the low price of $75; the horse power with boilers all complete." The engine was awarded a silver medal.
• American ancestry: Volume 7 - Page 61 Thomas Patrick Hughes, Frank Munsell 1892
• The industrial advance of Rochester National Publishing Co. 1884
• A history of the city of Rochester The Post-Express Printing Co. 1895, pg. 154
• A history of American manufactures, from 1608 to 1860 V II
• American Steam Engine Builders: 1800-1900 by Kenneth L. Cope, 2006 page 277
• Mechanics Magazine, Feb., 1885, pg. 64