Christopher Spencer Obituary

Christopher Spencer

Born June 20^th 1833

Died January 14^th 1922

I just came across this on while doing some biography research on Christopher Spencer.  Its his New York Times Obituary from 1922.  I'm sorry I didn't have this last Sunday (January 15).

Christopher Spencer was one of those "dirty mechanics" that the Southern aristocracy so derided and despised.  You can consider him  a "geek" of the industrial revolution.

Margret Mitchell (Gone With The Wind, ch8) best pointed out how dangerous despising those "dirty mechanics" would be: 

"The South produced statesmen and soldiers, planters and doctors, lawyers and poets, but certainly not engineers or mechanics. Let the Yankees adopt such low callings. But now the Confederate ports were stoppered with Yankee gunboats, only a trickle of blockade-run goods was slipping in from Europe, and the South was desperately trying to manufacture her own war materials. The North could call on the whole world for supplies and for soldiers, and thousands of Irish and Germans were pouring into the Union Army, lured by the bounty money offered by the North. The South could only turn in upon itself."

A fitting epitaph to Spencer and all those Union "mechanics" that won the war.  Never pays to make fun of geeks.