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ORRIN HENRY INGRAM
to Mr. Gilmore he was convinced it would work all right and
told me to go to the machine shop in Ottawa that did work for
them. I ordered five machines, three for the mills at the Gat-
ineau and two for other mills, which proved to be a grand suc-
cess.
             A REJECTED OPPORTUNITY
   The following winter Mr. Gilmore was in Quebec, and
John Hamilton, M. P., of Hamilton Brothers, of Hawksburg,
sixty miles below Ottawa, where they had large mills, met Mr.
Gilmore and told him their millwright, a Mr. Lawler, had de-
vised a great improvement for edging lumber, and that he was
there with the model to make application for a patent. Mr.
Hamilton told Mr. Gilmore something about the machine as
he understood it, and Mr. Gilmore replied, "Why, Mr. Hamil-
ton, Mr. Lawler has no right to a patent on that edger; Mr.
Ingram put three or four of them into our mills a year ago, and
Mr. Lawler must have seen what he was working at in the ma-
chine shop at Ottawa, or he never would have gotten -up a ma-
chine like that. He certainly saw one like that you have de-
scribed in our mills." Mr. Hamilton replied, if that was the
case, he could not have a patent, and he told Lawler that that
edger was already in use, and that he could not have a patent
on it. Mr. Lawler returned home in the spring, after our mills
were started at the Gatineau, and came to see me. I had met
him once or twice, once in Ottawa, and once at Hawkesburg, at
Hamilton mills. After looking over the mills, and as we were
crossing the bridge between them, and were leaning over a rail-
ing at a point where I proposed putting in a resawing machine,
he took a large envelope from his pocket and said to me, "Mr.
Ingram, I feel that this belongs to you, instead of me." Ask-
ing him what it was, he said it was an application for a patent
on that gang-edger. I told him I had no idea of getting a
patent, that I had had it in use over a year, had it made in a
machine shop in Ottawa, and that he had no right to a patent;
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