Weighing the World: How one family in St. Johnsbury changed the course of history

By Peggy Pearl

In 19th century Vermont, necessity was often the mother of invention. Isolated from large cities and challenged by a rugged climate, Vermont became a hotbed for inventors solving practical problems. This knack for creative problem-solving helped turn Vermont into a world-leader in a particular industry: scales.

Produced by the St. Johnsbury History & Heritage Center, Fairbanks Scales: Weighing the World is a new exhibit on display at the Vermont History Museum’s Local History Gallery. It explores how a large scale led to large-scale changes in how the world does business and how one family changed the course of history in St. Johnsbury, VT.

That family was the Fairbanks brothers: Erastus was the businessman, Thaddeus was the inventor, and Joseph was the salesman. In 1815, the brothers built a sawmill, a gristmill, and a wagon shop in St. Johnsbury, and a decade later, Erastus and Thaddeus formed the E.&T. Fairbanks Company to manufacture and sell stoves and plows. They didn’t stop there – in 1829, the brothers and their partners founded the Passumpsic Hemp Works. Soon, they began encountering problems, as weighing wagonloads of hemp was difficult and time consuming.

Thaddeus came up with a solution: a scale that used a platform and levers. With the platform at ground level and the levers in a pit underneath, an operator could drive a wagonload of hemp onto the platform to be weighed. Once empty, the wagon would be weighed again. With the difference subtracted, the operator easily could figure out the weight of their cargo. Almost overnight, the platform scale was a success, and its simplicity and accuracy would lead to the Fairbanks Scale weighing the world.

As the business expanded, up to forty E.&T. Fairbanks buildings stood along the banks of the Sleepers River in St. Johnsbury, with company offices in Boston and New York. The United States Post Office ordered 3,000 postal scales, which the company filled in just eight days. Orders poured in from all over the world, and between 1846 and 1860, Fairbanks scales were reaching customers in China, Cuba, the Caribbean, South America, India, and Russia. At the time of the Civil War, its scales were some of the best known American made products in the world.

In 1874, the company was incorporated as the Fairbanks Scale Company, and by 1885, the thousand workers in its St. Johnsbury factory were producing 70,000 scales annually. The company held 113 patents for new innovations and advancements in the industry and was producing 2,000 different products, from scales that could weigh pieces of paper to locomotives. Because of the company, St. Johnsbury played a major role in the Industrial Revolution, while the philanthropy of the Fairbanks family has left its mark on the town. Twelve years after the invention of the platform scale, the brothers established the St. Johnsbury Academy, while their children helped found the Fairbanks Museum and the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum. Their leadership and legacy can still be
seen in some of the homes, churches, and other public buildings in the town. 

In 1916, Charles Hosmer Morse, a St. Johnsbury native and Fairbanks Scales employee, acquired control of the company. In the decades that followed, the company underwent a series of mergers and acquisitions, before the Norden family acquired it in 1988 and moved its executive offices to Kansas City, Missouri. The company has expanded worldwide, and to this day it still runs a factory in St. Johnsbury. Fairbanks: Weighing the World will feature a number of scales alongside photographs, documents, and other ephemera that tell the story of St. Johnsbury and the entrepreneurs who transformed it.

This exhibit was on view at the Vermont History Museum from March 2 through July 27, 2024.

This article originally appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of our member magazine, History Connections. To get it and support the Vermont Historical Society, sign up as a member.