Elijah McCoy: Edinburgh-trained engineer hired as a fireman and oiler (Ypsilanti / Detroit, MI, 1859–1920)
Record: the document says itPattern: documents line upLens: our readingOpen: not yet provenDisputed: argued, often by a hostile witness
Year: 1859 · Places: Europe
SUMMARYElijah McCoy: Edinburgh-trained engineer hired as a fireman and oiler (Ypsilanti / Detroit, MI, 1859–1920) [Connections: Tech & skilled labor, Nov 5, 2026]
RECORDWikipedia says McCoy's parents, George and Mildred Goins McCoy, were "fugitive slaves" who fled Kentucky to Upper Canada by way of Detroit in 1837. At 15 (1859) he went to Scotland, apprenticed, studied at the University of Edinburgh and was certified as a mechanical engineer. Back in Michigan he could find work only as a fireman and oiler on the Michigan Central Railroad. He patented an automatic lubricator in 1872 (US 129,843) and obtained as many as 57 patents. He lacked the capital to manufacture, so he usually assigned patent rights to employers or sold them to investors, and he formed his own company only in 1920. STATUS: free (wage worker; inventor); his parents were formerly enslaved, self-emancipated (per Wikipedia)
PATTERNA certified engineer was placed in a manual job, and the patents went to whoever had the capital
DISPUTEDWikipedia says the "real McCoy" story is a false etymology, first linked to him in a 1966 Ebony bourbon ad, and that the phrase came from Scotland
LENS (WW9)The engineer with the papers was put on the coal shovel
OPENThe assignment records for his patents (who held them)
SOURCEWikipedia, "Elijah McCoy" (cites Railroad Gazette 1872, the Detroit Historical Society and others).