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The Singer Will Lawsuits

Upon his death in 1875, Isaac Merrit Singer left an estate of approximately $14 million. He also left two wives to whom he had been legally married, a common-law wife, and two mistresses, and with these women he had twenty-two children whom he recognized as his own. Singer did not divide his wealth evenly among his children. To some he left a large inheritance, to others he left very little, while others were entirely excluded. He left the largest shares of his fortune, as well as his Oldway Mansion, to his six children by his last wife, Isabella. His sons from this marriage received more money than his daughters. His children from his first marriage, William and Lillian, received very small amounts of money, with William inheriting $10,000 and Lillian receiving only $500. Among his wives and mistresses, he left money only to Isabella, his wife at the time of his death.

With so much money involved, several of his children, wives, and mistresses filed lawsuits against the estate. These suits resulted in years of litigation and were often without a valid claim to Singer’s fortune. One of the most curious of the lawsuits was that of his common-law wife, Mary Ann Sponsler. In 1875, she sued the estate, alleging that she was Singer’s lawful widow because she had lived with him for seven months after his divorce from his first wife, Catharine Haley, and was therefore his wife according to common law. Sponsler based her claim on the grounds that she had not been granted a divorce from Singer when she sued him for divorce after discovering his infidelity with his employee and mistress, Mary McGonigal. Therefore, she claimed, she was Singer’s wife at the time he married Isabella. Sponsler made her allegations despite the fact that she had married John E. Foster in 1862, and at that time declared herself an unmarried woman. The lawsuits against Singer’s will reflect his chaotic and unorthodox lifestyle, which caused him to be barred from polite society, notwithstanding his immense wealth.

Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy

Isaac Merrit Singer

by Shawncey Webb

American inventor, industrialist, and actor

Singer earned his wealth by patenting and producing a popular sewing machine. A former actor with a flamboyant and unorthodox lifestyle, he understood how to advertise and market his products, devising an innovative plan for selling sewing machines on credit.

Sources of wealth: Patents; manufacturing; sale of products

Bequeathal of wealth: Spouse; children

Early Life

Isaac Merrit Singer was born in Pittstown, New York, on October 27, 1811, the seventh son of Adam Singer and his wife Ruth Benson Singer. His father had immigrated from Germany and is believed to have been Jewish. Singer’s parents divorced when he was ten years old. His father remarried, and difficulties developed between Singer and his stepmother. At the age of twelve, Singer went to live with his elder brother in Otsego County, New York. His brother had a machine shop, where Singer began working and learned the machinist trade.

In 1830, Singer married Catharine Maria Haley. They moved to New York City in 1831 but returned to Otsego County two years later. Singer found work at the machine shop of George Pomeroy. In 1836, having decided that he would rather be an actor than a machinist, he joined a touring company of actors. He and his wife were again living in New York City in 1837. During this time, they had two children, William and Lillian. Singer had also fathered a child with Mary Ann Sponsler, whom he had met while on tour.

First Ventures

While Singer preferred acting to the machinist trade, the acting profession did not provide him and his family with an adequate and dependable living. Thus, he returned to the machinist trade. He invented a rock-drilling machine for which he obtained a patent in 1839. He sold the patent for $2,000 and returned to acting. He formed a company called the Merrit Players, using the name Isaac Merrit as his stage name. Sponsler, the woman he had met on his earlier tour and with whom he was living at the time, performed with the Merrit Players. The company toured for five years until 1849. By then, his patent money was exhausted, and Singer once again stopped acting. He took a job in a print shop in Fredericksburg, Ohio.

Isaac Merrit Singer.

ph_gliw-Singer1.jpg

(Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Two years later, he went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he set up a shop of his own. He began working on the invention of a machine for carving both wood and metal. In 1849, he received a patent for such a machine. He went back to New York City and found employment with A. B. Taylor and Company, and while there he developed a woodblock-cutting machine. This machine, as well as the shop, was destroyed when a steam boiler blew up. Fortunately for Singer, Orson Phelps was familiar with Singer’s machine, and Phelps offered Singer a job in his Boston shop. In 1850, Singer moved to Boston and built another woodblock-cutting machine. The new machine was not a success.

At this time, Phelps’s shop manufactured sewing machines for the Leroy and Blodgett Company. These machines were neither easy to build nor easy to use. Hoping for some improvement, Phelps, who admired Singer’s skill as a machinist, had him examine the machine’s design. Singer improved the machine, replacing its curved needles with straight ones and changing the mechanism of the shuttle from a straight-line to a circular movement.

Mature Wealth

Singer received a patent on his improved design for a sewing machine on August 12, 1851. Singer and Phelps then went into partnership with George B. Zieber, who provided the financial backing, and formed the Jenny Lind Sewing Machine Company. Singer soon had another partner, Edward C. Clark, a New York lawyer whose business skill would enable the company to be a success. The partners also renamed the firm I. M. Singer & Co.

Shortly after forming his company, Singer became involved in patent lawsuits. There were several other companies with various patents producing rival sewing machines. In 1856, the sewing machine manufacturers, with the exception of Elias Howe, met in Albany, New York. The manufacturers were well aware that they were spending a considerable portion of their profits on litigation. Orlando B. Potter, the president of the Grover and Baker Company, suggested a solution to the problem: the pooling of patents, which would permit all of the companies to produce sewing machines without patent infringement conflicts. There was unanimous agreement to the proposal, and shortly thereafter, Howe also accepted the plan and the Sewing Machine Combination was formed. This agreement initiated the mass production of sewing machines.

Singer’s first sewing machine.

ph_gliw-Singer2.jpg

(Getty Images)

While Singer could not be credited with inventing the sewing machine, he was recognized as producing the most practical machine. He produced two versions of his machine. He manufactured a large machine, which was suitable for use by tailors, as well as shoe cobblers, since it was able to sew through leather. He also manufactured a smaller sewing machine, called the Turtle Back Machine, for use in the home. From 1851 to 1865, Singer continuously improved his sewing machine, and by 1865 he had patented twenty improvements to his product. Two of the most important of these were the continuous wheel feed and the yielding pressure foot.

I. M. Singer & Co. grew rapidly, and on the suggestion of Clark the firm moved from Boston to New York City. In 1860, the company, located at Mott Street in New York City, produced 13,000 sewing machines, compared with only 2,564 four years earlier. With his flair for drama and his vivid imagination, Singer developed innovative ways of bringing his product to the attention of all classes of society. He appeared at fairs and outdoor gatherings and personally demonstrated his sewing machine. He also sang a special tune, “The Shirt Song,” to advertise his product. To reach the upper echelons of society, he hosted gala balls in New York. At these balls, attractive women were seated at sewing machines strategically placed throughout the venue, and they demonstrated the ease of sewing with a Singer machine.

Just as Singer was creative in promoting his product, he was also innovative in his sales methods. For those who could not afford to pay cash for a sewing machine, he offered the “hire purchase plan,” enabling customers to make a $5 down payment, take the machine home, and then pay the rest of the price in monthly installments of $3. Singer was one of the first to offer this credit installment plan. By 1860, Singer was a millionaire as the result of his firm’s success.

In 1863, I. M. Singer & Co. was reorganized both financially and structurally and was renamed the Singer Manufacturing Company. Singer himself no longer played an active role in the company but retained 40 percent of the stock and served on the board of trustees. In 1867, the company entered the European market with the establishment of a factory in Clydebank, Scotland. Subsequent factories were established in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and near Paris, France, making the Singer Manufacturing Company one of the first American firms to operate internationally.

Singer’s immense wealth enabled him to own several mansions, with the most elaborate one being Oldway Mansion in Paignton near Torquay, England. When he purchased this English property in 1871, it was the site of the Fernham estate. Singer tore down all of the estate’s buildings and hired the architect George Soudon Bridgman to build a magnificent mansion with 115 rooms. Singer lived there until his death from heart failure on July 23, 1875. He was buried in the Torquay cemetery. At the time of his death, Singer had twenty-two acknowledged children from two wives, a common-law wife, and two mistresses, and he left an estate worth approximately $14 million.

Legacy

Isaac Merrit Singer acquired his wealth through his exceptional talent as a machinist who quickly realized how to improve a design and who tenaciously sought further refinements. He was also an astute businessman with a good sense of a product’s marketability and a knowledge of sales techniques. By developing the Singer sewing machine and a company that would eventually market his product worldwide, Singer provided customers with a product that was useful in both the home and in some businesses. As one of the innovators of a credit plan with monthly installment payments, he helped increase the purchasing power of the wage earner and changed the structure of buying and selling merchandise. His Oldway Mansion in England, now opened to the public, provides cultural and artistic insights to visitors.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Webb, Shawncey. "Isaac Merrit Singer." Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy, edited by Howard Bromberg, Salem Press, 2010. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLIW_1366369001366.

APA 7th

Webb, S. (2010). Isaac Merrit Singer. In H. Bromberg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Webb, Shawncey. "Isaac Merrit Singer." Edited by Howard Bromberg. Great Lives from History: The Incredibly Wealthy. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2010. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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