Sewing Machine called, “The Denver”? I have Questions!

My grandma has this beautiful treadle sewing machine, with its original manual, but ZERO information on the year or even a company name!

Does anyone know anything about this?

 

Hello @Shanell & welcome to the forum!!

I am going to tag a member who may be able to help you. I believe he lives in Australia so it may be tomorrow before he gets the tag.

Where are you located?

@Shangas

 

Thanks! I’m having a lot of fun looking through all the treasures my grandma has kept over the years. I’m thankful I found this forum. Hopefully I can get some direction here.

I am in the middle of the US in Nebraska.

 

I would think there is a manufacturer name in the original booklet of directions. Maybe an address if lucky.

Here's one named Iowa ...
https://denver-co.americanlisted.com/art-antiques/antique-treadle-sewing-machine-240_28214069.html

It must have been a "thing" to name them after places, here's Minnesota ...
https://atbquilting.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/vintage-friday-minnesota-l-treadle-sewing-machine/

 

I just noticed....can you read what it says along that maybe one inch wide steel plate near the needle....that runs front to back--if it might be helpful??​

 

I have a serial number: 1866119

The manual has no information on the company. There’s a blank box on the front page that you can see if you zoom in a bit on that photo.

I wonder if it was similar to “The Iowa” and was made for Sears and Roebuck… it’s a direction to look anyway, so thanks!

 

Ooh I don’t think I got a good photo of that part. I will have to inspect that a little closer next time I see it in person!

I do have what I believe is the serial number, but not sure how helpful that will be if I don’t have a company direction .

 

The green booklet says Singer, but it may not relate to the machine.

 

Look for patent numbers/years too. Sometimes there is information on the flat vertical plate where the needle goes up and down.

 

The machine is a vibrating-shuttle model, probably from the turn of the last century.

It was really common to manufacture machines and sell them onto department-stores and sewing-shops and stuff like that, and to pay a little extra to get your own shop or company's name printed on the mahcine-body or stamped onto the badge. Called "private label" or "rebadged" machines.

I'm not familiar with this EXACT model, but the general styling looks to be early 1900s, likely before WWI. I don't see anything here that would link it to a specific manufacturer, but there were loads of them in the USA in the 1800s and early 1900s.

Just off the top of my head:

New Home, Gibbs & Wilcox, Wheeler & Wilson, Singer, White, National, etc, etc, etc, etc. Sewing machines were big business in the late 1800s.

Provided you have all the parts, and the machine takes standard domestic machine-needles (which haven't changed significantly since the 1880s), it should still be operational. Killing these machines is harder than nuking Freddy Kruger.

 

JMHO. looks like a normal Singer. Denver perhaps the Model name for an individual distributor ?
https://ismacs.net/singer_sewing_ma...er-sewing-machine-serial-number-database.html

 

It's not a Singer. Singer branded their stuff all over up the wazhoo. If it was a Singer, you'd know.

That, and as far as I know, Singer never did rebadged/private-label machines.

 

OK. Did some late-night Google-searching.

And I THINK that it is a DAVIS SEWING MACHINE COMPANY machine, or even a STANDARD sewing machine company machine.

They both produced machines for Sears & Roebuck mail-order catalogs, with their machines given various names or titles, like the Minnesota, the Paragon, etc etc etc.

They all have the same very square-looking slide-plates and needle-plate at the base of the machine underneath the needle mechanism, with the semicircular cutouts on the plates to grip them with.

As I suspected, such a machine would date to around 1900, but being more precise than that would be pretty difficult, without looking up patent-dates.



Here's a DAVIS sewing machine from the early 1900s. Identical plates, identical bobbin-winder, but it doesn't have the front-mounted tension springs. As you can see, the company rebadged their machines like crazy, so this is about as close as you're going to get to finding out the actual manufacturer.

As I said, there were dozens and dozens of little-little sewing machine factories in the USA at the turn of the century, so there would've been loads of tiny variations between machine-models, even within the same company.

Just to take Singer as an example - you have the 28, the 27, the 128, the 127...and they all vary slightly, but they are still the same essential machine.

 

always reminds me of af that used them as anker because nobody wanted them anymore.

 

Thank you! This is helpful. I wish I had the machine here with me, but I will post an update after I’m able to check!

 

I wondered if this may be the case, because “the Denver” sounds more like a model name than a company. I appreciate you taking the time to educate me on this! I’m fascinated by historical things, and I really enjoying getting more connection to this stuff!

 

Yeah "model names" were definitely a thing. I have a sewing machine made in Germany by the Wertheim Sewing Machine Company, which was based in Frankfurt.

It's called "THE PLANET".

There's no such thing as the Planet Sewing Machine Co., but the badge on the side of the machine says "WERTHEIM", so it's a Wertheim 'Planet' sewing machine.

So yeah, it can get a bit confusing. "The Denver" is, like you say, likely a model name. So it'd be like:

"These are the newest models offered by the Davis Sewing Machine Co. - The Chicago, the Denver, the Manhattan..." etc etc, all named after cities, or whatever.

Usually, sewing machines were numbered or lettered (Singer 99, Singer 66, 28, 12, 201, the Minnesota A., B, C, etc, and so on), but 'model names' also appear to have been a thing, although I think that practice was less common.

 

Thank you! Oooh I love to learn new things, I’m just giddy about this, so I am just excited and thankful to have found people who are willing to share such knowledge with me. It feels like treasure hunting a little! The benefit may not be monetary, but that feeling of connection to the past and the little window it gives us into a life that was completely different than what we know now in modern society.

 

Also dollars to donuts, if someone knows how to recondition that machine it wouldn't take much to get it into running order. And off it would got for another 100 years. Those old treadles were TOUGH.