John Sawyer, Joseph B., Catharine H., Mary W., and Aurelia M. Sawyer. From childhood Sylvanus showed great mechanical ingenuity; while he was a lad, he invented a
reed organ. Due to an injury at age 12, he and his brother Joseph established a shop in East Templeton, where they manufactured chair cane with it. In the following December, the American Rattan Company was formed to use their machine, and erected a large shop in
Fitchburg, Massachusetts. and, besides serving as director, was manager of the company's shop. His inventions were said to have entirely revolutionized the chair cane business, transferring it from southern India, China, and the Netherlands to the United States. These included the placing of a coating of lead or other soft metal on the rear and sides of the shell, which was expanded laterally by the discharge and prevented the "windage" or passage of gas by the projectile, also filling the grooves of the rifling and obviating the use of helical projections. An arrangement of a
percussion cap insured the explosion of the shell on impact. for
Major General Wool at the Rip Raps (
Fort Calhoun), 1861 In 1857–58, with his brother Addison, Sawyer conducted experiments on his invention, at his own expense, for the benefit of the
U.S. Ordnance Bureau. The 24-pounders designed by Sawyer were mounted at
Newport News, Virginia, with one on the
Rip Raps (Fort Calhoun, later
Fort Wool) in mid-1861. The gun at Fort Wool was the only land-based Union gun in
Hampton Roads that could reach the
Confederate Sewell's Point battery, a distance of two miles, which it did with great accuracy, damaging the railroad iron-clad batteries. A 32-pounder (or 30-pounder) Sawyer rifle (of 12-pounder (4.62-inch) bore) also did "great execution" on board the armed steam tug
Fanny, but the Confederates captured this vessel on 1 October 1861. The Union recaptured her remains after the
Battle of Elizabeth City, North Carolina on 10 February 1862.
Fanny was grounded and "blown up", but this gun was salvaged from her. It was preserved as a "30-pounder Sawyer rifle" at the
Washington Navy Yard, D.C. as of 2012. The
Fanny also had an "8-pounder rifled cannon" that may have been a Sawyer design. Sawyer claimed that he was treated unjustly by the ordnance officers during the Civil War. Notwithstanding the report in his favor, his guns were not extensively adopted, but his improvements were incorporated in others that, he said, were infringements on his patents. He was advised by government officials to wait until the war had ended and then prosecute the chiefs of ordnance of the army and navy, but they both died shortly after its close, and nothing had been done in the matter. But he received several orders for guns directly from department commanders, to whom he furnished what are said to be the first batteries of
cast-steel rifled guns made in the United States. He patented other improvements in projectiles and
fuzes in 1861–63, and in 1864–65 built a shop for the manufacture of ordnance, as he anticipated orders from the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, all of which he had negotiated with. However, the close of the wars in the United States and
South America caused it to be turned to other uses. He took out patents on dividers and calipers in 1867, a steam-generator in 1868, a sole sewing-machine in 1876, and a centering watchmaker's lathe on 10 July 1882. He subsequently engaged in the manufacture of watchmakers' tools, but soon retired from business, and took much interest in agriculture. In the early 1890s he developed a system for producing fertilizer by filtering Fitchburg's sewage. He served as an
alderman in Fitchburg. ==Sawyer artillery==