The Legend and Phantom Folk

Legends are stories that are often based on or inspired by real historic happenings. Sometimes facts (or echoes of what might have actually transpired) are embellished or exaggerated to a point where the story seems rather incredulous, where the line between real and imagined gets blurred. The Legend of the Gathers is one such story.

Though a fictional tale, The Legend explores a very important event in local (and world) history: when young inventor Thomas Edison sent someone from his company to the small town of Corning, New York.

According to historic accounts, Edison sent a representative (which may have been William Meadowcroft) to Corning Flint Glass Works sometime in 1879 or 1880 to see if the company could make the special glass containers for his incandescent lamps, as the glass needed to be able to withstand the intense heat generated by the electricity passing through the filament.

While at the Glass Works factory, Edison’s representative met with head glassmaker James Lear and his crew which, it is believed, was comprised of Lear’s brother, as well as a bit boy, a gatherer, and five shop boys.

Apparently James Lear struggled to create the particular shape Edison’s representative was after, but the man noticed one of the shop boys gathering molten glass from the furnace and playfully swinging his metal pipe before blowing the bubble that would change the course of history for the glass company and for the community.

While rooted in history, legends often have a larger-than-life magnificence to them and, occasionally, a sense of mystery, which makes them so much more than ordinary stories. Our legend certainly has a sense of mystery as well, for years later three different men—Frederick F. Deuerlein, Joseph Baxter, and James Goggin—claimed to have been the boy who blew that first bubble of glass. This simple contradiction, and a lack of irrefutable proof one way or the other, make it difficult to say with one-hundred-percent certainty which one of the three men had been the actual boy.

Of course, that ambiguity allowed us to add a supernatural twist to the historic event when we created our fictional version of the story titled The Legend of the Gathers in which a phantom child (known as a gather) appears each October in order to help get light out into the world.

A Very Real Boy

Despite our inability to definitively identify who blew that first bubble, some documentation provided by the family of Frederick Deuerlein suggest that their great grandfather may have been the boy in question.

In looking through articles written around the time of his passing, one thing is quite evident: Frederick Deuerlein was a beloved member of the Corning community, as well as a long-tenured and very respected employee of Corning Glass Works (CGW).

It appears that, unbeknownst to his parents, Frederick began his career with the company at the age of twelve. A few years later, he was part of the shop that blew the first glass bulbs for Thomas Edison.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to have been any documentation by the company at that time as to who blew the bubble. That auspicious day in history was, at the time at least, probably perceived as just another day where the glassworkers attempted to create something for a potential customer.

There’s a good chance no one realized just how profound an impact that product would have on the world or how ubiquitous it would become.

By the time of his retirement in 1936, Frederick Deuerlein had worked for CGW for 60 years. A glassworker for 45 years, Frederick was called a “true friend” by Amory Houghton, who along with his brother Charles, brought Brooklyn Flint Glass Works to Corning over 150 years ago. Frederick was, according to Amory, a “real institution in the company.”

While a newspaper article from the time of his death alludes to Frederick’s assertion that he blew the bulb “which is believed to be the first one ever made,” there are a few discrepancies within the same article, such as an allusion to Frederick conferring “with a young inventor named Thomas Edison.” There does not appear to be any evidence that Edison, himself, ever came to Corning.

The caption of a photograph acknowledging the blowing of the world’s largest light bulb, which appeared in a different and unidentified print publication back in 1954, refers to Frederick as the person who blew the first bulb 75 years earlier.

Because none of the articles provide primary source references it is nearly impossible to assert with absolute certainty that Frederick Deuerlein was, in fact, the mysterious boy who blew that first bubble. Yet, the aforementioned documentation does suggest that it is very possible he was that boy.

Frederick Deurlein spent much of his life devoted to (and as an integral member of) the Corning Glass Works company and the culture of glass around which the town has grown, a culture that permeates the local community to this day. You might even say that glass seems to have been in his blood, as members of his family continue to work for the company today.

Perhaps less of an emphasis should be placed on identifying who that mysterious boy was all those years ago and, instead, the focus should be on celebrating all the people who were part of that historic glassblowing team.

According to historic accounts, once James Lear saw the shape that Edison’s representative wanted (the one the boy blew), he and his team were able to create on that first day “165 bulbs satisfactory to Mr. Edison” . . . “and it took all day to make them.”

On November 17, 1880, Corning sent 307 dozen bulb blanks to Edison and in the first year (1880) Corning made 3,684 bulbs (also known as blanks) for Edison. This and more information can be found in The Generations of Corning: The Life and Times of a Global Corporation by Davis Dyer and Daniel Gross.

The Legend of the Gathers is more than a historical retelling, and it is also more than supernatural fiction. While portraying a real event in local and world history, the story also explores the theme of light and how this one invention (which we tend to take for granted today) allowed Thomas Edison to share light with the world at large. Young Frederick Deuerlein, as well as gaffer James Lear, and others from the small town of Corning, New York played an integral role in that very significant historic event.

You may not be surprised to learn that it was also in Corning, “America’s Crystal City,” nearly half a century after Edison’s first hand blown glass bulbs were made by James Lear and his team (approximately producing 2 bulbs every minute), that someone from Corning Glass Works invented the ribbon machine which allowed for mass production of light bulbs (about two thousdand per minute) and finally made light accessible to everyone.

You can find The Legend of the Gathers picture book story for sale in the Museum Shops at at the Corning Museum of Glass or online at Barnes & Nobles.

And don’t forget to enjoy the many events happening throughout Corning during The Days of Incandescence each October here.