Linus Yale (27 April 1797 – 8 August 1858) was an American inventor, manufacturer of Bank locks, and 1st Mayor of Newport, New York. His son, Linus Yale Jr, would found the Premier manufacturer of locks in the United States. Biography Yale was born in Middletown, Connecticut, and later moved with his parents to Salisbury, New York. He married Chlotilda Hopson, 27 September 1815, and they had four children. His brothers were Burrage Buchanan Yale and Allen Yale, the cofounders of Lamson, Goodnow & Yale company, a gun-making machine manufacturer based in Windsor, Vermont and Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Their company was behind the majority of the weapons manufactured to the Union Army of Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War, and supplied companies such as the U.S. government, U.K. government, Springfield Armory, Colt's Manufacturing Company, Remington Arms, Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, and many others. They were also one of the largest cutlery manufacturers in the U.S during that war, and supplied bayonets and muskets to previous wars, such as the American Revolutionary War, the Mexican-American War and the Crimean War of Napoleon III. Around 1858, they acquired the bankrupt Robbins and Lawrence Armory with Eli Whitney and Samuel Colt, a long time associate, and produced weapons such as the Springfield Model 1861. Parts were interchangeable with these weapons and with the Colt musket parts. They had received a special government contract from the Lincoln administration for this model, and was accepted by the Senate, under the personal request of Secretary of War Simon Cameron and Edwin Stanton, and with the approval of Joseph Holt, Robert Dale Owen, Peter V. Hagner, and General James Wolfe Ripley. LG & Yale was one of the companies that shaped the American Civil War itself, as they produced gun-making machinery to supply most of the factories making rifles, carbines, and pistols for the Union Army. Mr. Lamson, fervant abolitionist and head of the company, was one of the ten historical representative American manufacturers of the Civil War period. His home was a station on the underground railroad, hosting many African Americans at his table on their way to Canada. An exhibition named "Arming the Union" can be seen at the American Precision Museum, where the factory of Lamson, Goodnow & Yale was located. In 1857 the village of Newport, New York, was incorporated and Linus Yale was elected its first President and Mayor. Yale opened a