Coes Street
From Worcester Activist wiki
Until Loring Coes came along, the monkey wrench was just a plumber’s pipe dream.
Before the Worcester man’s invention there were two types of wrenches - the English type and the Merrick, or Springfield wrench.
You couldn’t manipulate either with one hand to save your neck.
A patent granted to Coes in 1841 called for a screw so that the wrench could be held and adjusted with one hand.
Coes was born in Worcester in 1812; spent 14 years on his father’s farm; was apprenticed as a carpenter to Anson Braman.
When he was 22, he formed a partnership with his brother, Aury G. Coes, born in 1817, to make woolen mill machinery near Lincoln square. A fire three years later left them penniless.
The brothers went to Springfield, where they became pattern makers in a foundry. They saved their nickels; dreamed up the better “mouse trap.” They came back in 1840 to set up with borrowed capital as L. & A. G. Coes, wrench manufacturers. By 1843 they were employing three hands. Things were looking up.
Early in 1844, they moved to New Worcester. Two years later they owned the property; soon bought an old woolen mill, which they converted, water power rights and land. In 1853 they bought a knife manufacturing plant. On May 2, 1864, the Coes brothers dissolved partnership. Aury took the wrench plant at Webster square. Loring took the knife shop on Mill street. A few years later Loring built a new factory at Coes square to make wrenches.
In 1888, the Coes organized a joint stock company as Coes Wrench Co. with a capital stock of $100,000. Loring was president. As late as 1899 the concern was the only screw-wrench manufacturer in Massachusetts; hammered out about 40,000 wrenches a month.
Aury died at 58 in 1875. Loring lived to be 94; set some sort of record as
the oldest fisherman visiting Maine. Number of trips: 47. He died July 13,
1906, “leaving a name that will be remembered so long as a wrench is used
by mechanics the world over,” promised the Worcester Magazine.
Coes street-park avenue northwest to Mill street-was named by the brothers, who laid it out through their property. It first appears in 1871. Coes square and Coes Pond also honor their memory.
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
