ISMACS Logo

International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society

The purpose of the International Sewing Machine Collectors' Society is to foster the collecting of, and research into, sewing machines.

Singer Sewing Machine Very Early Serial Number Database

Krisi Santilla
ISMACS News
5/2024
Very Early Serial Number Database

Existing I.M. Singer & Co. records are far from complete. A financial daybook had been used to enter all transactions, including purchases of supplies, payroll payments, and machines sold. These transactions were then transferred to individual ledgers, which unfortunately may not have survived. The information here is mostly from those daybooks.

There is a discrepancy of roughly 1400 machines in the first few years. When I.M. Singer and Co. entered into an agreement with Elias Howe and George Bliss they paid royalties on 1500 machines manufactured up until 7/1/1854, but the serial numbers on the machines sold during the summer of 1854 are upper 3000’s and low 4000’s. In addition, except for a couple, the earliest serial numbers in the table start at 2176. There are about 790 machines without serial numbers before that. So the records of almost 1400 machines sold to this point may be missing (2176 minus 790). Or are they? What if at some point Singer decided to use higher serial numbers to make it look like they were a more established firm? Or maybe they wanted to start a new year or a new model with a round number? But in going through the daybooks there were numerous entries for machines that had been returned and were being resold, yet the original sale had not been recorded. Were certain types of sales recorded in a different book that has not been found? With more research maybe this mystery can be solved.

Some notable entries:

  • November 11, 1850. The first recorded sale of a machine. But serial numbers of machines sold did not begin to be recorded in the daybooks until 1853.
  • January 26, 1854. The first sale of a Large machine, serial 3426.
  • November 3, 1854. The first Single Thread machine is mentioned.
  • October 2, 1855. Small (or Common), Medium & Large machines began to be called No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 machines.
  • October 22, 1857. The first Family (turtleback) machine was sold. The lowest serial number in the table for a Family machine is 12350x8339. Towards the end of 1859 one last run of 100 Family machines was made, the serial numbers were 29000x25000 through 29099x25099. Most of these last 100 Family machines were not sold until 1860 or later. Carter Bays estimated 1500 Family machines were manufactured, but this table proves at least 2446 individual serial numbers were assigned to Family machines.
  • November 10, 1857. The first of at least 24 Boudoir machines I.M. Singer & Co. manufactured for L.A. Bigalow was sold.
  • January 5, 1859. The first Letter A machine was sold. The earliest serial number in the table for a Letter A machine is 17626x13026.

C. or Com. = common (a small sized machine)
Mong. = mongrel (a machine that could serve a variety of purposes)
S.T. = Single thread
P. = The letter P after the second serial number indicates the machine had been sold previously and returned, so royalties on the machine had already been paid. In some cases where a machine had been sold a second time, I added the “P” for “paid” even though it wasn’t recorded in the records.

There are many thousands of sales yet to be transcribed and added to this table, they consist mainly of Letter A and industrial machines that date after January 1856.


ISMACS is an organization totally independent of all sewing-machine manufacturers, past or present and is not affiliated with any of the companies mentioned in these pages.  Please Note: Do not contact any ISMACS official in an attempt to solicit a valuation - it is not possible other than by hands-on assessment and your request will be ignored.

All rights reserved by ISMACS, under International and Pan American copyright conventions. Reproduction or copy of this page, in any form, in part or in whole, is strictly prohibited, without prior, written permission.