By William V. Scott, Interim Manager of Collections, Exhibits and Research for the Fall 2026 Ranch Record magazine.
In November 1874, Illinois farmer Joseph Glidden patented “The Winner,” a wire with sharp barbs twisted to lock. He and Isaac L. Ellwood founded the Barb Fence Company. (Ellwood went on to found the Spade Ranches, which later donated their blacksmith shop to stand at the National Ranching Heritage Center.) The invention became popular in the American West for its affordability and ease of production, with John W. Gates showcasing its strength in an exhibition with Texas Longhorns in San Antonio. By 1880, factories produced large amounts of barbed wire and tools to work with it soon became necessary. Enter Frederick J. Townsend of Painted Post, New York, in 1889.
Patent for Townsend’s wire-stretcher, No. 398,759.
Townsend’s patent No. 398,759 describes an invention related to “wire-stretchers”–tools used in building wire fences and stretching wire for various purposes. His goal was to create a device that was simple, durable, inexpensive and easy for one person to operate. It should not bend the wire and should grip more firmly as tension increases, preventing slipping.
Townsend’s wire-stretcher features a lever, tongs with laterally projecting jaws–one extending beyond the other and tapering to a blunt point–and a connecting chain. It combines a lever with recessed tongs fitted with corrugated plates that have countersunk perforations, secured by screws, and connects the handles via a chain. Additionally, the wire-stretcher has corrugated jaws projecting laterally, with faces that curve diagonally from corner to corner and have corrugations angled backward relative to the tongs’ body. The tongs also include handles pivotally attached at one end and laterally projecting jaws with recesses in their contiguous parts.
The Townsend Wire Stretcher proved to be a fail-safe implement for the livestock industry; designed in 1889, it was being peddled by 1891. This advertising has spanned more than a century, as Townsend Wire Stretchers appeared in newspapers well into the mid-1990s. Over that century, the Townsend Wire Stretcher has been marketed in at least fifteen states, from the Middle Atlantic to the High Plains in Canada. During the 1950s and 1960s, advertising for these tools peaked, with a slight rebranding to the Townsend Barb Wire Stretcher.
