Elias Howe Jr. (/haʊ/; July 9, 1819 – October 3, 1867) was an American inventor best known for his creation of the modern lockstitch sewing machine.

Howe spent his childhood and early adult years in Massachusetts, where he apprenticed in a textile factory in Lowell beginning in 1835.

After mill closings due to the Panic of 1837, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to work as a mechanic with carding machinery, apprenticing along with his cousin Nathaniel P. Banks.

In the beginning of 1838, he apprenticed in the shop of Ari Davis, a master mechanic in Cambridge who specialized in the manufacture and repair of chronometers and other precision instruments.

It never occurred to him that it should be placed near the point, and he might have failed altogether if he had not dreamed he was building a sewing machine for a savage king in a strange country.

Amasa was able to sell his first machine for £250 to William Thomas of Cheapside, London, who owned a factory for the manufacture of corsets, umbrellas and valises.

Elias and his family joined Amasa in London in 1848, but after business disputes with Thomas and failing health of his wife, Howe returned nearly penniless to the United States.

His wife Elizabeth, who preceded Elias back to the United States, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts shortly after his return in 1849.

[citation needed] Howe contributed much of the money he earned to providing equipment for the 17th Connecticut Volunteer Infantry of the Union Army during the Civil War, in which Howe served as a private in Company D. Due to his faltering health he performed light duty, often seen walking with the aid of his shillelagh, and took on the position of Regimental Postmaster, serving out his time riding to and from Baltimore with war news.

Elias Howe's sewing machine won a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1867,[1] and that same year he was awarded the Légion d'honneur by Napoleon III for his invention.

[citation needed] Howe was also a descendant of Edmund Rice, another early immigrant to Massachusetts Bay Colony.