As resident physician in the New York City Almshouse, Dr. John Ireland Howe observed how English residents laboriously made pins by hand. In 1831, Dr. Howe invented a pin-making machine and founded the Howe Manufacturing company in New York in 1835 to produce pins. In 1838, he moved the company to Birmingham, a section of Derby which would later become the City of Derby. The Howe Pin Company grew as Howe perfected his methods with additional patented inventions. In 1910, Howe‘s son donated his original Pin Machine to the Smithsonian. Howe’s stone house, constructed in 1845 on Caroline Street in Derby, was perhaps built by Lucius Hubbell, who constructed other stone houses in Derby and Shelton. The house, now owned by the Derby Historical Society, will eventually house the Lower Naugatuck Valley Industrial Heritage Center.