According to the transcript of a taped interview by the late Howard Stewart of the Clearfield County Historical Society with Leonard A. Gearhart, son of Joseph, in 1962, the Gearhart Knitting Machine evolved from Mr. Gearhart's first handmade one through a dozen machines to the intricate, machine-tooled final model that was placed on the market in the mid-twenties. The very first machine, according to this account, was simply a small wooden cylinder operated by hand. Later this was replaced by a larger wooden cylinder and eventually hand-fashioned needles, moving up and down as one turned a crank, were added.
       Thomas Lincoln Wall, in his "Clearfield County, Past and Present," published in 1925, gave the start of the Gearhart knitting machine enterprise as 1888 at West Decatur and said that business became so good that in the second year of operation it was necessary to have an Express office (The Adams Express Company) opened at West Decatur.
        Mr. Gearhart moved his operations to Clearfield in 1890, establishing his home and plant at the corner of Nichols and West Front streets (where the Arco service station now stands). From the beginning, the Gearhart Family Knitter was sold through the mail.
The knitting machine was only one of some 40 patents Mr. Gearhart was awarded for various products of his inventive mind and skilled hands. Swoope mentions in his sketch of Mr. Gearhart the Keystone Vacuum Cleaner, which Mr. Gearhart put on the market himself. Others included a mechanical rug knitter and an uncoupling device, which he reportedly sold to the Pennsylvania Railroad for $75, but no royalty, making it one of the best bargains the railroad company ever acquired.
       A devout member of the Methodist church, Mr. Gearhart also found time to become a lay minister who conducted services at rural churches in the Clearfield area. And be wrote two small books of a religious nature which were copyrighted in 1903 and published by the Christian Standard Co., Ltd. of Philadelphia.
        Mr. Gearhart retired from the knitting machine company in 1924 at the age of 75, turning the business over to his three sons, and he died at St. Petersburg, Fla., Jan. 5, 1928, less than four months before his 80th birthday.
        The Gearhart Family Knitter, manufactured and sold by the Gearhart Knitting Machine Company of Clearfield, enjoyed great popularity in the 1890s and through the first 25 years of this century. Although not manufactured since the middle or late 1920s, there are Gearhart Family Knitters still in use as a hobby for some owners; other owners proudly display them as antiques or relics of a pretty-much long-lost craft.
       Invented by Joseph Emery Gearhart at West Decatur in 1888 or 1889, the knitting machine produced knitted socks or stockings. Until World War I, the heels and toes of the socks had to be finished by hand; during World War I the American Red Cross is credited with improving the machine to knit closed heels and toes.
       (There appears to be some question as to whether Mr. Gearhart was the original inventor of the knitting machine or whether it was his father-in-law, John Middleton, an expert machinist and gunsmith. A legend handed down in the Middleton family credits Mr. Middleton as having at least prepared drawings for the machine. These, it is said, he gave to his daughter, Mary Middleton, and Mr. Gearhart as a wedding present. There is no doubt, however, that Joseph Gearhart secured the first patent on the machine and made improvements on it over the years.)
        The knitting machines which evolved from Mr. Gearhart's initial hand-made wooden device to intricate machine-tooled models, were sold by mail to customers throughout the United States and in several foreign countries. (it was patented in 13 foreign nations). At the height of its operation in the early twenties, the Gearhart Knitting Machine Company employed upwards of 200 workers, most of them women engaged in answering mail orders. The Adams Express Company established an office in 1899-90 at West Decatur, the first operating base of the Gearhart Company, to handle orders and the U.S. Postal Department maintained a mailing department at the Gearhart factory at Clearfield in the early twenties.
Mrs. Margaret Surver of Boyce, Va., a granddaughter of Joseph Gearhart, has a company brochure which priced the 1908 knitter at $14 including "ribber and extra cylinder." The brochure noted that "for more than 19 years