Walter A. Sheaffer
Walter A. Sheaffer (July 27, 1867 – June 19, 1946) was an American inventor and businessman who developed the first commercially successful lever-filling fountain pen and founded the W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company. Walter A. Sheaffer was born in Bloomfield, Davis County, Iowa, on July 27, 1867. His father, Jacob Sheaffer, moved to Bloomfield from Ottumwa, Iowa, after returning from California Gulch in 1854 and entered the jewelry business. At that time in Bloomfield, which was only a small town of several hundred people. He was the oldest child of Elizabeth and Jacob Royer Sheaffer, who had settled in Bloomfield in 1854 and established a jewelry store. Sheaffer dropped out of school and first started working as a printer's devil, then a grocery boy and in the summer he operated a peanut stand. He next worked at a jewelry store in Centerville, Iowa and later at a store in Unionville, Missouri. He returned to Bloomfield in 1888, to become a partner with his father in the family business. In 1906, Sheaffer purchased a jewelry store in Fort Madison, Iowa where he established the Sheaffer Jewelry and Music Co. on Second St. Inspired by the success of self-filling fountain pens—notably, Conklins—Sheaffer turned