Latimer (Lewis H.) is born in Chelsea.

The son of George and Rebecca Latimer, Lewis Latimer serves in the Union Army during the Civil War, returns to Boston, and becomes a draftsman, who prepares drawings for Thomas Edison’s development of the light bulb and Alexander Graham Bell’s development of the telephone. He receives his first patent for a toilet system for railroad cars on February 10, 1874, then others for a carbon filament lightbulb and an early version of an air conditioner. Latimer moves to Connecticut in 1879 and New York City in 1884. He dies in Queens on December 11, 1928.