Jan Ernst Matzeliger, a shoemaker, was born in Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, the son of a Negro woman and a Dutch engineer, in whose machine shop he began working at the age of ten. Although he could speak little English, young Jan earned his passage to the United States as a sailor. He found work in Philadelphia and later moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, where he learned shoemaking, a trade in which he worked for the remainder of his life. Before he died, he invented the lasting machine, which revolutionized the manufacture of shoes and helped make Lynn the shoe capital of the world.