History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 79

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942

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on the west side of what is now the depot of the Jeffersonville Railroad.

About that time Benjamin I. Blythe and Edwin Hedderly began packing in a house where Frank Landers' establishment is now. The Mansurs got this in 1854. In 1852-53, Macy & McTaggart began killing and packing in a house near the east end of the Vandalia Railroad bridge. In 1855, Col. Allen May killed and packed on the west side of the river, near the Crawfordsville road bridge. He failed in two years, and his house burned down the third year, 1858. In 1863-64 the Kingans built their house, which was almost totally destroyed by fire in the spring of 1865. They rebuilt at once, and have since enlarged their establishment' to treble its origi- nal capacity, and include extensions of the business never contemplated at the outset.

This gigantic establishment is second to none in the world, except one in Chicago, in extent, and to none in completeness of arrangement and amplitude of accommodations and facilities for every process of the business. It is the matured product of twenty years of improvement, directed by experience and enterprise, employing ample means. The various buildings cover ten acres of the thirteen constituting the entire site of the establishment. Some years ago, finding their space inadequate, the company pur- chased the Ferguson Pork-House, directly south, on the other side of the tracks used by the St. Louis, the Bloomington and Western, and Decatur and Springfield Railroads, and connected the two by tun- nels under the tracks, making the cellars one vast ex- cavation, packed with meat and lighted with gas and electricity. In a large part of the old establishment there are two stories of cellars. In all these, where meat is stored preparatory to shipment, a steady tem- perature is maintained by artificial processes, so that the soundness of the product is assured. But to make assurance doubly sure, every ham, and shoulder, and piece of side-meat is probed through, and its con- dition perfectly ascertained before it is shipped.

It may be as well to say here that the Kingan house kills and packs for the English market, and was the first house in the United States to prepare hog-meat in the style demanded by Englishi consuni-

INCAN & CO.

1 + + + 1

Morris Street Bridge. Indianapolis and Vincennes R. R. Bridge. Vandalia R. R. Bridge. Indianapolis and St. Lonis R. R. Bridge.

Union Stock Yards.

Cold Storage House.

South Warehouse.

Hog Pens.

Stable.

Furguson House.

KINGAN PORK INDIANA Dining Room.

KINGAN & Co.

KINGAN & CO.

CO. (L'D), CKERS, LIS, IND.

Sausage Department.

Refrigerating Works.

Lard House.

Slaughter House.

Kingan House. Office.

Wholesale House.

East Warehouse,

Meat Market.

Boiler House. Smoke Houses.

Mechanic Shops.

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MANUFACTURING INTERESTS OF THE CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS.

ers. The details of the process would require too much time to describe here, and would be irrelevant to the purpose of this sketch. It is enough to say that the meat, chiefly hams, is trimmed, salted, and laid away in perfect order in the huge dry cellars, and left lying a certain number of days, during which so much curing is done as is required for the special demand to be supplied. The product of each day's killing and packing is put by itself, with slats, and signs set through it marked with the date of the deposit. When the time comes this pile of hams of 3000 to 5000 hogs is put on the cars, and sent across the Atlantic, without waiting orders or dependent on market quotations. The business goes right on like the sale of goods between a factory and its ware- house. Of course, a large business is done in the home market, with transient customers and orders, as they come, but the dependence of the house is its English business. The factory is in Indianapolis ; the warchouse and salesroom in Liverpool. ·

The extent of the business may be judged from a few facts. The number of hogs killed is about 500,000 a year, or at the rate of about 5000 a day in winter and 2500 a day in summer. The estab- lishment has the capacity to do more than this if pushed, but so much it cani do regularly and certainly. It employs 600 hands in summer, and 1250 in winter. It may be noted here that Kingan's was the first house in the country-certainly the first in Indiana -to kill in the summer, and cool the hogs by ice and an artificial process. In this it did the best thing that any manufacturer ever did for the agricultural interest of Indiana. It enabled a farmer to sell his hogs as well and readily in July as in January. He was not compelled to keep them on stock feed for six or eight months before he could begin fattening for the market, at a dead loss of every bushel of corn they ate and all the time consumed. The money invested was no longer compelled to lie idle while the hogs were worrying through hot weather to the following season. The farmer could begin feeding for the packer the day he bought his stock, and the sooner he got it up to the market standard the sooner he made his profit and the larger it was. It also employed 600 or 700 men who would otherwise have been idle.

In cooling hogs, to get rid of the animal heat, an apparatus and process invented by George Stockman of this city are used with entire success and greater cheapness than any hitherto devised. The occasional variableness of winter weather is equalized by the same means, so that the house is not forced to suspend work, as all pork-houses used to do, when a warm day comes.

The average weight of the hogs killed at Kingan's is about 220 pounds, showing a net result of about 175 of meat. The annual value is about $7,000,000. The shipments amount to 4000 cars a year, while there is sold at home, for shipment and in the market-rooms belonging to the establishment, about $45,000 worth of meat, fresh and cured, per week, or $2,300,000 a year. It takes 13,000,000 pounds of salt a year to cure the meat, 500,000 pounds of salt- petre, 1,000,000 pounds of sugar, and 20,000 tons of ice. To ship it requires 150,000 boxes and crates, and 75,000 tierces for lard and hams. For sale and immediate consumption there are made 6000 pounds of sausage daily. The hogs, when killed and scalded, are scraped by machinery invented in the house by some of the men engaged there. An unbroken stream of dead hogs, alive and squealing ten seconds before, pours along the tables from the sticking-pens to the scalding-troughs and scraping-machines inces- santly from daylight to dark, and often longer, and as rapidly they are hurried in to the "gutter," the original " Col. Gutrippah," who can dispose of half a dozen a minute, and from him are sent flying down a little elevated railroad track, from which they are suspended to the huge low room, where they hang by thousands literally, to cool off sufficiently for the cut- ters and salters. Following up the carcass of any particular hog, we find it taken from the cooling- room, after the animal heat has been all removed, to a group of big blocks, set in a square form around, and in which a crowd of men swing up and down incessantly flashing cleavers, in a wild, stormy fasbion, with no measure or rest, reminding one of the fierce, irregular motions of the claymores rising and falling in the fight of the clans at the " North Inch." Here the hog is divided, the picces trimmed, and the fin- ished product dropped through a slide into the room

446

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

below, where the salters take it, and when they are through, send it down to the packers, who lay it away, marked and dated, till the shipping time comes. It is the full occupation of a busy day to go through this huge establishment, and merely note the processes and the crowds of busy men who carry them on.

Electric lights are used all through the different departments, the machinery being worked by a su- perb Corliss engine, made at the Atlas Works here. Besides these, no less than $6500 worth of gas and candles is used for lighting. It takes 750 cars of coal a year-14 tons to a car-to supply the heat required, and 20 carpenters and 2 blacksmiths are con- stantly employed, consuming 50 car-loads of lumber in repairs of one kind or another, exclusive of the men employed in the coopering- and box-shops. The stables attached to the establishment contain 25 horses, employed in market-wagons and otherwise. A large market-room for the supply of daily custom- ers in the city has been added within the last six or eight years, and here all the fresh meat is kept cold by artificial cold currents of air; and neat, active young clerks in the traditional white aprons eut up the steaks and hams and roasts on marble counters, and conduct all the details of an ordinary meat-shop, as if it were not a mere attachment or little excres- cence of the huge slaughter- and packing-house back of it upon the rear. This establishment has a rail- road of its own turning out of the yard at a track at Missouri Street, and fills pretty much all of the space between Helen Street and the river, and Maryland Street and the Vandalia Railroad and freight-yard. The taxes are about $10,000 a year. Within the past four years Mr. Thomas Kingan, the original manager of the business, has retired permanently, and has been succeeded by Mr. Samuel Sinclair, by whom many extensive and valuable improvements have been made.

The Landers establishment occupies the buildings, though with much improvement and a great exten- sion of business, of the Blythe & Hedderly and W. & I. Mansur house, the oldest now standing in the city. The amount of packing done by Mr. Landers in the last report was about $1,000,000 a year. A railroad-track from the Lafayette, or Cincinnati, In-

dianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago, road passes along the mill-race from the canal, and over the low ground northwest to Blake Street, and there enters the pack- ing-house, about a square north of the National road and the old bridge. Directly south of Kingan's are the ruins of the second Ferguson pork-honse, which was built south of the Vandalia Railroad and round- house, at the west end of Greenlawn Cemetery, soon after the first house, on the north side of the Vandalia and just south of the St. Louis road, was sold to Kingan. It did a large business both in suminer and winter killing, but was entirely burned in February, 1881, and was never rebuilt, the proprietors removing to Chicago. At the south end of the old cemetery, opposite the foot of Merrill Street, is the pork-house of MeMurtry & Co., built some ten or twelve years ago by Holmes, Pettit & Bradshaw. These latter gave it up about three years ago to the present pro- prietors, who have been doing a large and safe busi- ness. Coffin, Greenstreet & Fletcher built their present house in 1873, on the cast bluff of White River bottom, at the foot of Ray Street. Their busi- ness, by the last statement, was about like that of the other honses, except Kingan's,-a million a year. A railroad-track connects this house with the Vincennes road, along the river-bank, on what, in early times, were the "High Banks." A very short side-track from the same road connects with the McMurtry honse.

It would be interesting to know something about the extent of the pork business in early times, but no record has been made, and nothing can be learned but from the memories of the few connected with it who remain. It is probable that the total number of hogs killed during the season by the two houses of the Mansurs and Blythe & Hedderly did not exceed 20,000. In 1873 the whole number of hogs killed and packed here was 295,766, value of $7,614,000. In 1878 the number was 776,000; in 1879, 667,- 000; in 1880, 746,000 ; in 1881, 472,494 ; in 1882, 306,000. In 1878 and in 1880 Indianapolis was the third pork-packing point in the world, being ex- ceeded only by Chicago and Cincinnati. The falling off since 1880 has been the effect of short erops and tight business. The value of the hog product of the

447

MANUFACTURING INTERESTS OF THE CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS.

city in 1880 was $10,516,000, the largest in any one year.

GENERAL BUTCHERING .- The earliest butcher of Indianapolis was Wilkes Reagan, who sold his meat in the grove in the Circle. There was not much for a butcher to do in those days, for the pioneer could get his meat for the powder and lead that would kill it by walking about through the woods that the town was lost in ! Butchers came though, as usual, with the growth of the town, and killed in little houses located on the outskirts, and sold in the East Market, which was all there was. But even then no inconsiderable part of a family's meat-food was bought of farmers or raised and killed at home, poultry par- ticularly being almost always a home growth. Win- ter supplies were commonly a family job in the prep- aration, the whole hogs or quarters of beef being bought of farmers and eut np and cured by the united labor of everybody about the house that was big enough to lift a ham or hand salt. The smoking was done in the family smoke-house, and to this day the out-house in which are stored the family provis- ions is called a smoke-house by old residents and their children, though never a pound of meat was smoked within a mile of it. Not unfrequently the town householder raised his own pigs, as well as chickens, killed them a little before Christmas time, and provided his own winter meat throughout, as well as a good part of his summer supply. Thus the butcher did not figure largely in the economy of In- dianapolis till after the growth impelled by the advance of the railroad system made country supplies inadequate and forced a greater dependence on the butcher. He was then, as now, usually a German. Gradually, with the increase of butchering, came a resort to private meat-markets in localities that were handier to consumers than the public market. One of the earliest and largest of these was that of Tweed & Gulick, the latter of whom was candidate for sher- iff in 1858, but beaten by William J. Wallace, whom the Supreme Court ruled out because he was holding the office of mayor of the city at the time of his elec- tion as sheriff. There were a dozen others at that time. Now there are 113 meat-shops, exclusive of Kingan's, which does as much business as the greater

part of all the others together. The aggregate amount of the business it is impossible to say.

Until within the period since the war the butchers of the city usually did their killing each for himself, and there were slaughter-houses scattered all about in the suburbs and sometimes in the more densely set- tled parts. The lower portion of the canal, below the present line of the street, was a favorite locality for them, and the block facing the swamp or glade in the east bottom of the river, along what is now South Meridian Street. In later years the tendency has been towards the Paris abattoir system of having all the slaughtering done in a few places or one. Within a year the Abattoir Company has given a strong impulse to this wholesome change by buying and greatly enlarging the beef slaughter-house at the west end of the Morris Street bridge, and mak- ing ample provision there for all the slaughtering required. There was some talk of the Stock-Yard Company establishing an abattoir, but nothing came of it. The Exchange Stock-Yard, at the south end of the Vincennes Railroad bridge, had such a slaughter-house connceted with it, but the yard went out of business when the larger yard farther south was completed ; and the slaughter-house has declined or gone out of business, too.

Hides and Tanning .- There are several estab- lishments in the city that deal in the hides and pelts produced at the slaughter-houses,-the Abattoir Company, for one ; Messrs. Rauh, on the Belt road and South Pennsylvania Street; Allerdice, south- west corner of South and Meridian Streets; Hide Leather Company, South Meridian ; Lewitt & Co., West Indianapolis, on Vincennes Railroad ; Mooney & Sons, South Street ; Lewark, West Pcarl ; Stevens, South Meridian ; and Gallaway, South Meridian.

The first tanncry in the town was that of Daniel Yandes and John Wilkins, which occupied nearly all of the ground south of Washington Street, on the east side of Alabama to the creek. It was established about sixty years ago. Mr. William M. Black, a prominent member of the Masonic order in this city, learned the trade with this firm, and in 1833 formed a partnership with them for four years in a tannery at Mooresville, Morgan Co. The con-

448

HISTORY OF INDIANAPOLIS AND MARION COUNTY.

nection continued till 1858. About 1840 a second tannery was begun on South Pennsylvania Street, west side, just below Maryland. This filled the swampy street-Pennsylvania Street and all the re- gion of the creek-bottom east of Meridian to Ala- bama Street was either swamp or wet bottom-with great piles of tan-bark, on which it was the delight of school boys to repeat the jumps and tumbles of the last circus performers. As noted elsewhere in this chapter, this tannery gave way to a stage repair- shop in five or six years. These were the only tan- neries ever established in the city limits. Some years later, after the decadence of the West mills at Cot- tontown, a large and flourishing tannery was estab- lished there by Mr. John Fishback, but that has disappeared. There are three tanning establish- ments now in the city, Borst & Co., J. K. Sharpe, Jr., and Robert Schmidt. There are no statistics to- show the amount of the leather trade now, but of hides, pelts, and tallow the total was over $1,500,000 last year.

Fertilizers are a direet result of the manufacture of animal food, and the establishments devoted to their manufacture may be briefly noticed here. They are a growth of the last decade, mainly, and are all on the west side of the river. The first was started by Mr. Lannay, at the foot of West Street, during the war, but was abandoned in three or four years, and changed to a soap-factory. The most ex- tensive fertilizer factory about the city, a " blood dryiug" house, built by Crocker & Becker some four years ago, at the crossing of the Belt and Vandalia and St. Louis roads, has been abandoned. Another extensive one is carried on upon the Sellers farm, three miles southwest, a site bought by the city pur- posely for important but unfragrant industries. A related business is "rendering," or tallow-making, carried on here chiefly by the Abattoir Company and Lewitt & Co., both in West Indianapolis.

Mince-Meat .- The Adams Packing Company on South Alabama Street do a large business in the preparation and packing of minee-meat, which they ship to all parts of the country. The annual amount of this and the packing associated with it is about $150,000 a year.

Grain-Grinding .- The early grist-mills alluded to above worked only for home consumption, on grain brought by farmers in wagons, or by farmers' boys on horseback. Usually the bag was unloaded di- rectly into the hopper, and the farmer or his boy waited about, fishing around the dam, or shopping in the town, till the grist was ground, and the meal-it was oftener meal than flour-went back in the same bag, and on the same day it came. There was no bolting apparatus in any mill of that time in the New Purchase till the steam-mill of 1832 put one in its machinery, and all grain went back home in the bran, for the housewife to sift out as well as she could, as related in the general history. The first mill of a more pretentious character was built in 1840, by John Carlisle, at the south end of the basin into which ran the race from the canal at Market Street. It was the first merchant mill in the town, but its flour, like the perk of early packing, was harder to get to market than to make. It was wholly burned down in 1856, but immediately rebuilt and maintained till the still larger mills in the same vicinity succeeded it. Con- temporaneously with the Carlisle mill, or a year or two earlier, there was a mill at the crossing of the canal by the Michigan road, afterwards called " Cottontown," from a cotten-mill erected there a little later than the grist-mill. Both were built by Nathaniel West, who owned a large tract of land on Fall Creek at that point, which now constitutes a large part of the northwestern portion of the city. After the close of the war the Geisendorff brothers rebuilt er replaced the grist-mill and made it a much larger establishment than before, and a few years later built one of the finest mills in the State on the site of the old steam-mill destroyed about twenty years before. Robert R. Underhill built a large four-story frame mill,-all mills were frame in these days,-a few years after the opening of the canal, on the bluff bank of the swamp just east of which the Bluff road, now South Meridian Street, ran. The bluff gave him a good head for his power, and the canal gave him water through a race starting from the east side at the head of the upper wooden lock. Some- times struggling, sometimes prosperous, this mill was run for thirty years, not unfrequently stopping alto-

449

MANUFACTURING INTERESTS OF THE CITY OF INDIANAPOLIS.

gether and becoming a haunt for tramps. But some six or eight years ago it was turned into a mattress- factory, and was in a fairly prosperous condition, when ' it took fire one morning the past winter and was utterly destroyed.

In 1848, Gen. T. A. Morris built a flouring-mill on the northeast corner of Meridian Street and the Union tracks, at the east end of the Union Depot site, and carried on merchant milling there success- fully, but the mill burned in 1853. It was never re- built or replaced by another at another point. In this establishment was first used the automatic or machine- packing apparatus, which steadily and regularly kept the flour, as it entered the barrels from the bolting- cloths, pressed smoothly down. Some years after the destruction of this mill the changes began on the canal basin that have covered all the available ground there with flouring-mills, and recently with apparatus of the new kind, which substituted chilled iron rollers for stones, and saves all the flour that used to stick to the bran. The Gibson mills at least have made this substitution. The Skiller mill has been idle for several years. Some embarrassment in the affairs of the Gibson mills caused their sale last summer, but not their suspension. There are now nive flouring- mills in the city and near it. The Arcade ou West Maryland Street, at the crossing of Missouri, belong- ing to Blauton, Watson & Co. (steam), originally built by Mr. Carlisle and his son Harry D. in 1868 as the Home Mill, and conducted by them till 1874 ; since 1879 the present proprietors have had it. The

capacity is about 200 barrels a day. The rollers are used here. It was burned in May, 1881, but rebuilt and reopened in December. The Hoosier State Mills, owned by Richardson & Evans, on the site of the old steam-mill, contains 30 sets of rolls, with a capacity of 350 barrels a day ; were burned in 1880, but got in running order in August. Jacob Ehrerman, on Clifford Avenue and Archer Street ; Monroe & Len- non, Shelby Street ; Schofield, on Fall Creek ; Har- vest Mill, on Eagle Creek near the Vandalia road ; Union Star Mill, formerly Buscher's brewery, changed to a mill in 1870, owned by Frederick Prange since 1880, capacity 50 barrels a day ; City Mills, Holmes & Hartman, East Washington Street, No. 354 (rollers

and stones), capacity about 50 barrels in 24 hours. The capacity of all the flouring-mills is stated by Mr. Blake, secretary of the Board of Trade, at 500,000 barrels a year.

Hominy .- Flour is not the only product of grain- grinding, though the largest. The Indianapolis Hominy-Mill uses about 2000 bushels of corn a day in making hominy, grits, and corn-flour. It was burned twice within a year, in June aud October, 1881, but has been rebuilt in better condition and larger than ever. It is situated at the crossing of Palmer Street and the Jeffersonville Railroad, and is now owned by M. A. Downing and E. F. Claypool, late of the Belt road management. Hall's Western Hominy-Mill, at the crossing of Kentucky Avenue and the Belt road, west side, uses about 1000 bushels of corn a day, and turns out about $150,000 worth of hominy, corn-flour, and feed a year. It began opera- tions in August, 1882, with a capital of $25,000. James Kelly's mill, 430 North Alabama Street, is a smaller establishment. The annual product of all is about $500,000.

Brewing .- Without entering into the controversy concerning the nutritive character of malt liquors, the manufacture may be briefly treated in this con- nection as closely related to the topic of grain products. The first brewery was put in opera- tion here in 1834 or 1835, by John L. Young and William Wernweg, contractor for the National road bridges. It stood on the south side of Maryland Street, half-way between the line of the future Canal and West Street. It was not a very extensive or profitable establishment, and appears to have sunk almost entirely out of view as a source of business by 1840. It was next known under the management of Mr. Faux, about 1841 or 1842. He was a French- man, who bought frog-legs of the boys for beer, and made a good deal of his profit by selling yeast to the housewives of the town to make light or raised bis- cuit at a time when baker's bread was not held in high esteem, and every respectable household ex- pected its bread hot at every meal. Not long after, Mr. Faux moved to Noble and Washington Streets and opened a brewery there, and some one else, Mr. John Philip Meikel probably, continued that at the

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History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Part 79

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890 Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 942

Author: Sulgrove, Berry R. (Berry Robinson), 1828-1890
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.H. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 942