History of Columbiana County, Ohio and representative citizens, Part 21

Author: McCord, William B., b. 1844
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 912

USA > Ohio > Columbiana County > History of Columbiana County, Ohio and representative citizens > Part 21

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

ner of Second and Union streets a year or two previous to 1850, and the concern was then operating as Ball & Morris. This little pottery was bought by the new firm of Croxall & Cart- wright in 1856, and became known as the "Union Pottery." In 1859 this firm also took over the Mansion Pottery property from Gar- ner & Foster, giving them a capacity at the . two works of two kilns. For over half a cen- tury these two old plants continued practically without change in management, though Kin- sey and Cartwright dropped out of the company at later dates and the firm name in 1888 became J. Croxall & Sons, John Croxall's two sons, George W. and Joseph H., taking interests in the business and finally absorbing the whole as the Croxall Pottery Company. After seeing 60 years of the potting busiiness, John W. Croxall was in 1905 the dean of the manufact- uring business in East Liverpool, still living, in good health, at the age of 81.

FAMOUS OLD POTTERS INTRODUCED.

The story of the later '40's in the potting business in the rising young manufacturing center gives us our first introduction to some famous old names in the history of earthenware in America. It was about 1847 that John Goodwin, the Brunts, William Bloor, Jabez Vodrey and the ambitious firm of Woodward. Blakely & Company, all appeared as manu- facturers of yellow ware. All came from the old potting stock in Staffordshire, England. The influence of these splendid spirits on the world of ceramics can be traced through more than a half, century. John Goodwin had fol- lowed the Bennetts to East Liverpool, arriving in 1842 from St. Louis, and working for a time for the Bennetts and later for Benjamin Har- ker. In the latter part of the '40's probably about 1846, he rented an old warehouse at the foot of Market street, built a kiln and ran a pottery, later buying the property and contin- uing to operate it until 1853, when he sold the works to S. & W. Baggott, who conducted it as a yellow ware plant for nearly 40 years, the concern at last being converted into a potters' supply works by Mountford & Son in 1902.

152

HISTORY OF COLUMBIANA COUNTY

William Brunt, Sr., who, on coming to the United States in 1840 had first settled in Illi- nois, but had later followed his Staffordshire friends to East Liverpool, opened a tavern south of the Town Hall, on Market street, in the early '40's, and built his home on the river bank, on the western end of the site later occu- pied by the pottery of the Cartwright Brothers Company. Isaac W. Knowles built the struc- ture. In 1847 Brunt, with his son-in-law, Wil- liam Bloor, began the manufacture of yellow ware just west of the foot of Market street. A few years later he began, the manufacture of yellow door-knobs, being the pioneer in the in- dustry in America. The door knob venture proved quite profitable, and for years the firm which on the death of William Brunt, Sr., be- came Henry Brunt & Son, furnished nearly the entire supply of earthenware door-knobs in the United States. Henry Brunt's son, William H. entered the firm in 1884, and in 1894 Henry Brunt retired from the firm. William Brunt, the first, died in 1882. Henry Brunt died in June, 1905.

Contemporaneously with the establishment of the Goodwin and Brunt enterprises came the birth of the famous firm of Woodward, Blake- ly & Company, accounted the wealthiest pottery concern of that day. Jabez Vodrey, one of the members of the firm, was the father of potting west of the Alleghanies. He came to America from Staffordshire in 1827. In partnership with a man named Frost, he established a pot- tery in Pittsburg in 1828. In 1830 he went to Louisville and built the first pottery in Ken- tucky, and in 1847 he came to East Liverpool and formed a partnership with John S. Blakely and William Woodward. Both Blakely and Woodward were large property owners in the town, which was beginning to feel an impetus from the new industry. The people looked on Blakely as a wealthy man. He and his brother had come from Pittsburg some years before and had interested themselves in developing real estate. The firm of John S. Blakely & Company had for some years done a large mer- chandising business, and the name gave an air of solidity to the new firm. The factory that was built in 1847-48 was an ambitious one,

forming the nucleus for what was later the plants of Vodrey & Company, 'the William Brunt pottery and the East Liverpool pottery. The firm built three kilns, making the new works the most pretentious in the town. The people believed now that a new era had dawned for the industry; and had it not been for the series of 10 years' disasters that followed, be- ginning with the panic of the early '50's and ending with the Civil War, it is safe to say there would have been a story of substantial progress. to tell, for the period that followed the estab- lishment of the Brunts, Goodwin, the Harkers and the Woodward-Blakely firm in the earthen- ware business showed a spirit of enterprise on the part of the pioneers that, seen through the eyes of another century, was 'deserving of bet- ter results.

The number of successful manufacturing potters turned out by the old plants of George S. Harker & Company, and Woodward, Blake- ly & Company, during the next' few years, is. remarkable. In the biographies of at least two -. score men who afterward became prominent in the manufacturing history of the city is the story told of their employment during the later '40's or early '50's by one or the other .of the two firms. The "Liverpool Rockingham" ware was becoming famous throughout the West, and attempts were being made to produce the "cream-colored" ware of later years. The methods of fashioning the clay were still primi- tive but, as the half-century mark passed, great improvements were being made in the char- acter of the ware. It was during this period that the foundation was laid for the great plant of the Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company, which was to give East Liverpool fame during the latter part of the century as the largest gen- eral ware pottery in the country. After the old Bennett works, on the river bank, burned in 1852, Isaac W. Knowles, who, it will be re- membered, helped peddle the first kiln of ware burned by James Bennett 12 years before, bought the ruins. He took the machinery and,. with Isaac A. Harvey, located his pottery on upper Walnut street, at the point long known as the "Old End" of the Knowles, Taylor & Knowles works. The pottery started opera-

153

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS.

tions in November, 1853. Knowles and Har- vey had scarcely any capital, and the original plant was as primitive as any that had preceded it. The motive power was furnished by an old blind horse, which traveled round and round in a circle. Knowles had originally intended lo- cating his pottery at the corner of Third and Union streets. He and his brother, John Knowles, owned two lots there, aggregating 90 by 130 feet, and such a site was considered abundantly large in that day for the new enter- prise; but the neighbors objected to Knowles marring the landscape with his clay-heaps, and he considerately went "up the hill," and bought a larger site. Fifty years later, the Knowles,- Taylor & Knowles Company probably would have felt cramped with its 32-kiln plant on a site 90 by 130 feet, but it was not the idea of having "room to grow" that prompted the change in location.

THE "HARD TIMES" OF THE '50'S.

There are few stories of hardship and pri- vation in the early manufacturing history of the Middle West that equal the experience through which East Liverpool passed during the middle '50's. Labor was not usually paid in currency, but oftener in orders on the stores. The ware was peddled through the country and exchanged for corn-meal, cheese, flour, pro- visions, wool-anything that could be obtained ; and these were brought back to East Liverpool. and handed out by the manufacturers to the men in lieu of cash. The men who had invested their all in the little potteries looked to their workmen for support, and the workmen did not fail them, though wages-even when paid in stale provisions-were not always promptly paid. It is related that during the winter of 1854-55, which followed the complete failure of the crops throughout this section, the firm of Woodward, Blakely & Company, paid $1 in cash on their pay-roll in three months time- the rest being store orders. That winter, flour could not be had on a general wage order. The workman who would draw flour must get a special order, specifying flour. Many men, who had considered themselves fairly prosper-

ous a few years before, worked on the streets for a dollar a day, and took their wages in corn-meal. Men begged from their few wealthy neighbors the loan of a dollar or two, with which to keep up the taxes on their property .. Corn that year was selling in Indiana for 10 cents a bushel ; but there was an entire absence of transportation from that isolated section,. and the corn-meal sold in East Liverpool for 80'cents. Sheep were driven from Ohio into Indaina to keep them from starving, and cows could be had in East Liverpool for $3 a head.

The revival of business came slowly. Dur- ing these years Woodward, Blakely & Company had taken the contract to furnish the terra-cotta decorations for the new St. Paul's Cathedral, then in course of erection in Pittsburg, and were making a specialty of fine terra cotta. They filled the contract, making the new prod- uct at the western end of the works, but the venture resulted disastrously for the firm. They lost at least $10,000 in the experiments, and this, with the straitened conditions of general business, hastened their downfall. In 1857 Woodward, Blakely & Company, assigned. The failure, coming on the heels of that of William G. Smith, gave the town another seri- ous set-back. John S. Blakely, who had only a few years before been credited with being the wealthiest man in the town, lost all he had. He was at that time serving as postmaster under President Buchanan, and shortly after his term expired removed to St. Louis.

The Woodward-Blakely plant lay idle for some time. Out of the wreck Jabez Vodrey saved the eastern end, on the east side of Col- lege street, containing one kiln, and here in 1857, with his sons, William H., James and John, he organized the firm of Vodrey & Brother-the concern after the death of Col. William H. Vodrey, which occurred on Octo- ber 23, 1896, becoming the Vodrey Pottery Company. Jabez Vodrey retired after the Woodward-Blakely failure, dying in 1861.

There were two purchasers for the western end of the Woodward-Blakely plant, young men who had made their "pile" in the Cali- fornia gold fields. William Brunt, Jr., and William Bloor, who had been engaged with

154

HISTORY OF COLUMBIANA COUNTY

William Brunt, Sr., at his yellow ware plant prior to 1849, in that year went to California. Bloor returned in 1854, and Brunt a year later, each bringing with him from the far West a little fortune of about $5,000. Brunt joined his father in the yellow ware enterprise on his re- turn, while Bloor went to Trenton and engaged in potting for a few years. But the prospect of a bargain in the Woodward-Blakely plant, when it was offered at sheriff's sale in 1859, attracted both the young men.

The annual Ohio River floods, which made havoc in the potteries along the river bank dur- ing the '50's, were the direct cause of the younger Brunt branching out for himself in the yellow ware business, instead of remaining with his father at the old plant near the foot of Market street. The son, during one of the more severe freshets about this time, is said to have suggested to his father that they "swim ashore and build a pottery on dry land." The elder Brunt became incensed, and finally sug- gested that the ambitious young man find a high and dry site that suited him and go into business on his own responsibility. Young Brunt had mettle, and still had the nest-egg that he had brought home with him from the gold fields ; and so the sale of the western end of the idle Woodward-Blakely plant by the sheriff found William Brunt, Jr., and William Bloor the only bidders.

BLOOR'S FIRST WHITE WARE.

Brunt took the northern half of the bank- rupt concern, containing the two remaining kilns, on the corner of Walnut and East Fourth (then Robinson) streets. Bloor took the south- ern half on Walnut, near East Third (then Cook) street, where for years later the Will- iam Brunt, Son & Company, plant stood. Brunt began immediately the manufacture of yellow ware, but Bloor aspired to greater things. The story of his enterprise shows the spirit of the East Liverpool potter of that day, in the face of continued losses, panics, reverses and even the hard times of the Civil War. Bloor's half of the old works contained only the building that had been used by Woodward, Blakely & Com-

pany for a store and warehouse. During the next two years he built one kiln and a building for clay shops, and then entered confidently into experiments for the manufacture of white ware, the first ever produced in East Liverpool. The venture was watched with interest by the pot- ters of the place. The Wellsville Patriot of October 30, 1860, condescended to mention the new enterprise-though in that day the feeling between the two towiis was so great that few Liverpool industries received even passing mention. The Patriot of that date said :

"The white ware establishment of Mr. Bloor, of East Liverpool, is rapidly verging to completion. It has one 2-story kiln, almost 50 feet high. The Rockingham and yellow ware pottery of Mr. Brunt is now in operation. With these two establishments in full blast, together with those previously erected, East Liverpool may with propriety be denominated the manu- facturing town of the county."

The following spring, April 30, 1861, the same paper said :

"Mr. Bloor's white ware establishment at East Liverpool has proven a decided success. His china and Parian ware are. perfection."

Bloor had really succeeded in making an excellent white ware "body." Had the attempt not been made just at the beginning of the war his enterprise would in all probability have been successful financially. Through 1861 he struggled on. The ware produced was very heavy, of almost double thickness, but some artistic shapes were attempted. Little by little .he lost money, and, in 1862, he failed, and was forced to give up the venture. The plant passed into the hands of Brunt, thus giving him a 3- kiln pottery; while William Bloor returned to Trenton, there to become wealthy in the white ware trade. For many years afterward the old families of East Liverpool and vicinity kept specimens of William Bloor's first white ware, and exhibited it with pride. Some of the small ornamental mugs and pictures, decorated with blue panels, made a creditable showing even when compared with the white ware produced more than a decade later.

The drain on the young. blood of the town for war service put a second check on the strug-

155.

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS.

gling industry just as the manufacturers were recovering from the hardships of the '50's. By the fall of 1862 many of the factories were crip- pled by the lack of workmen; during 1863 and 1864 the manufacturers and all who could carry arms had joined the armies of the North. The stores of the town were left to the old men, the women and the boys, and there was no pretense of running the manufactories. Grass and "jimson-weed" flourished even in Second street and Broadway, the two busiest thoroughfares, and the women and babies suffered for the act- ual necessaries of life. But the victory of Ap- pomattox brought a new order of things. The young life which went into the potting industry when the "Boys in Blue" returned to their home town builded East Liverpool's potteries anew. In the succeeding six years no less than IO pushing, progressive firms were added to the little city's potting interests. The old make- shift plan of building had passed, and the fac- tories that were erected were substantial, and for that generation, modern. Money came easier, the old days of peddling ware had gone; steam was made the motive power of the new factories from the start, and the transportation facilities had advanced with huge strides.

John Goodwin, Sr., who had operated in real estate for several years after selling his original plant to the Baggotts in 1853, late in 1863 built the plant which later became known as the D. E. McNicol Pottery Company's, at the southeast corner of Broadway and Sixth street. In 1865 he sold the place to a company composed of A. J. Marks, Jethro Manley, Joseph Farmer and Enoch Riley. During the succeeding four years the place, known as the "Novelty Pottery," was idle much of the time, and in 1869, during a strike of the operatives, it passed into the hands of a new company, composed of John McNicol, Patrick McNicol, Adolph Fritz, William M. McClure, William Burton, Sr., William T. Burton and John Do- ver. This was the real beginning of the old firm of McNicol, Burton & Company. The McNic- ols had learned their trade in Glasgow, Scot- land, and almost every member of the firm was a practical potter. John McNicol died in 1882 and his brother, Patrick McNicol, March 13,

1894. The firm had merged into McNicol, Burton & Company, in 1870, and in -1879 D. E. McNicol, son of John McNicol, was admit- ted to the partnership. Ten years later Will L. Smith, who had for years conducted a planing mill on Sixth street, was added to the firm, and, on the death of William Burton, Sr., and the retirement of William T. Burton, the firm was. incorporated in 1892 as the D. E. McNicol Pottery Company, with Daniel E. McNicol as. president.

John Goodwin, Sr., had gone to Trenton. in 1870, but returned in 1872. Before 1860, James Foster, Timothy Rigby and James Riley had begun the operation of a plant on Broad- way just north of the McNicol-Burton factory. The plant had two kilns and was run, as were many others in those days, by horse power .. This plant, then running under the firm name of Foster & Riley, was bought by John Good- win in 1872, and the foundation there lai l for the Goodwin Pottery Company. He: died in 1875, his three sons, James H., who died in 1896; George S., and Henry S., succeeding him, and the firm. became prominent in the cream-colored ware trade from the start. With the incor- poration of the Goodwin Pottery Company, in the early 'go's, the sons of James H. Goodwin, John S. and Charles F., became active in the concern.

AFTER THE WAR.

The buildings begun by the new firms of Cartwright Brothers, in 1865; Godwin & Flentke and Agner, Foutts & Company, in 1866; the Great Western Pottery of Brunt & Hill in 1867, and Thompson & Herbert in 1868, with the additions constructed by several of the older companies about the same time, marked the new epoch in pottery architecture. All the structures were substantial, and were built with an eye to economy and facility in the arrange- ments of shops and kilns. The opening of a new pottery plant during those years was some- thing of a social event in the town, and was generally celebrated by levees to which the "se- lect" were invited. The young soldiers were

156

HISTORY OF COLUMBIANA COUNTY

home, with their laurels of war, and there was a social life in the town that there had not been before, - notwithstanding the mourning for fallen ones in many homes.

In 1857 two brothers, Samuel Morley and George S. Morley, both practical potters from Staffordshire, with James Godwin, had built a small plant to the north where the Goodwin pottery later stood, on upper Broadway, and into this company, early in the '60's, came Wil- liam Flentke. In 1866 these men under the firm name of Morley, Godwin & Flentke, built the substantial buildings which in later years formed the nucleus for the plant of the Stand- ard Pottery Company. Adolph Fritz, who superintended the erection of so many of the new factories during the '60's, was the archi- tect. Harmar Michaels, a Wellsville rail- roader, for many years baggage master on the Cleveland & Pittsburg Railroad, took an inter- .est in the firm, and in 1874 it was reorganized as Godwin & Flentke. In 1877, 30 or 40 opera- tives joined in the organization of the Standard Co-Operative Pottery Company, with A. C. Gould as president and Malachi Horan as sec- retary, and bought the Godwin plant. There were many changes in the company in later years, and the cooperative plan was finally abandoned, but the Standard Pottery Company has continued to operate the plant for nearly 30 years. Following the sale in 1877, George Morley and Harmar Michaels entered the pot- tery business in Wellsville. Samuel Morley died in 1866.

The firm of Agner, Foutts & Company had organized in 1862. The original firm consisted of Henry Agner, Isaac Foutts and George Hallam. Isaac Foutts died in 1866, and his son, Maj. M. H. Foutts, who served several terms as mayor of East Liverpool during the '70's, came into the firm, Ephraim Gaston later taking an interest. In 1866 the firm, then con- sidered one of the most enterprising in the town built a brick two-story building at the corner of Market and Second streets, which was still a part of the Sevres China Company's plant 40 years later. But the firm declined, and went into liquidation in February, 1882. The prop- erty was forced to sale and lay idle until 1887,

when it was bought for a song by the Sebring Brothers, becoming the foundation for the rise of the Sebrings to a position of power in the in- dustry-to which a more extended reference will be made later. M. H. Foutts died 'Octo- ber 26, 1886.

Elijah Webster had built a little stoneware plant on the river front-later to become the small beginning of the Cartwright interests- about 1860. Returning from the war, William Cartwright formed a partnership with Holland Manley and bought the factory of Webster in 1864. The main building was a story and a half, 18 by 30 feet, of frame, with one kiln ad- joining, the kiln-shed being 20 by 30. Cart- wright & Manley bought out the old dwelling house occupied for years by William Brunt, Sr., which adjoined the Webster plant, and in 1865 began building substantial structures to take the place of the old frames. In 1872 Sam- uel Cartwright, a brother of William, entered the firm, which became Manley, Cartwright & Company ; but on Manley's retirement in 1880 . the name was changed to Cartwright Brothers, and in 1897, after the sons of the founders were given an interest, became the Cartwright Broth- ers Company, the company continuing without change up to the present day ( 1905).

William Brunt II, who had secured both the "upper" and the "lower" ends of the old Woodward Blakely & Company pottery, upon the failure of William Bloor's white ware enter- prise in 1862, had turned over the combined plants, consisting of a row of brick and frame buildings extending along Walnut street from East Third to East Fourth streets, to his head packer, John Thompson, at the time he enlisted in the Union Army. He returned in 1864 to find that Thompson had left the town to elude the draft, and the entire property was idle. He began operations, however, and shortly' after- word, in 1865, Thompson returned and, with William Joblin, James Taylor-a brother of John N. Taylor of the Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Company-and John Hardwick, bought the "upper" end from Brunt. From this firm, in turn was organized in 1866 the old firm of West, Hardwick & Company. George West, Sr., and Thompson were mem-

. HOML

PLANT OF THE HOMER LAUGHLIN CHINA COMPANY, EAST LIVERPOOL

PLANT OF THE NATIONAL BRASS & COPPER COMPANY, LISBON

PLANT OF THE SALEM IRON COMPANY, LEETONIA

159

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS.

bers of this firm, with Hardwick and perhaps one or two others. Later Capt. W. S. George bought an interest, and the firm continued. never enjoying great prosperity, and with many changes, for nearly 20 years. Early during the life of the firm, John Thompson died, leaving his estate in the hands of Col. William H. Vod- rey for payment to an old sweetheart in Eng- land. Colonel Vodrey held the money for years, but finally discovered the whereabouts in England, of the legatee, then an old woman, and transferred to her the money.

West, Hardwick & Company were success- ful in the manufacture of "C. C." (cream-col- ored) ware, into the making of which they went early during the partnership; but when, about 1880, they went into the production of white granite, the new venture swamped the firm. George Morley, who after he left the old firm of Godwin & Flentke in 1878, had built the Pioneer Pottery at Wellsville, sold his interest in the Wellsville pottery about this time, and in 1884, with his son, Lincoln Mor- ley, bought the West-Hardwick plant, naming it the "Lincoln Pottery," and continuing the business under the firm name of Morley & Son. But from the days of the old Woodward-Blake- ly firm, this old works seemed to possess a "hoodoo" for every owner, for, Morley & Son in turn made an assignment in 1890, George Morley losing everything and retiring perma- nently from the pottery business, though he served with credit as mayor of East Liverpool for two terms during the years immediately succeeding. He died in the fall of 1896. Thie old pottery, after four years of idleness, was finally taken over by Robert Hall, John W. Hall (who, by a queer turn of the wheel of fate, had been defeated by Morley for reelec- tion as mayor ), and Monroe Patterson. They organized the East Liverpool Pottery Com- pany, and operated the plant until it was ab- sorbed with several others by the East Liver- pool Potteries Company in 1903. In 1905 the concern became the Hall China Company, John W., Charles and Robert Hall, Jr., being the principal owners. Robert Hall died Septem- ber 24, 1903.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

History of Columbiana County, Ohio and representative citizens, Part 21

Author: McCord, William B., b. 1844 Publication date: 1905 Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : Biographical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 912

Author: McCord, William B., b. 1844
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : Biographical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 912