USA > Ohio > Richland County > History of Richland County, Ohio, from 1808 to 1908, Vol. I > Part 48
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The Citizens' Bank, although comparatively young, is one of the best known business houses in this section. It was organized in 1893, with a capital of $60,000. The bank is a member of the American Bankers' Asso- ciation. It is insured against burglary and every means has been employed to secure to the depositors the greatest degree of safety. At the present time the bank's deposits are $ ; loans and investments, $.
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surplus and undivided profits, $ The bank has safety boxes for rent and a saving department in which three per cent is paid on deposits. It issues bankers' money orders, guaranteed by the American Surety Company. The development of the bank during the past four years speaks well of the officers. Roger Heath is president; H. W. Hildebrant, vice president; H. G. Hildebrant, cashier, and C. C. Bloomfield, assistant cashier. The directors are R. Heath, H. W. Hildebrant, G. M. Skiles, Henry Wentz, I. Hollenbaugh, Edwin Mansfield, B. F. Long, W. H. Morris, J. C. Fish and L. A. Portner.
The Shelby Building & Loan Company is one of the strongest institutions in this city, and has brought sunshine and happiness into a large number of homes. It has been the means by which many a hard-working man has been the proud possessor of a home. Since its organization in 1895 it has enjoyed a constant and steady growth. The capital stock, which was originally $250,000, has lately been increased to $500,000. The last year has been the best in the company's existence. A three per cent semi-annual dividend was paid on July 1. The company has arranged a three per cent semi-annual dividend during all the years of its existence, a showing which has not been made by other similar organizations. Five per cent interest per annum, pay- able semi-annually, is paid by the loan company on certificates. Its loans are all made on real estate, with first mortgage security. With the exception of the attorney, B. F. Long, the officers of the company have remained prac- tically the same since it was organized. They comprise: H. W. Hildebrant, president; W. A. Shaw, vice president; J. W. Williams, secretary; L. A. Portner, treasurer, and B. F. Long, attorney. The committee on appraisement consists of H. W. Hildebrant, L. A. Portner and J. L. Pittenger ; committee on expenses, H. W. Steele, James Funk and L. A. Portner; auditing com- mittee, J. L. Pittenger, James Funk and J. B. Shatzer.
The factories of Shelby of today are a legion. When the Shelby plant of the United States Steel Trust was destroyed by fire on the night of June 18, many thought that Shelby had been dealt a death blow; however, if they only had taken time for thought of the numerous factories which have grown up around the tube plant, it being admitted the latter was the starter of Shelby's prosperity, it would have become very evident at once that even the loss of the tube works, although slacking for a time its onward march, would not permanently injure progressive Shelby, or Shelby of today. But why worry about the tube mill? The last sparks of the fire were hardly extin- guished before the foremost of Shelby's business men were knocking at the door of the steel trust with this question on their lips, "Will you build again in Shelby?" Receiving a negative reply, they answered, "Then we will." Subscription papers were gotten out and $250,000 was raised in Shelby of today and vicinity in short order. The rest of the $500,000 capital came easy from eastern sources who were eager to get in on the deal. They had heard of the Shelby steel plant and knew what the word "Shelby" implied. The grounds and what remained of the old plant were bought by the new independent company, and work on the erection of the buildings of the Ohio Seamless Steel Tube Company was started at once. It is only a question of a few months when the independent steel plant of Shelby will be grander.
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bigger and better than ever. The old plant employed from six hundred to eight hundred men, the monthly pay roll amounting to over $40,000. Two thousand five hundred tons of raw material were consumed every thirty days. During the prosperous times, before the late financial depression, the plant ran twenty-four hours per day. A great deal of the government work was done by the local factory, as it had the enviable reputation of putting on the market the best tubes. The output of the plant consisted for the most part of tubes for battleships, boilers, automobile tubes, and the new plant will in every way be the equal of the old (will be built more modern, with an eye to labor saving), and its erection will certainly mean a great advancement in the progress of Shelby of today, instead of the temporary slackening which the loss of the tube plant would have meant. The same intelligent, skilled labor will be employed and there is no question but that the new modern plant will prove a money maker.
The officers of the Ohio Seamless Steel Tube Company are: President, John C. Fish; vice president, George M. Skiles; second vice president, Charles S. Hook; secretary, Howard D. Seltzer; treasurer, James Brubaker; superin- tendent and general manager, A. C. Morse; directors, J. C. Fish, Charles Hook, G. M. Skiles, A. C. Morse, J. A. Seltzer, Roger Heath, Edwin Mansfield, R. P. Bricker, Charles S. Moore.
Next to the tube works, in point of number employed, comes the Shelby Electric Company and the Tungston Lamp Company, manufacturers of the celebrated Shelby useful electric light, in conjunction with the popular Tung- ston lamps, since the installation of the Tungston lamp will hereafter employ from five hundred to six hundred people, which will make it a mammoth concern covering about four acres. The affairs of this institution are directly under the management of Mr. J. C. Fish, president; G. M. Skiles, vice presi- dent; W. H. Myers, secretary; W. W. Van Horn, superintendent. Mr. Fish organized the company, and to him more than to any other man is the com- pany indebted for the large measure of success.
The Brightman Manufacturing Company, one of the largest manufac- turers of shafting and shafting machinery in the world, occupies one of the finest factory buildings in the country, covering an area of nearly one hun- dred thousand square feet of floor space. In prosperous times the company puts out nearly one thousand tons of finished goods every month. Two hun- dred and fifty men are employed by the company, and all are well paid for their skilled labor. The Brightmans are a sturdy set of business men. Nineteen years ago L. H. Brightman, president of the company, and his son, Clarence W. Brightman, now secretary and treasurer, started in a room twenty by twenty feet, in Cleveland, Ohio, with little capital, no trade, but brimful of enthusiasm and latent energy, which has produced the great business struc- ture which is theirs today. G. F. Brightman, another son, who holds the position of vice president, has been a member of the company since 1897, and both sons have been educated in the business from carly youth and will make worthy successors to their father. L. H. Brightman is the inventor of every machine used in the factory. Recently he invented a nut machine which completes nuts and cuts them from bars of steel, and through this piece
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of mechanism the company's business has been substantially increased. Mr. Brightman has been receiving all kinds of money for the invention in ques- tion. The line of products of the factory now consists of shafting and shafting machinery, and the making of nuts of all kind.
The Shelby Spring Hinge Company occupies commodious quarters across from the Brightman works on Smiley avenue. This company has a capital stock of $60,000 and employs about one hundred and fifty men. This firm has branch houses established in New York, Boston and Chicago, and agencies in many of the principal centers in this country and Canada. The Shelby chief double acting floor hinge is the principal item of manufacture. How- ever, they also manufacture thousands upon thousands of screen door hinges and various hardware novelties. Their twenty-five thousand square feet of floor space is taxed to its utmost capacity, and it will not be long until the firm will be absolutely compelled to build another addition. The officers of the company are: H. F. Griffith, president; J. W. Williams, vice president; J. A. Seltzer, secretary, and H. W. Steele, treasurer and manager.
The Chicago Handle Bar Company, one of the most recent acquisitions which Shelby of today has secured in the way of new manufacturing indus- tries, has materially aided in the growth of this city. This factory gives employment to at least one hundred men, and the principal product of the plant is bicycle handle bars, equipped with stems, of which about three hun- dred thousand are made each year. The plant also puts up fine steel bronzed chairs and other furniture and novelties such as seat posts for bicycles, wire furniture, consisting of tables, chairs and stools, and wall paper racks for the display of wall paper. The foreign business of the company is very extensive. Large shipments are made to Japan, Denmark, Russia, Germany, South Africa and Australia. This certainly speaks for the product of the company. F. L. Watters is the leading factor in this industry and pronounced an efficient and painstaking manufacturer. C. J. Barry is the superintendent of the above in- dustry.
The Shelby Foundry Company is a booming industry, which promises great things to the people of Shelby. It was organized four years ago with a capital of $10,000. The business of the company has increased rapidly, new additions added to the plant and the company now employs about one hundred men and pay out monthly $7,000 in wages. The product of the company con- sists of light and heavy gray iron castings and a newly patented S. S. Weavers rug hanger for the display of large room-sized rugs in department stores. Be- fore the present hard times the concern was crowded with orders to such an extent that the company was compelled to decline further business on account of the rush they had from their regular line of customers. The officers of the company are Robert Greer, president ; Philip Rosskopf, vice president, and Wil- liam Wise, secretary. The genius and efforts is to a certain degree due to Robert Greer and William Wise in the great strides which the company has made in its onward march of progress.
The Sutter Furniture Company, located along the Baltimore & Ohio rail- road, just north of Whitney avenue, is another of Shelby's thriving factories. The company was incorporated in 1891 with a capital stock of $50,000. Sev-
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enty-five men are paid good wages for their skilled labor at this factory. The product is almost entirely devoted to end extension, pedestal extensions, ordi- nary extension tables and kitchen cabinets. Their product is regarded as among the best made in the country and the trade is such that a customer once secured is always retained. The company have a large retail department located on West Main street. George R. Sutter is the president ; H. W. Hilde- brant, vice president ; Fred Sutter, secretary and treasurer.
The Standard Manufacturing Company, established in 1904 with a capital stock of $10,000, has a future full of promise. At the present time the com- pany is making three lines of washing machines, the new Shelby, the Leader and the Winner. Fifty men are employed. Their orders have been so heavy in the past that it has been with difficulty that they have kept up with the demand. Their wares are very popular not only in the East but also along the Pacific coast. Carload shipments are frequent to Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Spokane and other western points. The officers of the company are Francis Brucker, president and treasurer; Charles L. Bushey, vice presi- dent, and M. T. Love, secretary.
Other factories and similar institutions of note in Shelby are the Shelby Canning Company, Heath's City Mills, Shelby Printing Company, Daily Globe Publishing Company, Dickerson Brothers Printing Company, Brucker Lumber Company, Wiggins Lumber Company, Shelby Ice Company, Shelby Cooper- age & Handle Company, Schreffler Carriage Company, Fix Hoop & Stave Mills, Stang's Iron Works, Shelby Water Company, Shelby Candy Company, Zeigler's Machine Shop, Houpt Monumental Works, Huber's Cigar Factory, Shelby Pure Milk Company.
The City Mills, established by Roger Heath in 1877, is one of Shelby's most thriving institutions. The mill puts out five well-known brands of flour, namely, Bon Ton, Imperial, Paragon, Climax and Moss Rose. They are recog- nized as the highest grade of goods in the market. Roger Heath is still the king pin. Three of his sons, Will, Bert and George, are associated with him in the business.
The Shelby Printing Company, organized in 1905, is one of the newer manufacturing institutions of the city. Their business has increased by bounds, and addition after addition has been built to the plant. The capital stock of the company is $75,000. One hundred skilled laborers are employed by this company. Its product consists mainly of sales books, duplicate, tripli- cate or quadruplicate devices for the rapid handling of business in establish- ments requiring a system of absolute certainty. This product is shipped to the four corners of the earth. The officers of the company are J. C. Fish, president; J. W. Van Horn, secretary; Henry Wentz, treasurer, and O. S. Gauch, general manager.
The Shelby Daily Globe was founded April 24, 1900, by C. S. Moore and J. C. Stambaugh. That it has been popular with its subscribers is shown by the fact that it started a little sheet about the size of a postage stamp and is now a full-fledged five-column daily with a circulation of 1.800. The plant has grown from a small building to the three-story briek block located on West Main street, now its home. It has without doubt the finest office of any
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newspaper in this section of the state. R. L. Castor is now and has been since its establishment city editor of the Globe.
The Shelby News Company, a partnership consisting of W. L. Dickerson and M. E. Dickerson, was formed in 1897. Job printing is a specialty, receiv- ing much of their work from outside points. Twenty-five people are employed. The plant is equipped with the most up-to-date and expensive machinery.
ABANDONED TOWN SITES.
The pioneer idea of a town site was a desirable location as to the ground, with springs of running water adjacent. But it is different now. A town locates itself, as it were, at a place convenient for traffic or for other commer- cial reasons. The springs of water with their copious flows determined the location of Richland's county seat, but those springs are now but little used, and some of our people do not even know of them. But Mansfield would not have grown after the "spring period" was passed had not other conditions favorable to its growth and prosperity been developed.
Then, too, there was the centrifugal theory that the marts of trade, like the dews of heaven, should be distributed over the country. Later came the centripetal idea of a tendency to the center, to the county seat, to the commer- cial and political metropolis. Therefore, as Mansfield grew and prospered the country towns went the other way.
There were exceptions, however, to this rule, and the town of Shelby is one of them from local causes; first, on account of its railroad facilities and advantages, and, secondly, by reason of its public-spirited and enterprising citizens. Bellville, another exception, was selected as a town site for its admira- ble location and natural advantages, and being on the State road between central Ohio and the lakes had advantages as a stage town, which drew it suf- ficient trade to foster its growth until the railroad came that way, after which its continued prosperity was assured.
There are other towns that are more or less prosperous, but it is the purpose of this chapter to treat of the other class.
The first town founded in Richland county was at Beam's Mills, on the Rockyfork of the Mohican, three miles southeast of Mansfield. This town was intended for the county seat of the newly-to-be-formed county, but within a year or two the Beam site was abandoned and a new site selected further up the Rockyfork. That is the site of the present town of Mansfield. The change of location was made principally on account of the famous springs where Colonel Crawford's army rested in 1782. There is a tradition that Major Rogers and his Rangers also bivouacked at these springs in December, 1760. It was the water of the springs that the pioneers considered that caused the county-seat site to be permanently located here. The historical associations of the springs at that time were not much in evidence. The site of Richland county's first town and settlement is now a part of the Mentzer farm, and a farmhouse and a Grange hall mark the place of the town site of 1807.
Winchester was once a promising little village in Worthington township, this county, but its site is now cultivated as fields. The county records show
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that Winchester was platted March 31, 1845, but otherwise the town exists only as a memory. Winchester was situated on the west bank of the Clearfork of the Mohican river, half way between Butler and Newville.
There were several reasons why Winchester was founded, the principal one perhaps being on account of the large grist mill at that point. Another reason was that Newville, the only other town then in Worthington, was situ- ated within a half mile of the north line of the township, which made it inconvenient as a township seat, as some men had to go nearly six miles to vote on election days. The town of Winchester was within a half mile of the township center.
The mills-then known as Calhoun's-consisted of a grist mill, a saw- mill and a carding and fulling mill, around which several dwellings clustered, but the land in that immediate vicinity was too rough and uneven for a town site. Therefore the plat was made and the town founded upon a more eligible location on the opposite side of the river, where a half dozen or more houses were subsequently built, and the business of the place, in addition to the mills, increased and soon included a store of general merchandise, a blacksmith shop, a cooper shop, a shoe shop and a weaver's shop, and the village bid fair for the future.
But soon that great revolutionizer of affairs and annihilator of time and distance-the railroad-went that way and the old-time calculations of the town were upset. The Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark railroad, when ex- tended from Mansfield to Newark, went within two miles of Winchester, and that sealed the fate of that village.
A new town was laid out along the railroad in January, 1848, and was locally known as Spohntown, because the town was platted on Spohn's land. The town, however, was called Independence, perhaps in defiance to Bellville, six miles distant, which was supposed to be unfriendly to the new town. When the postoffice was established at Independence it was called Butler, and the first postmaster was Thomas B. Andrews. Mr. Andrews was a Democrat and he called the postoffice Butler in honor of General William O. Butler, of Ken- tucky, who was the candidate for vice president on the ticket with General Lewis Cass in 1848. The name of the town has since been changed to "Butler" to agree with the name of the postoffice. Butler now is a thriving village of good size and is an important shipping point on the Baltimore & Ohio railroad.
Winchester was named for Winchester, Virginia, where the Hammon family emigrated from. Winchester almost "died a bornin'," for Independ- ence, the railroad town, grew and prospered, while the little mill hamlet went to the wall.
The second grist mill in Richland county (Beam's being the first) was built by John Frederick Herring on the Clearfork in Perry township, after -. wards known as the Hanawalt mills. Later Herring sought a new location farther down the stream in Worthington township, where he built another grist mill and founded the town of Newville in 1823.
David Herring, John Frederick Herring's youngest son, built the Win- chester mills in 1840. The building was forty by sixty feet, three full stories high above the basement, and was for many years the largest frame building
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in Richland county. Its glebe comprised three hundred and twenty acres of section 9. Herring operated these inills successfully for a number of years, and shipped part of the products of the same by flatboats from Newville and Loudonville to New Orleans under his personal supervision. After selling his cargo in the Crescent City Herring would sail for New York, where he would buy a stock of goods; then return home via the Erie canal, the lake and stage to Mansfield.
But in years financial misfortune came to Mr. Herring. Having signed papers as security for a friend for a considerable amount he had to pay the same, and when he saw the disaster coming he shipped flour to a firm in Detroit and let the purchase price remain with them until the final shipment, so that he could draw the whole amount at once to pay the claim for which he was surety. But a few weeks before the stay on the paper became due the Detroit firm failed, and on account of this double misfortune Herring had to incumber his property and finally lost it all.
The Winchester grist mill building was converted into a woolen factory in about 1856, but as time was then relegating woolen mills to the past it only had a run as such a few years, and the building now stands as a relic of change and of passing time. The head-race was quite long. After leaving the dam some distance it widened into a reservoir, at the lower end of which was a "spill," and between that and the mill the race resumed a canal-like channel. Between the reservoir and the river there is an island field of about five acres, and it was from this island that persons had to be rescued in canoes at the time of the Victoria flood in 1838.
The Hammon family, whose lands adjoin the site of old Winchester, owns broad acres and is wealthy and prosperous.
The old-time settlers of that locality, like those of other places, have passed away, and old-time affairs are held in bad repute by the "smart sets" of today. It is a pleasant relief to turn at times from the styles of today to the old-fashioned ways of former years. Old-fashioned women! God bless them; yes, He has always blessed them. They never attempted to improve upon the teachings of St. Paul. They never clamored to vote, not even for members of the school board. It was "woman" and "wife" then; it is "lady" now.
An old English story states that the wife of a bishop once called at the rectory of a country parish. The servant announced that "The bishop's lady has called." The vicar innocently inquired, "Is she the bishop's lady or the bishop's wife?"
A girl once called at a house in answer to a want ad and inquired, "Are you the women who advertised for a lady to do housework?" Innovations are sometimes made at the expense of good taste.
It is said that the eyes of the pioneer maiden were like those of a child, being expressive of satisfaction of home life. Cynics claim that now women lose that child-like expression after they get into society; that social artifice, affectation and insatiate vanity that modern life encourages soon do away with the pellucid clearness and steadfastness of the eye; that that beautiful expres- sion which, though so rare nowadays, is infinitely more bewitching than all the bright arrows of coquetry that flash from the glances of even well-bred
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women of society, who have taken more care to train their eyes than to cultivate their hearts.
Octororo was once a promising little village in Monroe township, with a church, a grist mill, a store and a hotel, and a number of residences, but a rival town (Lucas) was platted up the Rockyfork, scarcely a mile distant, and Octororo quietly passed away, leaving only a little cemetery to mark the locality where the town once stood.
Six Corners, locally called "Pinhook," was another little town which bid fair in the early '50s to make a place of some importance. Its site was also in Monroe township on the road leading from Lucas to Perrysville. It was situated at the crossing of three roads, making six corners. The town in 1852 contained a Masonic temple, a church, a store, a wagon shop, a blacksmith shop, a shoe shop and a number of dwellings, and also had a postoffice. The Masonic lodge, however, for which the Masonic building was erected was never instituted and the building was used for other purposes. After a few years' existence some of the buildings went up in smoke and others down in decay, leaving but a few buildings today on the old town site. The location is a commanding one, affording a good view of the Blackfork valley and the Mifflin hills, and upon a fair day the old village of Petersburg, now called Mifflin, can be seen nestling upon the Ruffner plateau, six miles away.
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