USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > Sketches and statistics of Cincinnati in 1851 > Part 16
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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31
Camphine and Spirit Gas. Three factories .- Seven hands ; pro- duct, seventeen thousand two hundred dollars; raw material, 75 per cent.
Candies and Confectionaries .- Of these, there are twelve shops, with eighty hands ; value of product, one hundred and twenty-eight thousand one hundred and twenty dollars; raw materials, 60 per cent.
P. Hall, 52 Main street, employs at an average, twenty-three
183
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
hands, and makes six to eight hundred pounds candies per day. Large quantities of sirups for soda-water establishments, are also made here, when the weather is favorable. He has worked up fifteen boxes Havana sugar, weekly, into candies and sirups.
Caps-men and boys. Nine factories .- Employ fifty hands ; value of product, thirty-nine thousand dollars ; raw material, 40 per cent.
Carpenters and Builders. Two hundred and eighty-four shops .- Employ two thousand three hundred and twenty hands ; value of product, two million one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars; raw material, 5 per cent.
Cars and Omnibuses-railroad. Four establishments, for making and repairing. Employ one hundred and ten hands; value of pro- duct, one hundred and eight thousand four hundred and forty-seven dollars; raw material, 70 per cent.
Carriages, Buggies, etc. Twenty-four factories .- Two hundred and twelve hands ; product, two hundred and forty-seven thousand four hundred dollars ; raw material, 40 per cent.
J. W. Gosling, corner of Sycamore and Sixth streets, employs forty-five hands; makes buggies, barouches, carriages, etc., to the value of fifty thousand dollars. There is a novelty introduced here, of a carriage step, which by hidden machinery, is so con- nected with the door, that the opening of the door uncovers and lets down the step, as its shutting restores it to its place and covers it. The step is, therefore, out of sight, except for the brief space during which it is in actual service.
George C. Miller & Sons. This is a long established house, who have recently put up spacious work and sale-rooms, on Seventh, west of Main street. They make every description of fine carriages, buggies, and barouches ; employ thirty hands, and manufacture to the value of thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars.
I. & B. Bruce & Co., 75 Walnut street. This establishment makes every variety of wheeled vehicle, including carriages, buggies, barouches, omnibuses, hose-reels, and light wagons; it employs sixty hands. It does the largest repairing business, in its line, of any shop in Cincinnati. The concern is about to open separate work- shops on Elm, below Columbia street.
Carpet weavers. Eighteen shops .- Sixty-five hands; fifty-six thousand dollars, labor product.
Carvers in wood. Three shops .- Seven hands; value of pro- duct, seven thousand dollars ; raw material, 5 per cent.
184
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
A. W. Anderson, Second, west of Race street, makes figure-heads for steamboats and sailing vessels, Ionic, Corinthian, and composite capitals and columns, and patterns for ornamental castings. The full length statue of Jefferson, on the Vine street engine hall, was executed by Mr. Anderson.
Castor Oil. One factory, that of Conkling, Wood & Co .- Em- ploys eight hands, and produces to the value of fifty-five thousand dollars ; value of raw material, including barrels, 75 per cent.
Charcoal, pulverized for rectifiers. Three establishments .- Nine hands; value of product, eighteen thousand five hundred dollars ; raw material, 50 per cent.
Chemicals. Five laboratories .- Seventy-nine hands ; product in value, two hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars ; raw material, 40 per cent. Here are made oil vitriol, copperas, alum, prussiate of potash, prussian blue, etc.
J. C. Baum, on Dunlap street, south of Hamilton road, works twenty hands, in the manufacture of prussian blue and prussiate of potash ; manufactures to the value of twenty-five thousand dollars.
Cistern builders. Three .- Thirty-six hands ; value of product, seventy-five thousand dollars.
Jos. S. Cook has been several years engaged in cistern-building- has built all the public cisterns in Cincinnati-was the first man that ever turned an arch in this line of business, and has never been called upon to repair or alter a cistern built under his charge.
Cloaks and Visites. Two shops .- Six hands; three thousand dollars value ; raw material, 65 per cent.
Clothing manufactories .- This is a very extensive business here, which is principally engrossed by the Israelites of Cincinnati. One hundred and eight stores and shops; employ nine hundred and fifty hands at their workshops. More than nine thousand women work at their own houses, for these establishments. Value of pro- duct, one million nine hundred and forty-seven thousand five hun- dred dollars ; raw material, 60 per cent.
There are six establishments alone, in the city, which manufacture more than half a million of dollars of clothing. Cincinnati is the great mart for ready-made clothing, for the whole south and west.
Coffee roasting, etc. One establishment, with seventeen hands, and a product of thirty-eight thousand dollars; raw material, 75 per cent.
185
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
Combs. One factory .- Employs eighteen hands; value of pro- duct, eighteen thousand dollars; raw material 60 per cent.
Composition-roofing. Four establishments .- Eighteen hands ; value of roofs, forty thousand dollars; raw material, 50 per cent.
S. M. & C. M. Warren, put on these kind of roofs, very exten- sively. They first introduced them here, in 1847.
The usual covering hitherto, has been shingles, sheet-tin, slate, and sheet-zinc. The two last very expensive; the others far from durable. Warren's composition roofs, in their first cost, are not much higher than shingles, and taking durability into view, are much less expensive.
The composition is a preparation of tar and sand upon paper, which is fastened to the sheeting usually prepared as a basis for shingles. Thick and strong paper is first secured to the boards, and two or three coats of prepared tar are then spread on the sur- face. Sand or fine gravel forms the final coat or covering.
Such a roof does not leak, even when just made, and a few months serve to render it perfectly dry and indestructible by fire.
The advantages of this roof are :
1st. Its durability. To this no period can be assigned, save that it will last as long as the house it covers.
2d. The beauty it confers upon a roof. The slightest possible declivity serves for such a roof, as the water cannot penetrate it in the slightest degree. The benefit of this light slope, is also a mate- rial advantage. Usually, the upper rooms of a house, are of little value, the greater part not being high enough to permit persons to stand upright. With these roofs, the whole of the upper floor can be readily used for ordinary purposes.
3d. Its efficiency. Such a roof becomes so substantial that rain cannot, in the slightest degree, penetrate it.
4th. Its indestructiblety by fire has been often tested, and always with success. The workshop of the Messrs. Warren, themselves, took fire not long since, and although the sheeting of the roof was charred through to a coal, the fire could not pass through the roof, and the adjacent buildings were saved thereby from the extension of the fire.
5th. Not least in the advantages, is the perfect foothold it affords in the surface as well as in the slope. These roofs may be walked over in perfect safety, except when covered with sleet.
Coopers. There are sixty-three shops, with seven hundred and
f 186
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
ninety-six workmen employed ; value of product, three hundred and eighty-seven thousand dollars ; raw material, 20 per cent.
One shop alone, works one hundred and fifty hands, and turns out cooperage, annually, to the value of ninety thousand dollars.
Copper, Tin, and Sheet-Iron workers. Forty-two shops .- Two hundred and forty hands; value of products, two hundred and fifty-eight thousand six hundred and forty dollars ; raw material, copper-ware, 60 per cent .; tin-ware and sheet-iron-ware, 30 per cent. ; average value of raw material, 48 per cent.
Copperplate Printers. Two establishments .- Employ twelve hands ; labor product, fifty thousand dollars ; raw material, 10 per cent.
E. C. Middleton, Odd Fellows' building, is one of the inventors and patentees of a novel press, which enables the copper-plate printer to execute his work without lifting the plate after it has been placed on the bed. Every artist can appreciate the importance of such improvement.
Cordage, etc. Nine rope-yards .- One hundred and thirty hands; value of product, one hundred and eighty thousand dollars; raw material, 35 per cent.
Cured Beef, Tongues, etc .- There are thirteen establishments, with forty hands, in this line, most of them operating on a small scale, or carrying it on as an adjunct to business of greater magni- tude. Of this latter class, is the firm of Stagg & Shays, which does a heavy business in sugar-cured hams, and has this year put up one hundred and fifty thousand pounds dried beef ; and cured fifteen thousand beef tongues. The rounds of thirty-one thousand two hundred beef cattle, have been cured here, this season, which, to- gether with that number of tongues, reaches a value of one hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars. Raw material, 65 per cent.
Cutlery-Surgical and Dental Instruments -Tailors' Shears, etc. Four workshops .- Twenty-five hands ; value of product forty thou- sand dollars ; raw material, 20 per cent.
W. Z. Rees, Sixth, near Walnut street, is one of the most im- portant of these. He makes surgical instruments of admirable delicacy of construction and finish, and his couching or cataract needles, are preferred in the United States, to those of any others made in this country. Drs. Mussey, Taliaferro, Smith, and others, surgeons, get all their instruments here.
Daguerreotypists .- Thirty-two, with seventy-eight assistants ; pro- duce to the value of eighty thousand dollars; raw material, 60 per cent.
187
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
Our daguerreian artists stand high everywhere. Reed, the artist, who carried portraits taken by Hawkins and Faris, to Europe, states, in a letter home, that their works were recognized at a glance in Florence, by Frenchmen and others, as American productions, and superior to anything produced on the continent of Europe.
Hawkins, in addition to his daguerreotypes, produces, what he terms, a solograph picture. These are portraits and miniatures which possess the beauty of superior oil paintings, and the exquisite finish of highly-wrought miniatures. Nothing can exceed their truthfulness of likeness and life-like coloring.
They possess the great advantage of not being liable to change ; while, on the contrary, like a fine painting, they improve by time.
While these pictures are equal to finished paintings in color, they excel even the daguerreotype, in fidelity.
Dentistry .- There are thirty-six dentists, with forty-four assist- ants ; value of operations, ninety-two thousand dollars ; raw material, 65 per cent.
Die sinkers. Three shops .- Five hands; value of product, five thousand dollars; raw material, 10 per cent.
Domestic Liquors-Brandies, Wines, Cordials, etc .- Of these, there are eight extensive establishments, and as many more on a small scale, employing forty-six hands, which manufacture sixty-six thousand barrels of forty gallons, annually, worth at eleven dollars per barrel, seven hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars; raw material, 60 per cent.
Kellogg, Brothers, on Second street, consume sixty barrels whis- ky, per day ; other materials, proportionately. Here may be seen a tub or tun employed in the manufacture of native sweet wine, which is of fifty thousand gallons capacity, the staves being three inches thick ; the bottom of six inch timber, and bound with nineteen iron wagon-tire hoops, of four and a-half by one quarter inches. It is twelve feet high, and over twenty-five feet diameter. There are five other tubs, which in the aggregate, contain as much as the great mastodon just described, and which, if seen anywhere else, would be considered of enormous capacity ; but whose size here, is lost sight of, in the contemplation of the largest one.
This firm supplies brandy, gin, old reserve whisky, sweet wines, cordials, etc., to the south-east and south-west.
Dyers. Fifteen dyeing and scouring establishments .- Twenty-
188
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
four hands ; value of product, twenty-eight thousand dollars; raw material, 25 per cent.
William Teasdale, corner Walnut and Gano street, carries on these various operations, on an extensive scale. He has never failed at the various state exhibitions and mechanics' fairs, to receive premiums and diplomas for superior tints and permanent colors.
Edge-tool makers. Nineteen factories .- Seventy-two hands ; value of product, ninety-seven thousand nine hundred dollars; raw ma- terial, 35 per cent.
J. F. Fowler & Co., on Lock street, fabricate all kinds of edge tools, pump augers, tanners', fleshers', and lath knives, hatchets, plane bits, carpenters' and coopers' tools, of all descriptions.
James Galbraith, Seventh, west of Main street, makes annually, one thousand two hundred dozen stone hammers, lathing and shing- ling hatchets and drawing-knives, chopping, broad, and carpenters' axes, of the value of eighteen thousand dollars.
Edge-tool grinding .- A. Cunningham, Lock street, employs eight- een hands. Value of annual labor product, twenty thousand dol- lars ; raw material, 5 per cent .; grinds two thousand four hundred pieces every week. Fancy grinding and polishing, is also done here.
Engravers .- There are eight wood, and six steel and copperplate engraving establishments here; thirty engravers, including assist- ants ; value of labor product, fifty thousand dollars; raw material, 10 per cent.
Fancy job printing. Two establishments .- These are those of Messrs. Schmidt & Storch, Third street, east of Main; and C. Clark & Co., of the Ben Franklin office, on Walnut street. Their ornamental work in bronze or silver and gold, and in tints and colors are executed in a style unsurpassed at other offices, here or elsewhere. The gold lettering of Schmidt & Storch, upon ultra- marine paper, is truly magnificent. These are largely employed in wine labels, for our native wine manufacturers. C. Clark & Co., are extensively engaged on fancy steamboat bills, printed also in gold and silver letters. Both these firms execute fine circulars, checks, notes, bills lading, bill-heads, and indeed, every species of letter sheet printing. Twenty-five hands are employed in these job offices ; value of product, thirty thousand dollars; raw material, 30 per cent.
Some notion of the extent of Clark & Co.'s operations, may be
Mainili.
TATE
E
light Ajatch&
ENGRAVERS
189
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
formed, by the statement here made, that they employ in their job office, more than one thousand fonts of type; and keep employed, seven hand presses, four power presses, two card presses, one tip press, and one embossing press. They occupy more business space, and are provided more extensively with business materials, than any establishment of the kind in the Atlantic cities.
Feed and Flouring mills .- There are fourteen mills here, the more important of which, manufacture wheat flour, and steam-dried corn meal, for foreign markets. They grind oil-cake into meal, and make feed for horses, etc., by grinding up corn in the cob, and oats, and by chopping rye and buckwheat, etc. Value of aggregate product, one million six hundred and ninety thousand dollars; employ sixty-five hands ; raw material, 75 per cent.
C. W. West & Co., have two mills, one on the Miami, the other on the Whitewater canal; manufacture three hundred and fifty barrels flour per day. Their flour is of the highest reputation in the markets.
C. S. Bradbury, corner Eighth and Broadway, manufactures one hundred and fifty barrels superfine flour, and one hundred and forty barrels steam dried corn-meal per day. Prepares from wheat and corn, using only the germ of the grain, farina of the finest quality. This is the basis of various delicious culinary preparations, such as puddings, custards, blanc-mange, etc. Five hundred pounds of this article is made at this mill daily. His steam dried corn-meal, is shipped to every part of the globe.
A. Erkenbrecher, Lock street, north of Miami canal, makes and sifts corn-meal for family use, buckwheat flour, chopped feed, and pearl barley. Also, kiln dried corn-meal, for exportation.
Fire-engines, Hydraulic Apparatus, etc .- One very important manu- facture which has been established during late years in Cincinnati, is that of fire-engines and other hydraulic apparatus. These are made by D. L. Farnam, on Elm, between Fourth and Fifth streets. Mr. Farnam is the inventor, as well as manufacturer of these hy- draulic fire-engines. They are constructed on the novel principle of working horizontally, the firemen being seated in the body of the engine. Those who have handled, in times of fire, engines on the ordinary principle, know what an exhausting process it is to work them with spirit, even for twenty minutes. In the present descrip- tion of engine, the men exert themselves as if rowing a boat, the motion of the body and the muscles employed, being precisely the 16
190
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
same. Eubank, in his celebrated work on hydraulics, appears to have referred to this very kind of engine as a desideratum, in say- ing, " when a man's strength is applied as in the act of rowing, the effect is nearly one hundred and fifty per cent., more than in moving a pump lever. This is sufficient to induce efforts to supersede the present mode of working the pumps of engines."
In these engines, the firemen sit with one or both feet braced up nearly level with the seat. In this position, a man of ordinary strength can raise a weight of one hundred and fifty pounds, thirty inches, and keep that weight passing up and down that distance, as many times a minute as the usual number of strokes of an engine.
As it has been ascertained that firemen working on side-engines, do not apply on an average over thirty pounds, and on an engine with long levers working across the ends, about fifty pounds, the advantage this engine possesses over its predecessors is manifest. This does not include the greater power of enduring protracted exertion in the position of rowing, which is as five to one against the old fashioned exercise of the arms. Accordingly, it has been found that these engines, with less working power, deliver more water a greater distance, than those on the ordinary principle.
On a recent trial, twenty men forced water up Race street, on an ascent of thirty-five feet, a distance of six hundred and fifty feet, and threw it from the nozzle at the end of the hose, a further dis- tance of one hundred and twenty feet.
Another great advantage these engines possess, is their being one- third to one-half lighter in weight, than those already in use ; a dif- ference which enables the first two or three who reach the engine house to start off to a fire at once, as well as lessens the labor of dragging the apparatus the whole distance.
Of these engines, thirty-seven have been already built, and orders are on file, sufficient to keep the concern employed for the ensuing six months.
There is in this establishment, a double acting force-pump, just finished, that has been ordered for a flouring mill at Hamilton, Ohio. Another of the same is making here, for Zanesville, Ohio. These are designed for the protection from fire, of the mills, being worked by the water-wheel, with which they are connected. When wanted for use, sixteen streams of one inch each, can be thrown at once, the volume of water being one foot diameter in capacity. These afford not only protection to the mill or factory which uses
191
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
them, but may be carried on in pipes through a town or village, and taken from water plugs at various points by an attachment of hose, so as to perform the duty of a fire-engine, without the labor or expense of that apparatus. In this way, at trifling cost, compara- tively, any place which has water or steam power employed in manufacture, can protect itself from the ravages of fire.
With the exception of castings in the rough, every part of these hydraulics is made on the premises ; thirty-seven hands are employed here. Value of product, sixty-five thousand dollars; raw ma- terial, 50 per cent.
This is the only hydraulic apparatus factory, west of Philadelphia.
Flooring-mills .- Beside planing machines, which face boards, as well as shave other lumber, there are fourteen of Woodworth's ma- chines, for planing and tonguing flooring-boards. These supply an aggregate of three hundred and fifty-one thousand two hundred dollars, as a product, and a value of raw material, of 65 per cent. Seventy-two hands.
Florists .- A large amount of plants are disposed of wholesale and retail, in this market. There are fifteen sale gardens, whose annual sales reach one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. Thirty-five hands ; raw material, 10 per cent.
J. S. Cook, has recently commenced a sale garden and nursery, on the Madison road, just beyond the Lane Seminary. It is of twenty acres extent, and as every dollar made from it for years, will be invested in further improvement, it will eventually become one of the most charming flower-gardens in the west. As to the nursery, Mr. Cook is determined to have nothing for sale which is not of his own planting, budding, or grafting, as the case may be ; and the purchaser can therefore, always rely on obtaining with cer- tainty, the very article he desires to purchase.
Foundery castings .- This is one of our heaviest branches of manu- facture, and is carried on in every possible variety, in which iron can be cast, from a butt hinge to a burial case. A number of these founderies, include finishing shops. A few of them, simply supply castings in the rough ; others finish their work to the last degree of polish required by the purpose to which it is applied. A share of them confine their products to a single great staple or two of manu- facture, and in the case of others, a thousand different articles are the product. It would be impossible, therefore, to reduce these founderies, with their products, to classes; and the aggregate being
192
MANUFACTURES AND INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS.
first stated, the operations of a few of them will be given, as samples of each class.
There are forty-four founderies, one-third of which, are mainly or entirely in the stove trade, which is itself a heavy department of the business, as high as one thousand stoves having been manufactured here, in one day alone. The value of foundery products, is three millions six hundred and seventy-six thousand five hundred dollars ; hands employed, four thousand six hundred and ninety-five ; aver- age value of raw material, 22 per cent.
Horton & Macy, Fifth, between Elm and Plum streets, employ sixty hands, and manufacture to the value of seventy-five thousand dollars. These products are, iron-railing castings, in every variety of pattern, for exportation ; also, for cemeteries; enameled grates ; one-third for home use, two-thirds sold for the supply of other mar- kets. Iron mantles, hat racks, chairs, and settees; value of raw material, 20 per cent.
There are some of the hands in this foundery, who earn twenty dollars weekly.
A. B. Holabird, west Front St., makes steam-engines principally- fifty per year, for the last three years ; will this year increase those figures. These are worth one thousand five hundred dollars each. One hundred corn shellers, which sell for one hundred dollars each. Their repairing and small machinery business, fifteen thousand dollars.
A finished engine on the premises, of his own manufacture, and of novel construction, is worth a visit; for finish and ease of work- ing, and general efficiency, it cannot be surpassed.
Reynolds, Kite & Tatum, build steam-engines and boilers, and are brass and iron founders ; fitters of wrought iron welded pipe, for steam, gas, etc .; fitters of lard-oil, stearine, star candle and soap apparatus, and steam fixtures for rendering lard, tallow, and oil; make to order, all kinds of tools and machinery; also, tanks for rendering lard, under Wilson's patent. They employ eighty hands ; value of product of labor, eighty-five thousand dollars. Their repairing business alone keeps twenty hands occupied.
Niles & Co. The principal business of this establishment, is sugar-mill and steam-engine building, for the south. P. A. Cham- pomier, in his statistics of the sugar crop of Louisiana, for 1850, says :
Since 1846, there have been erected in the State, three hundred and fifty-five engines and sugar-mills, most of them to replace old
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.