1872

"Merrill and Houston Iron Works"

Paper Machines:

Watts and Barker       42" Cylinder       Indiana

Comments:

In February of this year Charles B. Clark, George Whiting, .J. A.

Kimberly, H. Babcock, and Frank Shattuck incorporated themselves as

the Fox River Paper Mill Company. J. A. Kimberly was president, and

George A. Whiting was secretary. The next month the incorporation was

dissolved; and the partnership of Kimberly, dark and Company was then

formed composed of Messrs. Kimberly, dark, Shattuck, and Babcock.

The Fox River Flour Mill was purchased and removed, thus making way

for the Globe Mill which was completed and in operation by October.

Colonel H. A. Frambach brought the Keller Groundwood Pulp method

to Wisconsin. He was responsible for expanding the industry into lumbering-

ing areas and interesting lumber kings in the making of paper.

The Western Wood Pulp Mill of Appleton was a pioneer starter in the

field of wood pulp manufacture. This mill was owned by Bradner, Smith

and Company of Chicago.

Frederick Weyerhaeuser was elected president of Mississippi

Logging Company.

Doing business in 1872 was the Rock River Paper Company, headed

by S. T. Merrill. He was known as the first teacher in Beloit College

and founder of the Beloit Savings Bank and the Merrill and Houston Iron

Works.

Its mill was the structure now occupied by the Brown Swiss Association

on Pleasant Street near the Wisconsin Power and Light Company dam.

The dam was used to furnish power, although most of the machinery in

1872 was operated by steam.

The mill buildings were listed as covering three acres of ground

where 100 hands were employed. Production averaged twelve tons of 

paper a day selling at sixty-five dollars a ton.

Erected in 1858, the  mill buildings were enlarged in 1864 and 1866.

Their production ran mainly to building and wrapping paper.

0. E. Merrill and Company was listed in the Beloit 1872 business

directory as "The Leading Manufactory of the City". It was also called

the Houston Turbine Water Wheel Works. The factory employed more

than one hundred men who had turned out two hundred water wheels the

previous year. Plans were under discussion to enlarge facilities for the

coming year. As indicated in their report, they had built paper machines

to the value of $100,000 for the past several years.

The 0. E. Merrill building is still in use as a part of the Yates

American Machine Company. During the depression in Beloit their unused

building impelled P. B. Yates and Louis B. Forbes of^Berlin, Wisconsin

to move their factory here.

Beloit could boast of at least a diversity of industry in 1872. 0. B.

Olmstead and Company advertised themselves as "Machinists and manu-

facturers of turbine water wheels, Wheeler's patent windmills and patent

barn door hangers". The firm had on the payroll twenty-five employees

and planned on making five hundred windmills this year. The type of wind

mill was originally invented by a missionary to the Indians, Leonard H.

Wheeler and his sons, including William H. Wheeler, a Beloit College

graduate. The latter at a later date organized the Eclipse Wind Engine

Company with the objective of making windmills. This latter firm became

the nucleus of the present day Fairbanks, Morse and Company.

Another industry was the John Thompson Plow Company, which

turned out more than one thousand plows and one hundred wagons for the

preceding year. Approximately fifty men were employed. The Beloit

Reaper and Sickle Works founded by Charles H. Parker and Gustavus

Stone had been in business for fifteen years. After a series of reverses

the plant on Third Street was manufacturing one thousand reapers a year

by 1872, with seventy-five employees and an annual wage of $35,000.

The latter's reapers attained nation wide reputation, and it was here that

Appleby made his famous twine knotter that was to revolutionize the har-

vesting of grain. Eventually the company was reorganized as Parker

and Dennett. They moved the plant to Milwaukee where it was purchased

by the International Harvester Company.