Transcribed by Crist Middaugh
September 16, 1993
-----
Using local resources to make useful products
I think there is a message here. Those industries that I have been able to guess at seem to be taking some local material - mostly hard wood - and fashioning it into some more useful product. The local talent is used in the process. There is very little outside raw material brought in for primary processing.
For example about 1903 we find the Foster Pulley Works somewhere in Friendship Village. Ten years later there was the Excelsion Pulley Company somewhere in Friendship. Were these the same company under different management? The name seems to be pretty descriptive of what they did. I assume they made bullies out of hard wood. In those days a great deal of ram work was still done with ropes and pullies.
A little later we find the United Block company in the town of Ward. Since I am not aware of any manufacturing other than saw milling in that town I am assuming that we are dealing either with a timber tract or a mill that cut logs into blocks for someone else.
About the turn of the century Fillmore seems to have been an up and coming mill town. There were the Fillmore Machine Corp., The Fillmore Cement Mixer Co., and the Fillmore Mill Corporation. Could they have been using that newly made electricity from the Genesee Valley power company?
Further down the alphabetical list I find several more chemical companies recording Timber Tracts.
I suspect that a couple of pre-1900 “Transit” companies were actually pipelines.
Did the Start Piano company make instruments or just sell them?
There were the Groven and Baker Sewing Machine Co. of Scio and the Wood Sewing Machine Co. manufacturers or just distributors? They were in business in the 1870s.
Did Gregory Starkman hire people to make shoes. In the good old days every town had its shoemaker. Their tools still show up at county auctions. Was the Hume Mechanics Hall a shep or a trade school?
I will conclude with a list of companies that are unknown to me. I am sure that many of them are remembered in their localities. Some effort should be made to get them recorded by the local historical societies. They could form an important chapter in the bicentennial history.
* 1922 Andover Heading Co.
* 1912 S. H. Burns Co., Belmont.
* 1819 Belmont Manufacturing Co., (Rawson Rooper?).
* 1900 Bates Manufacturing Co., Cuba.
* 1901 Coats Manufacturing Co., Scio.
* 1922 J. H. Colegove Co., Canaseraga.
* 1919 Demey & Sibley Cuba, Empire Sand Co.
* 1901 Fish Crawford Co. Belfast, S. S. Galser & Son, Gridly, Tyhman & Martin Co.
* 1922 Groven & Shculhlics (spelling) of Independence.
* 1908 Home Enterprise Co. of Andover.
* 1910 Hunt McMahon and Lindsey Belfast
* 1882 Jucechi Mfg. Alma, Mason Young Co.
* 1917 Merrill Soule Co. Centerville.
* About 1910 Prosser & Dekay, Richard Beebe Co.
* 1921 Ryder Washburn Co., Alfred.
* 1917 Young & Glasen, Fillmore.
* 1867 Wellington Bindall, and Waldock Co.