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1843 – closed after a receivership in 1888
Founded: Henry Rudisill Sr. and Louis Wolke formed a partnership in 1843 and the same year erected a four-story brick and stone building, 45 by 44 feet, on Lot 9 of the County Addition — the south side of East Water Street (now Superior Street) between Barr and Lafayette, on the north bank of the Wabash and Erie Canal, which powered it by an overshot wheel. The building was first fitted as a flaxseed oil mill.
Founders: Henry Rudisill Sr. and Major Louis Wolke.
What it did: In 1844 the oil equipment was removed and a carding machine, cards, looms and auxiliary machinery installed: the plant became a woolen mill, run as Henry Rudisill & Son. By 1868–69 the firm was listed as "manufacturers of and wholesale and retail dealers in cloth, tweeds, jeans, satinets, flannels, blankets and woolen yarn, also dealers in wool," with capacity up to 720 spindles handling 600 pounds of wool in twenty-four hours and employing as many as sixty people day and night.
Course: Rudisill withdrew in 1854 and Wolke became sole owner under the same firm name; he added a steam engine at once while keeping water power, and built a three-story brick and stone addition in 1856, raising the force to about fifteen employees and 140 spindles. Rudisill Sr. died in 1858; in 1859 a new partnership — Henry Rudisill Jr., R. Morgan French, and N. B. and M. B. Freeman — continued as Henry Rudisill & Son until 1861, when Rudisill and the Freemans retired and French carried on. In 1863 Judge Samuel Hanna and his son Willis were admitted and the firm became French, Hanna & Co.; another building filled the space north to Water Street about 1864 and O. W. Jefferds was admitted as a partner. Wolke died 1 November 1873; he had also erected the Wolke Building on Calhoun Street.
Fate: When the Nickel Plate Railroad was built through Fort Wayne on the former canal right-of-way, the mill's water power was cut off. The company's suit for damages reached the U.S. District Court at Indianapolis on 1 November 1883; five years later a receiver was appointed and shortly thereafter the business was closed. Bates records that the original building with its additions was then the only water-powered mill building still standing in Allen County, its walls long used for warehouse purposes.
Sources:
- Roy M. Bates, The Water-Powered Mills of Allen County, Indiana (1942), No. XXXV, quoting the Fort Wayne City Directory of 1868–69 for the product line — founding, course, capacity, closure.