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Founder of Bass Foundry and Machine Company · Railroad car wheels
On the record
John H. Bass was born 9 November 1835 at Salem, Kentucky, and came to Fort Wayne in 1852, aged seventeen. The family's iron business had been started by his older brother Sion S. Bass, who clerked for Ewing, Chute & Co., co-founded the machine works in 1853, and was killed as colonel of the 30th Indiana at Shiloh in April 1862. That year John H. Bass bought the Fort Wayne Machine Works from his brother's estate. Incorporated as the Bass Foundry and Machine Company in 1873, the works on Hanna Street grew to spread over more than five city squares and became the world's leading maker of railroad car wheels, turning out axles, Corliss engines, and boilers besides — at its peak employing about 1,100 men on a $35,000 monthly payroll. Bass was for many years president of the First National Bank, and his country estate, Brookside, was known for its lake, gardens, and wildlife preserve. He died in 1922. The firm outlived him by two decades, passing through a federal bankruptcy reorganization in 1939 and a sale in 1941.
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- § 06 — people of the record
- § 05 — business
Sources: Pioneers Resting in Historic Lindenwood (ACPL, 1989); News-Sentinel, Cityscapes (28 November 1981); Griswold, Pictorial History of Fort Wayne (1917).