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The fortune: Noble G. Olds, a carpenter and machinist, established the family's lumber yard, machine works, and wagon-wheel trade in Fort Wayne. His son Henry G. Olds (1839–1902) founded the Olds Wagon Works in 1881 — the works were incorporated in 1882 and were known nationwide, one of the city's largest employers of their time (Paulison). The business entry is in the Business section.
Its scale: The 1889 county history, Valley of the Upper Maumee River, reported that the Olds works manufactured more vehicle wheels than any other maker in America: 90,000 sets of wheels shipped in twelve months, 7,000,000 spokes to be made in a year, five acres of works, nearly 500 men and boys employed, and more than $16,000 a month disbursed in wages. The directories give the paper scale: N. G. Olds & Sons incorporated in 1882 with capital of $400,000; the Olds Wagon Works with capital of $200,000. Period articles put peak output at about 50 wagons a day. No published figure for the family's personal estates has been found.
What it left: The works themselves could not survive their own product's replacement: facing scarce timber, rising labor costs, and the automobile, the wagon works retired from business in 1907 and disappeared from the directories about 1910 — the c.1882 plant building still stands south of the tracks. The family stayed in Fort Wayne commerce — Henry Olds was an original incorporator of the Fort Wayne Jenney Electric Light Company in 1881, and the family name continued in the Economy Glove Company and the Olds Coal Yard. The Henry Olds home at Berry and Ewing streets later housed the Mizpah Shrine Temple. (One clarification the record requires: the Fort Wayne Olds works had no connection to Ransom Olds's Oldsmobile; the similarity is the name alone.)
Sources:
- Valley of the Upper Maumee River (1889) — wheel output, workforce, wages.
- Fort Wayne city directories, 1889–90 and 1903 (R. L. Polk & Co.) — capitalizations of $400,000 and $200,000.
- Arthur M. Paulison, Pioneers Resting in Historic Lindenwood (1989 edition) — Henry G. Olds; the house at Berry and Ewing.
- Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, April 24, 1982 — the works' incorporation and end; Wheels That Won the West archives — the 1907 closing notice and peak output.