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1889 – 1901
The band and the ball: The knit boot carried a black band around its top — the band of the name. The company's published history fixes the mark's course in two dates: "the actual use of the Red Ball began in 1891," and in 1901 the RED BALL device and the name BALL-BAND were registered as trademarks. Bock's 1937 history agrees on both. The sequence matters to the brand's archaeology and is printed exactly: the product came first (1886), the band with it, the red ball nine years into the boot's life, and the registered name a decade after that — BALL-BAND is a trademark of 1901 laid over a boot of 1886, not a founding name.
The line widens: Felt boots were added about 1889, in the company's history; the same history's second column gives 1895, and both datings are printed as the company's own text carries them. The manufacture of lumbermen's long socks commenced in 1889, on the agreement of the company history and Bock — the woolen works clothing the northern woods trade from the feet up, in the years when the knit boot was becoming the standard footwear of the lumber camps whose name the socks took. The company's motto, printed in its history, governed the whole line: "Good enough will not do; BALL-BAND must be the best."
What the mark became: The red ball's later life — on rubber boots, on the heels of sneakers, on the painted high-top that stands at the riverfront today — is carried in the entries that follow. Its documented beginning is modest and exact: a colored device adopted in 1891 on a wool boot, registered in 1901, and destined to outlive every product it was first stamped on, the company that registered it, and the buildings it was made in.
Sources:
- The History of Ball Band (company history) — the black band at the boot's top, the actual use of the Red Ball from 1891, the 1901 registration of the RED BALL and BALL-BAND trademarks, felt boots about 1889 (1895 in the same history's second column), lumbermen's long socks from 1889, and the company motto.
- Milton Bock, South Bend Tribune, 1937 — agreement on the 1891 red ball, the 1901 registration, and lumbermen's socks from 1889.