George Milburn — the wagon maker who fed Studebaker its start

born 3 June 1820 at Alston, England · died 1883 · Mishawaka 1847–49 to 1873

The founding act: George Milburn came to Mishawaka by way of a Goshen dry-goods counter and a Kosciusko County farm, settling in the town in 1847–49 and entering business as clerk, then junior partner, in A. B. Judson & Co.'s general store. In 1853 he bought an interest in A. Eberhart & Co. — the Mishawaka Wagon Works, on the south bank about where Riverfront Park stands — and the firm ran as Milburn, Eberhart & Beatty. In 1858 he bought his partners out and reorganized as George Milburn & Co.: a founder by purchase and reorganization, in the form half of Indiana's dealer and wagon houses would later copy.

The run: The government made the fortune's first scale: in 1857, holding a federal contract for Army wagons for the Utah expedition that his works — a hundred employees — could not complete in time, Milburn subcontracted the overflow to a fledgling South Bend blacksmith firm, the Studebaker brothers. The subcontract's size is printed two ways in the Wealth section and both stand — 100 wagons on the Smithsonian's account, 150 on the CoachBuilt company history — as does its agreed effect: the profits materially accelerated the Studebaker brothers' growth. The Civil War made the works the valley's war contractor, with contracts Milburn himself went to Washington to win. On 23 August 1869 the Milburn Wagon Company incorporated at $100,000, George Milburn, Thomas H. Milburn, and John Milburn the incorporators; a second incorporation, the Hollow Axle Manufacturing Company at $20,000, followed on 4 March 1871, and for the year ending 1 July 1873 the company's sales are reported at $446,652.

The leaving, and the succession: The fortune's geography was decided against Mishawaka by a refused siding: Milburn asked the town's fathers to help pay for a railroad siding to his plant and was refused, and Toledo businessmen answered with a stock offering and a thirty-two-acre parcel beside the railroad. The new company organized on 14 June 1873 with Milburn as president, and the works — soon, by the trade's own account, the largest farm-wagon maker in the world — were Toledo's from 1874. Milburn remained president until February 1880, resigned, and that April moved to a farm in Johnson County, Kansas, where he died in 1883. The Mishawaka works' own later chiefs are not carried in the record reached; the wagon ground and its water rights were absorbed into the town's later industry, and the succession on the Mishawaka side is named as a gap in this section's closing entry.

Sources:

1. Great Fortunes — "George Milburn" (Part One) — the biography and dates; the Judson store clerkship and partnership; the 1853 interest in A. Eberhart & Co. and the firm of Milburn, Eberhart & Beatty; the 1858 buyout and George Milburn & Co.; the 1857 Utah subcontract at 100 vs 150 wagons, printed as a conflict; the Civil War contracts; the incorporation of 23 August 1869 at $100,000 with its three incorporators; the Hollow Axle incorporation of 4 March 1871; the sales of $446,652 for the year ending 1 July 1873; the refused siding, the Toledo offering, the organization of 14 June 1873 with Milburn president; the resignation of February 1880 and the Kansas removal; the death in 1883.