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1847 – 1883
The fortune: George Milburn (born 3 June 1820 at Alston, England; died 1883) 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 at Main and Vistula. 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. 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 and both stand: the Smithsonian's Studebaker exhibit says he subcontracted 100 wagons; the CoachBuilt company history says 150 additional wagons were needed to fill the order. Both accounts agree on the effect, in CoachBuilt's words: "The profits derived from the Milburn subcontract materially accelerated the growth of the Studebaker Bros.," who built their first brick manufactory in 1858 on the strength of it. The Civil War then made the works the valley's war contractor: the South Bend Tribune's account of the period record has Milburn himself going to Washington and returning with contracts, the first for 400 wagons by the end of July 1861, the factory employing over 150 men — and it preserves the era's price fight entire: the charge, printed against him, that the firm was paid $145 to $155 for Army wagons "which could be profitably manufactured for $95," and Milburn's answering letter to the Mishawaka Enterprise. The profit-per-wagon dispute is carried here as the period record carries it, his accuser's arithmetic and his denial together.
Its scale: The published figures are a company's, rung by rung. On 23 August 1869 the Milburn Wagon Company incorporated at $100,000 — George Milburn, Thomas H. Milburn, and John Milburn the incorporators. He put money into the town's other engines as he made it: an 1867 investment in the Mishawaka Hydraulic Company that kept the dam's power flowing to his works; stock in the Oliver Chilled Plow Works and in the Milburn House, a hotel the company history calls one of the best conducted between Detroit and Chicago; and on 4 March 1871 a second incorporation, the Hollow Axle Manufacturing Company, a $20,000 firm. For the year ending 1 July 1873 the company's sales are reported at $446,652. By then the fortune's geography had already been decided against Mishawaka: Milburn had asked the town's fathers to help pay for a railroad siding to his plant and been refused, and a group of Toledo businessmen answered with a stock offering that raised a reported $300,000 and a 32-acre Auburndale parcel bought for a discounted $30,000 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 Cutler's History of the State of Kansas (1883) profiles him as a farmer; he died in 1883. No probate or estate total for George Milburn appears in the sources consulted, and none is stated here.
What it left: In Mishawaka, two things: the wagon works' ground and water rights, absorbed into the town's later industry, and a marriage. His daughter Anna Milburn (1842–1916), widowed from her first husband, married Clement Studebaker on 13 September 1864 — the wagon fortune's daughter becoming the other wagon fortune's wife, and her parents' name carried into South Bend's record in her son George Milburn Studebaker. The fortune itself, and the world's-largest wagon works it built, stand in Toledo's and Kansas's records. Mishawaka's part — the store, the Eberhart works, the war contracts, the subcontract that launched the Studebakers, the $100,000 incorporation — is the making, and it is documented; the keeping was done elsewhere.
Sources:
- CoachBuilt.com, "Milburn Wagon Company" (company history) — the 1849 Judson partnership; the 1853 Eberhart purchase and 1858 buyout; the Utah War subcontract of 150 wagons and its stated effect on the Studebakers; the 23 August 1869 incorporation at $100,000; the Hydraulic Company investment, the Oliver and Milburn House stock, and the $20,000 Hollow Axle company of 1871; the siding refusal; the $300,000 Toledo offering and $30,000 parcel; the sales of $446,652 for the year ending 1 July 1873; the presidency to February 1880.
- Smithsonian Institution, "From Horses to Horsepower: Studebaker Helped Move a Nation" — the 1857 subcontract stated at 100 wagons.
- South Bend Tribune, "Industries prospered from demand during Civil War" (2002), from the period record — the Washington trip and the 400-wagon contract of July 1861, the 150-plus employees, the $145–$155 against $95 price charge and Milburn's letter to the Enterprise.
- Cutler, History of the State of Kansas (1883), biography of George Milburn — the wagon manufacture from 1857, the 1869 joint-stock company, the presidency of the Wagon Maker's Association, the April 1880 removal to Johnson County.
- American Association for State and Local History, "Before Tesla Motors, There Was Milburn" — the 1869 Mishawaka incorporation, the 1873 Toledo removal, the world's-largest standing.