The anchor manufactures — Atwood Brothers' pickles, the Central Cut Glass works, Hardenbrook's bottling works

1903–1919 AND AFTER · THE FACTORY RECORD

Walkerton's first manufacturer of record is a pickle house, and it grew out of the township's cucumber ground. Howard's Atwood sketch gives it whole: Amos T. Atwood, shoemaker and mason, a Walkerton resident from 1874 (and owner of 160 acres in Starke County), raised the sons who built it — "Walter J. Atwood" and "Ed E. Atwood" are "member[s] of the firm of Atwood Brothers, pickle and relish manufacturers" of Walkerton, "this industry having been established in 1903, and it has now reached extensive proportions" at Howard's writing in 1907. The 1916 directory carries the house in the singular — "Atwood W J, pickle mnfr" — and the same entry's header names pickles as one of the town's two manufactures. Beside the local house, and not to be merged with it, stands the Heinz interest: "Heinz Co, C A Wills mngr, salting station" (1916) — the national house's cucumber-salting station in the town, of the same system in which a third Atwood son, Albert E. Atwood of Grand Rapids, was "associated with the Heinz Pickle Company, now having charge of all the salting stations in the state [of Michigan]" (Howard). No source read states any Heinz ownership of Atwood Brothers, and none is printed. The pickle works' course after 1916 — its end, sale or successor — is not in the record read and stands as a named gap; the town's cucumber economy that fed both houses is the Farms file's to carry.

The cut glass works was a recruited factory, recruited by the town's merchants, and it burned at its peak. The Walkerton Area Historical Society's exhibit history of the company, drawn from the Walkerton Independent's record, gives the course: a committee of the Chicago cut glass company came to Walkerton on February 2, 1910, to propose a factory; a citizens' committee — the hardware merchant George P. Ross and the implement dealer D. W. Place among its members, Ross elected president of the meeting — carried the local subscription, raising $3,750 of the $4,500 to $5,000 needed by March; the cornerstone was laid April 30, 1910; and the works — Factory No. 2 of the Central Cut Glass Co. of Chicago — was set to start operations August 15, 1910, with about 50 skilled cutters and talk of 150 hands within sixty days, its boiler of 60 horsepower driving an engine of 40. By October 1910 the workforce stood at 40. The Polk header of 1916 names cut glass with pickles as the town's manufactures, and the entry lists "Central Cut Glass Co (Chicago), H T Racine mngr." The works' course between includes a dynamite explosion in July 1913 and wartime fuel shutdowns, resuming in February 1918 under president Herman Roseen after a shutdown for lack of fuel (H. T. Roseen bought an interest in the factory in January 1918, per the exhibit); the company's secretary was N. W. Ericson. On February 19, 1919, the factory was destroyed by a fire of unknown origin — "the building was completely gutted, only a part of the bare walls being left" — with 65 workers on its force and a large new stock of blanks just in. It was not rebuilt as a glass works. Those employment figures — 40 hands in 1910, 65 in 1919, against hopes of 150 — are the town's first factory payrolls of record, and they make the works, for its nine years, the largest single employer the record names in Walkerton before the school corporation's modern era.

The smaller manufactures and utilities of the canvass years stand in a row: Hardenbrook's Bottling Works, James W. Hardenbrook proprietor (1916) — "Mnfrs Soda and Mineral Water, Bottlers of Beer, Agents for Columbia Brewing Co" — the town's bottling house, whose family's name returns in 1940 when Vern Hardenbrook bought the former State Bank building for the post office (the banks article above); the Walkerton Telephone Co, A. O. Yerrick manager (1916), the town's exchange; the Lincoln Theatre, H. A. Giles proprietor (1916), the town's first picture house of record — its joined exhibition course stands in this build's Arts & Culture leg; and, from Howard's sketches, the Baltimore & Ohio's lunch room at the depot, in the charge of Mahala (Snethen) Robinson — depot commerce at its smallest scale, printed because the record names it.

Sources:

1. Howard (1907), vol. 2: Amos T. Atwood sketch, pp. 950–951 (the firm, the 1903 establishment, Albert E. Atwood at Heinz); Isaac T. Snethen sketch, pp. 946–947 (the B. & O. lunch room).
2. Polk 1916–17, pt. 2, Walkerton entry (Atwood W J; Heinz Co salting station; Central Cut Glass Co; Hardenbrook's Bottling Works; Walkerton Telephone Co; Lincoln Theatre; the header's manufactures line), read whole.
3. Walkerton Area Historical Society, "The Story of Walkerton's Central Cut Glass Company (Factory No. 2)," Walkerton Digital Library exhibit, compiled from the Walkerton Independent — the 1910 recruitment and subscription, the cornerstone, the 1910–1919 course, and the fire of February 19, 1919.