Mills, lumber and the wood trades — Rogers' flour mill, Schwartz & Tischer, the hoop factories

1873–1916 · THE MILL RECORD WHOLE

Walkerton's mill record is short and is given whole: one flour mill, one planing mill, two barrel-hoop factories, and a township steam saw-mill. The flour mill is a directory firm: Rogers & Son in 1882, Rogers Bros in 1884, heading the 1882 header's manufactures ("1 flour mill"). No later directory read names it, no source read dates its end, and E. J. Vincent's years as "packer in a flouring mill" (Chapman, place unstated) are the only other flouring trace in the town's record — the mill's founding, its seat in the town, and its closing stand as named gaps below, with the gazetteer run and the town paper as settlers. The planing mill's origin is settled from the neighboring township's chapter: North Liberty's Home Manufacturing Company, started in the fall of 1873 and discontinued, sold its machinery to Schwartz & Tischer, who "moved [it] to Walkerton, where they erected a planing-mill" (Chapman, Liberty Township chapter); the Walkerton house stands in both canvasses — "Schwartz & Tischer, proprietors of the Walkerton Planing Mills" in Chapman's sketches (John Schwartz, a carpenter by trade), and in 1882 as "Planing Mill, Manufacturers of Sash, Door, Blinds, etc., Dealers in Iron Roofing." The barrel-hoop factories — two by the 1882 header's count — belong to the stave-and-hoop economy of a timbered township being cleared; only Leiher & Thompson is named, as "manufacturers barrel hoops" in 1882. The township's steam saw-mill stands at sketch strength in Chapman: John Cripe's father, who had bought a tract of about 1,000 acres in the township in 1836, after the family's western years "bought a steam saw-mill; in this business he utterly failed" — the seat and dates are not stated, and it prints as the failure Chapman records, not as a dated firm.

Lumber and fuel run alongside: Henderson E. T. dealt in "lumber and grain" in 1884; Robert F. Dare was in "the wood and coal business in Walkerton" by 1907 (Howard) and stands as "Dare R F, coal" in 1916; and the Walkerton Lumber Co, W. S. Rhodes manager, dealt in "lumber and coal" in 1916 — the yard the twentieth century kept. No gristmill is seated in Lincoln Township by any source read: Chapman's township chapter names none, and the two gazetteers name the flour mill only under the Rogers name. A claimed earlier gristmill on Pine Creek would have to be proven from the deed and mill-race record; nothing in the record pulled carries it.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880), Liberty Township chapter (Home Manufacturing Company machinery sale) and Lincoln Township chapter and sketches (Schwartz & Tischer; the Cripe saw-mill; Vincent's packer line).
2. Polk 1882–83, vol. II, p. 798 (Rogers & Son; Leiher & Thompson; the header's mill and hoop counts); Polk 1884–85, vol. III, pp. 743–744 (Rogers Bros; Henderson).
3. Howard (1907), vol. 2, Robert F. Dare in the Henry M. Smith sketch; Polk 1916–17, pt. 2, Walkerton entry (Dare; Walkerton Lumber Co).