Women add binding to St. Marys Woolen blankets in this image that appeared in the company’s 1939 sales brochure. The company patented and registered their custom bindings, such as a three tone scallop design, with the Bureau of the Silk Association of America.
Courtesy of Auglaize County Historical Society
As large ads for blanket sales covered pages of newspapers in the early 20th century, many ads had one label in common: St. Marys. Department stores across the nation boasted that they sold high quality blankets created by the St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company.
William Gibson opened the St. Marys Woolen Mills along the Miami Erie Canal in 1866. Stone, brick and slate formed the four-and-a-half story building that had a 40-feet by 90-feet footprint. The water-powered mill cost $62,000 to build. By 1870 Gibson’s son served as the company’s proprietor. Under both Gibsons’ leadership, the St. Marys Woolen Mills advertised that it would pay “the highest market price” for wool to create its custom products.
Throughout the second half of the 19th century, the St. Marys Woolen Mills competed with woolen mills in other Auglaize County cities. Wapakoneta created jeans, flannels, cashmere, blankets and yarns. New Bremen manufactured yarn and cloth.
In 1871 St. Marys citizens bought the mill in a sheriff’s sale. They invested $50,000 to form the joint stock company named St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company. By 1880 the company used 100,000 pounds of wool each year to create flannels, blankets, jeans and yarn.
Albert Althausen, Albert Herzing and Ernest Veenfliet bought all of the St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company’s stock in 1887. These men were known throughout Auglaize County and beyond. Albert Althausen, a leading businessman in Auglaize County, actively took part of the mill’s leadership for three years. During his time as a director, he served as secretary and later became president. When Althausen was elected the president of the newly organized Home Banking Company in 1890, he stepped back from his active leadership in the mill, but he remained president.
Ernest Veenfliet, son-in-law to Althausen, served as secretary and treasurer of the St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company. Throughout his career, he also served as an assistant civil engineer for four railroads and the vice president of the Home Banking Company.
Albert Herzing, a well-known civic leader, first started working for the woolen mill in 1876. Several months later he left to join his father’s flour mill. After working for Peoples Bank in Wapakoneta, Herzing returned to the St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company in 1881 and became a director of the company. He served as secretary from 1890 until he was elected president after 77-year-old Althausen’s death in 1912. Herzing served in that capacity until his death in 1940 at 80 years old. He worked for the mill for more than 60 years, and the company expanded and improved under his leadership.
The St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company adapted to the changing wool industry. Yarn was its primary product in 1881. Yet home knitting declined so much that the company discontinued its yarn line and focused solely on creating blankets by 1886.
In its early years, the woolen mill did not have refined machines. Herzing recalled in a 1931 interview with the Dayton Daily News, “machines then had not been manufactured to make the fine-spun fluffy blankets recognized now as the accepted blanket.” However, two features remained the same: the blankets were primarily wool and were known to be durable. Regardless of how the company made their blankets, St. Marys blankets were internationally renowned by the turn of the century.
Disaster struck the company on June 25, 1895, when a fire started in the nearby flour mill. Employees of the St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company fought the fire alongside firemen and employees of neighboring mills and factories. Using their company’s steam pumper, woolen mill employees were the first group to put water on the fire. Despite the firefighting effort from St. Marys citizens and Lima’s fire department, the fire could not be contained until after the destruction of two mills and eight other businesses.
The St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company suffered a total loss valued at $100,000, including $20,000 worth of damage to new machinery installed within the previous year. Despite the total loss of the main mill, firefighters managed to save the company’s recent addition of a wareroom on High Street. The St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company’s insurance covered only $25,000 of the damage. Newspapers across the Midwest shared the news of the loss of the famed woolen mill.
The St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company rebuilt in approximately six months. The new, larger structures accommodated the company’s growth. In the following years, the mill continued to increase its footprint by expanding the 1895 main building and adding a new office building and a warehouse.
Despite the fire’s setback, 1896 proved to be the best for the company to date. The company made a dividend of $3,600, placed $13,000 into the surplus fund and made a net gain of $16,600 for the year.
The St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company continued its success. The business had an excess of $54,000 in its stock, made more than $100,000 per year in profit and consumed more than 300,000 pounds of wool to create its blankets by 1898. The 75 to 100 employees of the mill manufactured the famous blankets for customers across the United States and Europe. At that time, the company’s stockholders included Albert Althausen, Albert Herzing, Ernest Veenfliet, all of St. Marys, and Christian Timmermeister, son-in-law to Althausen from Wapakoneta. The latter also acted as a director and vice-president of the woolen mill.
In the 1910s to 1930s, department stores across the nation commonly advertised pairs of St. Marys blankets in plaid and white. The company created various sizes of blankets, including crib blankets. Some of its lines included Noble, Arbutus and Buckland. A 1911 ad in the Kansas City Star declared the blankets “unshrinkable” and “unusually soft and fluffy.” The blankets proved to be just as popular locally. R. T. Gregg & Company in Lima outsold Toledo’s department stores.
Steamship lines, hotels and metropolitan clubs used St. Marys wool blankets. By the late 1920s St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company offered to weave or stamp club insignia into the end of the blankets for its customers.
As operations grew, more employees worked at the St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company. By the 1930s the company employed a New York designer to create exclusive patterns for its brand. When the mill created its last blanket, approximately 300 people were employed through the mill.
St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company also remained community minded. When people suffered from the devastating Mississippi River flood in 1927, the company sent 30 pairs of blankets to the American Red Cross in Tennessee to assist. The St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company had the leading softball team in the city in 1935. The company opened its doors to seventh-grade students from Spencerville who participated in a guided tour in 1954.
In 1957 Fieldcrest Corporation took over the St. Marys Woolen Manufacturing Company and added the St. Marys blanket line to its operations. Fieldcrest stopped the woolen mill’s operations in 1960.
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SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
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Reach Brittany Venturella at [email protected].
