Trying To Diagram Relationships Between Early Steel Pen Makers In Us

[AAAndrew]

A lot of the early makers in Birmingham were interrelated, sometimes by blood, sometimes by marriage and sometimes by key people moving around.

 

That also happened in the early years of the American steel pen industry.

 

I've been researching some of these early firms, especially focusing on Turner & Harrison which seems particularly well-connected. As part of this research I've created a basic diagram showing some of the relationships of companies and key figures. There are some significant omissions, with C.H. Hunt being the most obvious. But I don't have dates for him leaving Esterbrook and it was in the 20th-century anyway, so he's not included yet. I also didn't include J. L. Isaacs, the son of Leon Isaacs, because he never actually made pens, he just imported British pens and had them imprinted with his name. He was a salesman, not a manufacturer. Samual Isaacs was no relation to Leon that I can find and made good pens but counted upon the good reputation associated with the name Isaacs in Philadelphia. He only began making pens after the sale of the Leon Isaacs & Co. to Turner & Harrison.

 

Anyway, I just thought I'd share this with this group on the off chance someone may be interested and perhaps it might help clear up some of the confusion that I had to clear up before I could understand some of the history. (Warrington, in particular had me confused until I found references to T&H initially located in the same address on Buttonwood St. as the old Warrington, and discovery that the new Warrington officially had a different name)

 

Any questions, let me know. For some of this I have a lot of information, for some it's sketchier, and for a few things (indicated by question marks) it's informed speculation.

 

Andrew

 

[rwilsonedn]

Fascinating!

It would be wonderful (and perhaps illuminating) to know how much of the process these companies performed in-house. Did they roll their own steel, or buy sheet? Did they do their own stamping and finishing, or job it out? How about the tool and die work? Perhaps the births and deaths of some of these companies were dictated as much by their access to capital, supply chains, and internal capabilities as by the personalities of the principals. And the individuals themselves--did they bring to the party design or manufacturing expertise, distribution relationships, or just cash? I find the structure and operation of companies in the 19th century to be really interesting, and maybe not so different from today's tech start-ups.

In any case, this is fascinating history--thank you for unearthing and publishing it!

ron

[AAAndrew]

The ones I mention above all actually made their own pens. I don't know of any who made their own steel. Most steel up until the first world war came from Europe, English or Swedish. It came in sheets. They did do some of their own rolling to specific thicknesses but mostly they cut the sheets and then did the various stamping and slitting, polishing and heat tempering all in house. I've not heard where the presses where made, whether in-house or commissioned, but I would imagine they would be commissioned by specialist tool and die makers. The big manufactories were located in Camden, NJ (Esterbrook, Hunt), and across the river in Philadelphia (Isaacs, Turner & Harrison) or in New York City. There were some smaller makers in places like Boston and Chicago, but the really big ones were in the area around Philly and New York where there were plenty of tool and die makers and other manufacturers.

 

In the early years there were some American makers and a certain amount of native expertise was built up, but when Esterbrook wanted to found his own company, he brought a group of skilled workmen from Birmingham, the home of industrialized steel pen making. One of those men was John Turner. Turner had started out as an apprentice in the steel pen works in Birmingham. He has spent a little time in factories in France after serving his apprenticeship, but eventually came back to Birmingham from whence he joined Richard Esterbrook in his American adventure.

 

I know more specifics about one company, Turner & Harrison. Turner & Harrison was founded by a money man with experience selling pens (Harrison), and a man with a solid knowledge of all parts of manufacturing them (Turner). Throughout the history of T&H, it was important that all officers of the company had extensive experience actually working on the factory floor, and knew what it took to make a good quality pen. In their whole history, from 1876-1952, they only had one president who hadn't come up through the ranks, and he was Charles Malpass. Charles was a nephew of George Malpass, an experienced engineer with several pen patents to his name who had died suddenly in the presidency of T&H. Charles took over in 1917, coming from the Bank of North America. Charles only served two years before dying suddenly of pneumonia. He was succeeded by a long-term employee of T&H, Joe Huss who had started at T&H about 1881 as an apprentice in his early teens. When Joe became president, his son, Raymond had already worked himself up from sweeping the floors as a teen to shop floor foreman. This had to have been interrupted at some point because he also found time to attend college and play football. Raymond took over from his father and ran the company until it closed in 1952. Raymond died in 1954.

 

All of the companies had difficulty accessing material during WWI and they all severely reduced the number of styles of pens they produced during the war, but steel pens were rated as a key commodity so they actually made more of them, just with fewer variety.

 

What finally killed off the pen companies was the fountain pen. Esterbrook lasted as long as it did because they finally jumped into the market. What amazes me is how long Turner & Harrison lasted considering they never went closer to making a fountain than a modest line of dip pens and some cheaper gold-plated fountain pen nibs under their Regal brand. Yet they continued to make pens in Spring Water St. in Philadelphia until their dissolution in 1952.

 

There's a lot more to the story, like how T&H's purchase of Leon Isaacs & Co and their Glucinum pens became their premier line from the purchase in 1899 until the very end. How that purchase included absorbing some of the key folks in Isaacs, like Leon's old partner Michael Voorsanger, who was legendary in the community of steel pen traveling salesmen. In tribute to his decades of work in the industry, T&H produced a very short-lived line of pens called M.V. which you can sometimes find on eBay.

 

Some pen folks came into the industry with real, solid experience, like John Turner, others came from other related fields like jewelry and pawn (Leon Isaacs, De Haan and Koshland, all from Dutch Jewish families in Philadelphia), or cutlery (Miller Bros). It was a booming new industry in the 1870's. Esterbrook taught Americans that American steel pens could compete with the British pens that had dominated the market in the first 40 years of the industry. Some made it, some did not. Many just hired companies like Perry or Esterbrook or Turner & Harrison to make custom imprints of their name and sold the pens as Spencerian or Tadela or Birmingham Pen Co.

 

It is a fascinating history, and one that is very little known. There are some secondary sources now about the Birmingham pen trade, and even a museum, but for the American steel pen industry, it's all primary sources, and those are few and far between as well. There is one other person I know of doing extensive research, and he's focusing on Esterbrook. He's writing a book which I hope will be published at some point. I've focused on Turner & Harrison and related companies. There is so much there, and yet there is so much still to be discovered, and so much that we will probably never know. I have a short article on John Turner coming out early fall in the Birmingham Pen Museum's newsletter Pen Talk, but haven't really written anything beyond that. You could not underestimate how little interest there really is on this topic. But, at some point I'll try and put out a coherent set of information just so that it's out there and doesn't disappear with me.

 

If you're interested in how they actually made steel pens, the process I captured in this FPN posting didn't change much until after WWI when labor started to get harder to find and more expensive. They began to introduce some more mechanization which increased significantly more during and after WWII, with a concomitant drop in quality as well.

 

Andrew

[bobje]

Impressive piece of historical analysis, Andrew.

[rwilsonedn]

Indeed fascinating. Maybe the wider interest is awaiting publication. Who would have thought that a book on the history of the pencil would sell?

This story seems to have everything: personalities, intrigue, technical detail, and a window into a wider view of history. Thanks again for opening it up!

ron

[AAAndrew]

And some of the juicier stuff comes from some more minor characters, like the daughter of one pen maker who was almost run over by a runaway horse, but was saved at the last moment by the heroics of a stranger. He disappeared into the crowd before she could thank him. A few days later she is introduced to him at a party and recognized him as her savior. He turns out to be a dashing young French dentist getting some extra training at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. Two years later they're married and move back to France. The story actually gained some attention nationally with the story running in papers as far afield as Kansas and Ohio.

 

Or the inventor of a reservoir pen who also invented an automatic cake mixer. Or the playboy son of a prominent manufacturer who was known for racing cars and sailboats and was married for precisely a week before his wife fled and filed for divorce.

 

Who knew?

Edited July 17, 2017 by AAAndrew

[AAAndrew]

When I first created the diagram above, I was just teasing out these connections. A lot of research has happened since. So, I took some time yesterday and re-created this diagram. I now know a whole lot more and what's really interesting, at least to me, is the vital importance of just three Birmingham-trained tool makers on the beginnings of the steel pen industry in the US. John Turner, George Harrison and George Bradford were involved in starting or setting up or running (or some combination of all three) almost every steel pen company in the US from 1857 until 1881.

 

Here's my Esotrivia (esoteric piece of knowledge) for the day.