G F Filley Excelsior St. Louis Cast Iron Embossed #70 3 Leg Kettle Gate Mismark

Description: All sales final. Look at pictures for condition and measurements. Other items listed. Will be mailed immediately. Very RARE Scarce G F Filley Excelsior St. Louis, Missouri Cast Iron Embossed #70 3 Leg Kettle Gate Mismarked It's very uncommon to find mismarked it's this old, like this. Note the 15th and 16th pictures. There's a small hairline crack at the top, but isn't really noticeable and doesn't effect the durability of the kettle. Displays nicely. G F Filley Excelsior St. Louis Cast Iron Embossed #70 3 Leg Kettle Gate Mismarked GF Filley Excelsior St. Louis Cast Iron Embossed #70 3 Leg Kettle Gate Mismarked History Excelsior Manufacturing Co. Location: St. Louis, St. Louis County, Missouri Founder: Giles F. Filley (1815-1900) Period of Production: 1860-1900s Products Manufactured: Full Line, with emphasis on gem pans Excelsior Timeline 1849 - G.F. Filley establishes Excelsior Stove Works. 1865 - Stove works becomes Excelsior Manufacturing Co. 1895 - Filley retires, business renamed Charter Oak Stove Co. GILES F. FILLEYA BRIEF BIOGRAPHY A presentation to the 1995 Annual Dinner of Company M, 1st Missouri Light Artillery by Randy Baehr Giles F. Filley Giles F. Filley The Civil War period raised to public prominence many persons who might otherwise have remained footnotes in American history. Conversely, the events of that period were also shaped by those who had already achieved a measure of fame or influence in their own time, but who are now largely forgotten. This is the story of one such man, whose 1900 obituary called him one of the best-known of the older residents of St. Louis and one of its most prominent manufacturers: Giles F. Filley. Giles F. Filley was born in Connecticut on February 15, 1815. His father, Oliver Filley, was both a tinware manufacturer and a farmer and could trace his ancestry back to the Mayflower. Giles was educated in the common schools of Connecticut and spent three terms at the Wilbraham Academy in Massachusetts. In 1834, 19-year-old Giles left New England for St. Louis to work in the tinware shop of his brother, Oliver D. Filley. Giless trip illustrates the rigors of cross-country travel in that era. After sailing by ship to New York, Giles traveled by way of the Erie Canal into Lake Erie, where he was shipwrecked and barely escaped with his life. He walked to Wellsville, Ohio, on the Ohio River, found no boat there, and continued on foot to Cincinnati. There Oliver joined him, and they booked passage on a riverboat to Cairo, Illinois. Just as the boat reached the harbor at Cairo, the boat exploded. The only passengers to survive were Giles and Oliver Filley. Finally arriving in St. Louis on another riverboat, they landed during a flood, at Locust Street and Commercial Alley. After working in Olivers shop and becoming his partner, Giles sold his interest to his brother and started a crockery store in 1841. He also tried manufacturing earthenware and stone china using craftsmen he recruited in England, but these imported workers drifted away. He closed the factory and sold the retail part of the business to his cousins Edward A. and Samuel R. Filley in 1849. The pottery venture had been profitable overall, so Giles had the capital to start yet another business. In 1849, Giles established the Excelsior Stove Works, starting with 25 molders and 20 men in other departments. Beginning production in September, the factory produced 644 cast iron stoves that year. The following year, nearly 6,000 stoves were produced, and sales continued to climb rapidly. In 1851, Giles invented a stove model named the Charter Oak Cooking Stove, which became the premier model of his line and a good seller, consistently making up about a third of all sales. Production of all models exceeded 12,000 in 1852, enough to require a large expansion of the factory in 1853. In 1859, nearly 23,000 stoves were produced. Material shortages may have contributed to lower production during the Civil War, since the iron was brought in from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, but sales volume returned to prewar levels in 1865. That year, Giles and some associates incorporated the firm as the Excelsior Manufacturing Company. By 1869, annual production exceeded 33,000, and the factory covered 37,000 square feet, employed 255 men, and melted 175 tons of iron per week. In that same year, the factory began to use iron mined in Missouri almost exclusively, mixed with a portion of softer iron from Scotland to properly mold the ornamental designs in the stove castings. By 1893, the factory covered two square blocks in North St. Louis and employed 550 men, plus another 100 in related businesses, such as the distribution of tinners supplies. In 1895, Giles retired from active participation in the business. The company was then reorganized into the Charter Oak Range and Iron Company. This firm survived in St. Louis into the 1950s. While building a successful enterprise, Giles Filley always took a strong interest in the public affairs of his city. Although he never sought public office, he was active in politics. His New England roots and education helped establish him as an uncompromising opponent of slavery. In 1848, he was one of the organizers of the Free Soil or Liberty Party in Missouri and prominently assisted in starting a Free Soil newspaper in St. Louis called the Barnburner. Through the Free Soilers, he began a long association with Frank P. Blair, later a powerful Republican leader. In 1856, Giles served as one of four electors from Missouri to cast electoral votes for Republican Presidential candidate John C. Fremont. In 1858, Giless brother Oliver D. Filley was elected mayor of St. Louis as a Republican, and he was reelected in 1859 and 1860. With the election of Lincoln in November and the secession of South Carolina in December of 1860, sectional tensions flared quickly across the United States. While Missouri was a slave state and governed by a Democratic and pro-Southern state administration, St. Louiss large German population and strong Republican organizations made for deep divisions within the city. Each side was extremely suspicious of the others intentions. At stake was control of the United States Arsenal at St. Louis and its store of weapons and ordnance. In January 1861, Frank Blair, Mayor Oliver Filley, Giles Filley, and 11 other prominent pro-Union citizens secretly met to organize a body of Union men to repel any attack which might be made by Southern sympathizers. At a second meeting on February 1, they established a military organization called the Union Guards and enrolled a company of men for secret drill. Mayor Filley and four others were appointed a Committee of Safety, and Frank Blair was appointed captain. At the same time, the pro-Southern members of the citys Democratic Clubs were forming groups of Minute Men, as they were called, which were mustered into the State Militia so they could be equipped by the State. The Wide Awakes, a Republican club which had worked to elect Lincoln and which had been disbanded in January, were reformed into Union Clubs, open to pro-Union men of all parties. Members of these Union Clubs were also enrolled into the Union Guards, formed into military companies, and secretly drilled at night at several locations including Giles Filleys foundry and the German Turner Hall. Having formed the Union Guards, the organizers now had to arm them. They decided that they could not ask the authorities at the Arsenal for arms, since this could expose their plans to secessionist leaders. Instead, Capt. Blair asked Edward and Samuel Filley to raise money to buy guns. Three hundred dollars were raised right away, $100 from Edward and Samuel, and $100 each from Oliver and Giles Filley. Blair added $25 of his own, and they bought 70 muskets from T. J. Albright for $407.90, making up the difference on credit. Gov. Yates of Illinois contributed about 200 muskets for use by Union men in St. Louis, shipped to Giles Filley care of Woodward and Company, hardware dealers. Upon taking delivery, Giles found that Woodward and Company also had 60 Sharps rifles in stock, which he immediately purchased to prevent them from falling into the hands of the secessionists and which he reserved for the company of men drilling at his foundry. Mr. Woodward gave another 50 guns to the Union Guard, and with those procured by other Union citizens, there were enough guns to arm a regiment. Samuel Filley and E. A. Fox acted as a committee to raise money to support the Union Guards, seeking at first $1,000. Oliver and Giles Filley each contributed another $100. Following the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincolns call for 75,000 volunteers on April 15, 1861, the Union Guards were quickly incorporated into the volunteer troops under the command of Capt. Nathaniel Lyon. On April 17, Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson sent a reply to Lincolns call, refusing to supply troops, and on April 22, issued an order for the State militia to assemble in their respective military districts on May 3 and go into encampment for six days, as provided by law. Thus began what became known in St. Louis as the Camp Jackson incident. Gen. Daniel M. Frost of the Missouri State Militia established Camp Jackson on May 3 in Lindell Grove at the intersection of Grand Avenue and Olive Street, now the site of Saint Louis University. Within a few days, he had 635 militiamen encamped, formed into two regiments. Capt. Lyon felt the camp was an affront to Union men, but the Committee of Safety felt that it posed no threat to the Arsenal and that it would be disbanded after its legal term of six days anyway. Lyon appealed to Frank Blair to urge the Committee to change its position. Blair accomplished this by informing the Committee that Gen. Harney, the pro-Southern commander of the Arsenal, would return in a few days from a trip to the East and take command of the Arsenal back from Lyon. Lyon immediately began plans to capture Camp Jackson. His force was ample to achieve his goal: five regiments of volunteers, five regiments of Home Guards, several companies of Citizens Guards, and nearly 400 U.S. Regulars. Lyon made elaborate preparations, specifying every detail of the operation. On May 9, he sent a lieutenant with a note to Giles Filley requesting him to procure 36 horses and send them to him at the Arsenal by 4 p.m. Giles called James Harkness of Glasgow & Harkness for assistance. Twenty-two horses were purchased at the Glasgow & Harkness stables, while Filley and Harkness visited other places to get the rest. Giles and Oliver Filley signed their own names as securities to Harkness for payment. On May 10, Lyon surrounded and captured Camp Jackson without a shot. As the captured militiamen began to be marched to the Arsenal, a hostile crowd formed, hurling at first epithets, then rocks and bricks at Lyons men. Then shots were fired, and the Union troops fired into the crowd, killing over thirty persons, including a woman and a girl of fourteen. But the capture of Camp Jackson secured St. Louis as a Union stronghold during the Civil War. Giles Filley continued to contribute to the war effort and pro-Union causes. In a note written to the Missouri Historical Society accompanying a donation in 1898, he described his gift: This wrought-iron cannon is one of thirty I had made in 1861. Half were rifled, the remainder smoothbore. They carried a lead conical ball weighing about four pounds. The balls were grooved and wrapped with woollen yarn. The shooting was accurate with great penetration. They were used against the Guerrillas and by unprotected towns, and other places about the country. The carriages were burned at our foundry in 1881. The Filley gun at Saint Louis University. The Filley gun on display at Saint Louis University. The tube remains in the collection of the Society and was last on display in the History Museums special exhibit on The Civil War in Missouri until March 2013. The tube is 42.5 long, with a bore of 2.125. [No other mention of these pieces has turned up so far in my research. The Official Records of The War of the Rebellion report an engagement at Bloomfield, Missouri, on January 27, 1863, in which Col. James Lindsay of the 68th Regiment Enrolled Missouri Militia, with about 250 men and two small pieces of artillery, provided at private expense, dashed into the town, capturing a large number of the enemybreaking up the troublesome band of guerrillas which have for a long time infested that neighborhood. It seemed possible that these pieces might have been Filleys. However, a search of the Ordnance Records of the Enrolled Missouri Militia shows that the 68th drew round balls and mortar powder. This is inconsistent with Filleys report that his guns fired lead conical shot, which other evidence indicates were issued in unitary rounds (shot and powder bag attached). Mortar powder was issued in kegs. Lindsays guns have since been identified as Woodruff guns, the same Woodruff guns that ultimately ended up at Fort Davidson during the 1864 Battle of Pilot Knob, Missouri. Coincidentally, the Woodruff guns while at Fort Davidson were issued the same conical lead rounds made for the Filley guns, since they shared the same 2 1/8-inch bore. Filley said his guns were used against guerrillas, which was the role of the Enrolled Missouri Militia. However, the Ordnance Records show that every other EMM unit which drew artillery supplies also had 6-pounder guns in their inventory. Further research is required to determine exactly where Filleys guns were employed.] On August 28, 1862, Gen. Schofield, commanding the Military District of St. Louis, issued Special Orders No. 91, establishing a county board for St. Louis County to assess and collect, without unnecessary delay, the sum of five hundred thousand dollars from the secessionists and Southern sympathizers in St. Louis County. The money was to be used in subsisting, clothing, and arming the enrolled militia while in active service, and in providing for the support of families of such militiamen and U.S. Volunteers as may be left destitute. This order created great indignation among Southern sympathizers but also concern among many pro-Union men. The assessment was to be based on the individuals wealth and his supposed degree of sympathy for the South. The board was instructed to ascertain the facts, examine witnesses, and specify the amounts to be paid by each party. Giles Filley was one of five members appointed to this board, and it was said that he accepted this appointment reluctantly. Several loyal Union men petitioned Missouri Gov. Gamble for his intervention to stop the assessments. The Governor forwarded the petition to President Lincoln, who instructed Gen. Halleck to rescind the order. After only one or two assessments, the assessments were ordered stopped on December 15, 1862. During the war, Missouris lead deposits were a valuable resource to the Union for the production of bullets. A group called the shot ring managed to gain control of all the shot works in Missouri and attempted to jack prices up to the government. Giles Filley immediately offered to make bullets and shot at cost, and as an alternative proposition, offered to turn his factory over to the government free of cost. This broke the shot ring, and more reasonable bullet prices were restored. Between 1864 and 1867, Giles Filley, among others, cosigned notes for a prominent and well-respected St. Louis businessman. When this businessman failed, Filley found that his personal obligations as cosigner approached one million dollars. Filleys friends advised him to declare bankruptcy and promised to help him reestablish his business, but he refused, declaring his intention to pay back every dollar if the creditors would only give him reasonable time. This he was given, and in 1881 he completed paying back the entire obligation, which with interest totaled $1.3 million. During this time, he not only kept his company intact but expanded it. After the debts were repaid, his colleagues in the National Association of Stove Manufacturers presented him with a sterling silver bowl as a testimonial of the honor he had reflected upon the industry through his high devotion to principle. These financial problems did not keep Giles Filley from participating in other business and civic pursuits. He was one of the key investors in the Kansas Pacific Railroad and took an active role in the project. He was a close friend of James B. Eads. When Eads asked him to invest in his project to build a bridge across the Mississippi at St. Louis, Filley refused. However, he did offer to supply all the rock needed for the bridge from a quarry that he owned north of the city at a price as near cost as possible. All the rock in the Eads Bridge piers did come from Filleys quarry, at an estimated cost to him of over $200,000. Filleys obituary stated: A marked characteristic of Mr. Filleys personality was the tenacity with which he held to his opinions and the peculiarities of his views. In other words, he was stubborn and eccentric. But he clearly contributed much to the economic and political growth of St. Louis in the 19th century. And he deserves to be remembered for that. The Excelsior Stove Works was established in 1849 to make products of the Excelsior Manufacturing Company. Giles F. Filley, who owned the company, was born February 15, 1815, in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Excelsior Manufacturing prospered because of its Charter Oak Stove product, which had a patented hot air flame invented by Filley in 1851. Charter Oak stoves would eventually be used across the country. In-Depth The Excelsior Stove Works was established in 1849 to make products of the Excelsior Manufacturing Company. Giles F. Filley, who owned the company, was born February 15, 1815, in Bloomfield, Connecticut. His family could be traced back to the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts. He was educated in the public schools of Connecticut, known as common schools at the time, and finished his studies at Wilbraham Academy of Wilbraham, Massachusetts. In 1834, at age 19, he moved to St. Louis to work for his brother, Oliver D. Filley. Excelsior Manufacturing prospered because of its Charter Oak Stove product, which had a patented hot air flame invented by Filley in 1851. Charter Oak stoves would eventually be used across the country. Struggles Highlights During the Civil War, Excelsior Manufacturing, like many companies, switched to wartime production. Instead of making stoves, it produced cannons and iron armor for James B. Eadss gunboats. Workers went on strike in 1864 over the issues of hiring child and female labor and low wages. In response, Filley fired the strikers. As a result of the strike, Gen. William Rosecrans issued Order No. 65, which used martial law to ban workers from striking or joining unions. In-Depth During the Civil War, Excelsior Manufacturing, like many companies, switched to wartime production. Instead of making stoves, it produced cannons and iron armor for James B. Eadss gunboats. Filley was a staunch Unionist who helped Frank Blair Jr. in the establishment of a Republican Party in Missouri. He supported the war effort by arming a group of his employees and establishing the Union newspaper to support Lincoln. The Union would eventually become the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Workers went on strike in 1864 over issues of hiring children labor and low wages. In response, Filley fired the strikers. As a result of the strike, Gen. Rosecrans issued Order No. 65, which used martial law to ban workers from striking or joining unions. Excelsior Manufacturing was again under siege by worker organization in 1877 when the nationwide railroad strike turned into a general strike in St. Louis. Giles Filley led the assault on the strikers that was organized by the businesses and government of the city. Later Work Highlights Worker unrest did not deter growth. The company would continue its success after the war, helping with the construction of the Eads Bridge that spanned across the Mississippi. Eventually, Excelsior changed its name to Charter Oak Stove and Range Company and enjoyed continued success into the 1920s. As consumers began to use gas and electric stoves, the company became part of Reynolds Metal Company in 1943 and suspended operations in 1949. Vocabulary General strike - a mass strike in all or many trades and industries in a section or in all parts of a country. Giles Filley, 'Inventor' of the Charter Oak, Victorian America's Favorite Cooking Stove This is the final part of my draft of the first half of Chapter 6, on the development of the mature US cooking stove and range (the shorter second half would be about heating stoves), which I decided to tell as a story of invention and "invention," with a focus on a few leading figures in order to impose some necessary order on an industry and a technological community giving more attention to this subject between the mid-1830s and mid-1850s than ever before or since. Figure 6.#: Giles Franklin Filley. (J. Thomas Scharf, A History of St. Louis City and County (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1883), Vol. 1, opp. p. 600.) Giles Filley, 'Inventor' of America's Favorite Cooking Stove Giles Franklin Filley was born in 1815, the son of a Bloomfield, Connecticut, tinsmith. His father and his brothers ran a family firm with branches in Philadelphia and Troy, and networks of peddlers selling the essential household goods they made to rural consumers right across the United States.1 In 1829 Giles's older brothers Oliver and Marcus went to seek their fortune and represent the firm in St. Louis, whose population had increased by 62 percent in the 1820s and would rise by 149 percent in the 1830s and then 347 percent in the 1840s, turning it from a town of about 7,000 to a city with almost 75,000 people while the Filleys were building their careers there. Oliver soon became a tinsmith and tinware dealer in his own right; Marcus trained as a lawyer before returning to practice in Troy in 1833; and in 1834 Giles took his place, joining Oliver in his growing business. His first journey to St. Louis was even more of an adventure than P.P. Stewart's arduous but peaceful trips to the Choctaw Mission, and reminds us of the difficulties to be overcome in building and sustaining business networks in the heroic age of frontier enterprise. He traveled by steamer from Hartford to New York, then by riverboat to Albany, railroad to Schenectady, canal to Buffalo, and ship to Cleveland, surviving a storm that claimed several vessels. After crossing Ohio by stage and on foot, he boarded a riverboat in Cincinnati that, delayed en route by low water and sandbars, eventually exploded twelve miles from Cairo, Illinois, killing all passengers except Giles and his brother Oliver, who had joined him for the voyage home.2 His life in St. Louis after that was comparatively unexciting but financially quite rewarding. He served an apprenticeship with his brother, then became his partner, and by 1838 was able to report to their father that they had survived the Panic almost unscathed and all live like piggs in clover here a right Yankey sett. The Filley brothers were founding and then leading members of the city's mercantile elite, supplying tinware and tinners' supplies to a dynamic region where every place that has a name in the country has also a Tin Shop and new settlements were growing almost overnight. They imported their raw materials, their skilled workmen, and some finished items (notably Connecticut clocks) from the East Coast, as well as manufacturing locally.3 By 1844 Giles wanted to branch out into his own business (he had married and was starting a family), as well as to diversify the brothers' interests, so he decided to move into a related trade, first of all selling imported crockery from a store next door but one to his brother's and then, like other merchants, moving into manufacturing too.4 St. Louis had good clay deposits nearby, so Giles planned to exploit them and undercut imports of earthenware pottery (queensware). He traveled to England to learn the trade and recruit skilled workers, but abandoned it within a few years because of the difficulty of disciplining and retaining them, selling his shop to cousins who reverted to the simpler business of buying their stock across the Atlantic and shipping it upriver. Giles had decided to pursue a more promising opportunity instead, stove manufacture, where Hudson Bridge and Buck & Wright had already demonstrated the potential of the local market and showed how to make money satisfying it. As the St. Louis historians Dacus and Buel explained, The progress of our factories has been made in the path of the pioneers; after rearing their rude habitations as a mere protection from the most unkind elements, the sturdy yeoman (sic) then turn their thoughts to the more accessible comforts, and among their first wants is a cooking stove.5 The earliest picture of Filley's factory, across the street from his store -- Green's St. Louis Business Directory, for the Year of Our Lord 1850 (1850), p. iv. For his pre-Charter Oak product line, see also advertisement, The Western Journal of Agriculture 6:1 (April 1851): 72. When he set up the Excelsior Stove Works in 1849, Filley did not need to invent a business format, simply to copy one, so the Excelsior was purely a stove foundry from its beginnings, and thanks to his and his family's capital resources it was also quite big, starting out with twenty-five molders (recruited from the East) and twenty other employees, and rapidly building up to a capacity of seven tons (about sixty stoves) a day. Filley, like Bridge, bought his patterns from Troy rather than having to attempt at the outset to master the most difficult aspect of the business, product design. Also like Bridge, he gave his firm a name suggesting a New York pedigree, an implicit promise of quality and innovation at a time when New York State made almost 40 percent of the nation's stoves and dominated interstate trade. (An alternative or perhaps complementary explanation is that, rather than Excelsior referencing the Empire State's motto, which can be roughly translated as Onward and Upward, a good sentiment for an ambitious entrepreneur to tie to his firm, it was inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1841 poem, the start of whose third verse was also appropriate for a stove works -- In happy homes he saw the light / Of household fires gleam warm and bright. There were eventually three stove makers in the United States all called Excelsior, but whether the other two, in Quincy, Illinois and Philadelphia, were also inspired by Longfellow, or were instead attempting to make consumers think their goods were from Filley's by then famous company, is impossible to know.)6 Filley's timing was good the city was recovering from the disasters of fire, flood, and cholera that had beset it in the late 1840s, and the discovery of gold in California meant that an enormous emigrant trade was flowing past his door. Excelsior grew quickly, making about 6,000 stoves in its first full year of business (1850), struggling to keep up with demand, and reinvesting to expand capacity by four to five times over the next few years until the Panic of 1857 temporarily slowed its growth. By then Filley employed well over 300 molders, pattern makers, carpenters, stove mounters, and laborers.7 The Excelsior Works in the late 1850s -- note the importance of its river-front location; this is a pre-railroad firm. This picture was engraved from a drawing by Filley's pattern-maker, and when enlarged shows every detail of the works -- the steam engine for the mounting (finishing and assembly) shop facing the levee; three molding rooms (roof monitor vents, walls mostly window, to provide the light required for fine work) either side of two cupola furnaces (iron smokestacks with conical tops); material storage yards, and blacksmiths' shops (five small chimneys) across the street behind. Taylor & Crook, Sketch Book of St. Louis (1858), opp. p. 391. An earlier version of this was used in a trade card -- basically the same, but before its expansion across the street to the west. Nicholas Vedder's original patent "Charter Oak" design -- note the oak leaf motif on the panels and feet. Key to his success was the invention of what became the largest-selling cooking stove in the United States, the Charter Oak, designed in 1851, placed on the market in 1852, registering 2,619 sales in its first year, and patented in June 1853 (Patent 9788 -- Reissue 873 in 1859, then extended for a further seven years in 1867, testifying to its importance). The patent bears Filley's name, and some of the ideas may have been his, but his pattern maker Nicholas Vedder of Troy, the most influential in the United States (see below, Chapter##, p. ##), made them work and gave the stove its distinctive appearance with his Design Patent 519 (November 1852). The patentable improvement was simple but effective -- tapering the flues in a standard three-flue stove rather than leaving them straight-sided, which resulted in a stronger draft and better heat-distribution around the oven. (The innovation was partly anticipated by Jonathan Hathaway in his original 1837 large-oven patent -- see Figure 7 -- but it was not a key feature of it, nor was it imitated in other three-flue stoves that followed, so perhaps Filley's or Vedder's idea was new to them even if not entirely original.) It also, perhaps unwisely, incorporated an insulating air chamber between the oven and the fire-box, like several previous inventors including Buck something that would make Filley vulnerable to Buck's widow's and son's lawsuits, in due course; but when he took out the patent he may have anticipated that Buck's was about to expire. The stove had an attractive design, with a naturalistic oak-leaf motif, and a name communicating its Yankee virtue to a market originally consisting mostly of Northern settlers and German migrants, who regarded cooking stoves as 'a blessing to the poor housewife'. The Charter Oak, the ancient tree then still standing in Filley's home city, Hartford, in which Connecticut colonists had hidden their colony's charter from King James II's forces, was an icon of American liberties, something about which the Free Soiler Filley had been very sensitive ever since the return of the slavery-extension controversy to plague American politics after the Mexican War. (Filley maintained the patriotic theme in naming his leading cook stoves: by 1857, he was also offering the public a Valley Forge).8 Kennedy's St. Louis City Directory for the Year 1857 (1857), advertising section p. 44. Cf. the similar ads for his major local competitors Bridge & Beach (p. 18) and Buck & Wright (p. 58). Giles was aggressive in defense of his own Charter Oak patents, and equally aggressive in attacking Buck's, which threatened it. He was prepared to fund a lawsuit which he had no doubt but that it will be a long and tedious one, and was assisted in this endeavor by his brother Marcus, well placed in Troy to gather documents, testimony, and artefacts undermining Buck's claims, and providing most of the basis for the account of the development of the large-oven stove presented earlier in this chapter and in Chapter Two. The progress of the contest between these two determined antagonists is not clear from the surviving records not even whether it came to court at all; no case was ever reported. But the outcome was plain enough: before Buck's extended patent expired in 1860, Filley had successfully defended his own against violators, and was able to secure a reissue of it in 1859 that clarified his own claim in precisely the area that Buck had contested.9 * * * * Why did I give up at this point? (1) A book, particularly a work of academic history (and that's what I was supposed to be -- and all that I was capable of -- producing), needs an argument, and what I had instead was lots of content and stories. Had I carried on with Chapter 6, it would have continued in this vein, with three more biographical sections on (a) Isaac Orr, "inventor" of the airtight heating stove; (b) Dennis Littlefield, "father" of the base-burner heating stove and (c) Gardner Chilson, who probably did more than anybody else to perfect the warm-air furnace. I have begun the first and last sections, and will complete them; but only as blog posts. Littlefield will get the same treatment, partly because he also had a wonderful beard that I want to use as an illustration somewhere. I might then assemble the pieces to complete Chapter 6, and I'd have achieved my objective of providing a reasonably comprehensive, but still manageable, account of the evolution of all of the principal types of cooking and heating appliance that the mature American stove industry produced by the time of the Civil War, for a market that was by then also mature, diverse, and nationwide. But I'd still be left with the problem of how to wrap up my six very meaty chapters in such a way that they looked enough like a book to be worth showing to a publisher. (2) As I wrote all of this I reached the conclusion that my research for these stories of invention was incomplete. To be really satisfactory, it would need more on-the-ground research in the archives of the US Patent and Trademark Office, and probably also in US Circuit and District courts. In the PTO I might be able to find evidence about the innovation process from the correspondence (including any challenges from competitors) surrounding the original patent filing and any subsequent disclaimers or reissues; about the success of marketing from the case made at the time of extension application; and in the assignment registers there should be information about the sale of patent rights, a vital part of Hathaway's and Buck's business model, though not of Stewart's or Filley's. In Circuit and District courts there might be trial papers, enabling me to get below the surface of the few reported cases. (3) But I was not sure that I wanted to do this kind of research. I'm still not sure. I'm retired now, so this has turned from work into a hobby. Nor can I get financial support for the costs of research, which would certainly entail quite a bit of time and travel. However, my reservations go further than that. This is not just supposed to be a study of stove invention; I don't want the tail to wag the dog. Other historians of business and technology -- Carolyn C. Cooper on Thomas Blanchard, Ross Thomson on shoe machinery and more generally -- have done this sort of immensely detailed study of the invention process and inventors' business practices. I don't want to repeat it. But I'm not sure that I can complete this chapter, even to my own satisfaction, unless I do. * * * There is, in any event, an awful lot more to write about Giles Filley, some of it touched on in Donald Southerton's family history and Randy Baehr's biography -- his leading role among Missouri Unionists and anti-slavery men, in politics in the 1850s and in supporting the Union war effort after 1861; the thing that earned him national and even international celebrity, the way that he traded his way out of bankruptcy after the Civil War and managed to clear all of his epic debts; his trenchant anti-labor attitudes and behaviour, which made him one of the industry's most important strategists in its battles against the Iron Molders' Union from the 1860s through the 1880s; and his vital contribution to organizing the industry into an effective trade association through the 1870s and 1880s. I have dealt with these aspects of his business career in my last proper publication about the stove industry, "Coping With Competition: Cooperation and Collusion in the US Stove Industry, c. 1870-1930," Business History Review 86:4 (Winter 2012): 657-692. [Free Version]. There's not really enough about Filley to be worth a proper biography, but too much to squeeze into the narrow compass of just part of an article or a chapter, which is all that I have ever been able to devote to him. Excelsior after another 30 years' growth, during which it became the largest stove manufacturer in the country. The plant had grown upwards and spread across the streets to the north, west, and south. It had even reclaimed land from the Mississippi as it turned from a riverboat- to a railroad-dependent business. George W. Orear, Commercial and Architectural St. Louis (St. Louis: Jones & Orear, 1888), opp. p. 272. NOTES 1 Richard Edwards and Menra Hopewell, Edwards's Great West and Her Commercial Metropolis (St. Louis: Office of Edwards's Monthly, 1860), p. 516; Shirley DeVoe, The Tinsmiths of Connecticut (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1968), pp. 11, 16-21; David Meyer, The Roots of American Industrialization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2003), p. 81; Gina Martin and Lois Tucker, American Painted Tinware: A Guide to Its Identification, Vol. 3 (Cooperstown, NY: Historical Society of Early American Decoration, 2007). For peddlers, including tinners like the Filleys, see esp. David Jaffee, Peddlers of Progress and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1760-1860, Journal of American History 78:2 (Sept. 1991): 511-35. 2 Old-Time Journey. Thirty Days Occupied Between Hartford and St. Louis in 1834, The Weekly Times [Hartford, CT] 18 Sept. 1899, p. 4, citing a family letter, supplemented from Randy Baehr, "Giles F. Filley--A Brief Biography: A Presentation [1995]," http://home.earthlink.net/~turnerbrigade/filley.htm and Donald G. Southerton, The Filleys: 350 Years of American Entrepreneurial Spirit (Lincoln, Neb., 2005), p. 70, sources for what follows unless stated otherwise. 3 Giles to John Filley [brother], 12 June 1838, and Sylvanus Wing [relative and partner] to O.D. Filley Sr., 10 April 1836, both Box 1, Filley Family Papers, Accession 487, Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis. For the Yankee elite, see Adler, Yankee Merchants and the Making of the Urban West not wholly reliable about the Filleys, p. 67. 4 James Green, Green's St. Louis Directory (No. 1) for 1845 (St. Louis: Author, 1844), p. 62. 5 Joseph A. Dacus and James W. Buel, A Tour of St. Louis; or, the Inside Life of a Great City (St. Louis: Western Publishing Co., 1878), pp. 231-3 -- including nice pictures of Excelsior's office and showroom, and of the 1878 model Charter Oak. 6 Capacity from Southerton, The Filleys, p. 84, and Jacob N. Taylor and M.O. Crooks, Sketch Book of St. Louis (St. Louis: George Knapp & Co., 1858), p. 391. Excelsior later used the Longfellow poem in its advertising [e.g. Charter Oak Ranges Charter Oak Stoves, The Stove and Hardware Reporter 7:15 (15 Jan. 1885): 2-3], but this is not definitive proof about which came first in Filley's mind, the poem or the company name. Filley's contemporary Richard S. Elliott complained I never knew why any concern should be called 'Excelsior,' merely because a fellow with a flag went up a mountain and perished; doing no good to anybody, unless a foolhardy climb is a pattern to be imitated instead of an example to deter -- Notes Taken in Sixty Years (St. Louis: R.P. Studley & Co., 1883), pp. 11-12. 7 The Excelsior Manufacturing Co., The Stove and Hardware Reporter 6:6 (1 Sept. 1883): 1, 7; Baehr, Giles F. Filley; Logan U. Reavis, St. Louis: The Future Great City of the World (St. Louis: C.R. Barnes Pub'g Co., 1876), Appendix, p. 12, and Taylor and Crooks, Sketch Book of St. Louis, p. 391. Giles F. Filley's surviving correspondence with his brothers provides snapshots of his company's growth e.g. 24 September 1849, to Jay Filley (Hartford) [foundry in full operation, traveling East in winter for patterns], Filley Family Papers, MHS, Box 1; to Bro. Lucius (Marcus), 23 December 1854, Filley Papers, RPI, Box 7, Folder 7 [extending foundry, acquiring more patterns in Troy] but is too incomplete to support a continuous narrative. 8 1851 origins: Improved Stove, Scientific American 7:12 (6 Dec. 1851): 93; 1852 sales: Dacus and Buel, A Tour of St. Louis, p. 232; Vedder patterns: "Supreme Court of Missouri. Giles F. Filley, Respondent, v. A.D. Fassett et al., Appellants [Filley v. Fassett]," American Law Register 17:7 (July 1869): 402-11

Price: 205 USD

Location: Brussels, Illinois

End Time: 2024-12-28T00:11:12.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD