Billheads - Brown, Treacy & Co. St. Paul MN

Michael Treacy was born in 1844 at Massachusetts. He moved to St. Paul in 1856 and worked for TM Newson in 1859. He soon learned the trade of job printer with the job department of the Pioneer Press and worked for them for twenty-two years when in 1882 he went into business for himself with partners under the firm name Brown, Treacy & Howard. His brother John also worked for the Pioneer Press and eventually joined the firm. In 1894, the firm became Brown, Treacy & Co. with Hiram Brown, Treacy and Dennis Sperry as partners.

In 1896, the firm invested money with Herbert H. Bigelow to print and sell calendars. That firm was known as Brown & Bigelow. In December, 1900 the firm of Brown, Treacy & Co. was dissolved due to the death of Michael Treacy. In 1905 Brown died.

In 1924, Bigelow was sentenced to two years in Leavenworth prison for income tax evasion. At Leavenworth he was befriended by Charles Ward who was serving a sentence for narcotics. Ward grew up in poverty and became a vagabond, mined gold and was a mercenary with Pancho Villa in 1919. He was arrested on a narcotics charge in El Paso. After Ward was released in 1924 he began working for Bigelow.

Ward soon rose to vice president of the firm Brown & Bigelow. In 1933, Bigelow drowned at his cabin. When his will was filed, it was known that he left Ward one-third of his estate of $1,000,000. Ward took over as president of the firm and Brown & Bigelow grew under Ward. Ward encouraged unionization, widened production into playing cards, pens & pencils, and cigarette lighters. He soon hired the top commercial art talent (Norman Rockwell, Maxwell Parrish) for B & B calendars. B & B became the biggest calendar producer in the world. All this started from Brown, Treacy & Co.’s initial investment into Brown & Bigelow.

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Baking Powder Billheads

In 1843 the first modern version of baking powder was discovered and manufactured by Alfred Bird, a British chemist. In 1846, Justus Von Liebig in Germany experiments with yeast made from sodium bicarbonate and hydrochloric acid with explosive results. In 1885, Eben Horsford and George Wilson manufacture chemicals which eventually became the Rumford Chemical Works. Horsford formulated and patented Rumford Baking Powder, the first calcium phopshate baking powder. In 1889, William Wright and chemist George Rew developed a double-action baking powder marketed under the name Calumet Baking Powder. Below find some examples of baking powder billheads.

Billhead of the Month: Schmit Bros trunks Oshkosh WI

I picked up this Schmit Brothers billhead recently in Eau Claire. I currently have it for sale on ebay right now. It is a nice triple graphic billhead. Here is my ebay write up: 1895 billhead for The Schmit Brothers Trunk Company manufacturers of trunks, traveling bags and valises of Oshkosh Wisconsin. Great header graphics with three images. Left side is the firm’s mill at Summit Lake, middle is the firm’s factory and left side is the firm’s warehouse. Billhead has creases. Peter Schmit was born in 1840 in Prussia. He emigrated to the U.S. in June 1854 and located inRacine WI. He was engaged in farming until 1861 when he enlisted in Company D, 6th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry. He engaged in the battles at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, Mine Run, Bull Run, Gettysburg, Atlanta, Macon, and Savannah. He was mustered out in June 1865. He came back to Racine and kept a hotel until 1866 when he joined his brother Henry’s trunk business. Henry had established the bus

Newest edition to my collection - Widdicomb Furniture Co.

Lately, I can't help but buy some U.S. letterheads and billheads. I have an affinity for billheads / letterheads / receipts from the 1870s. Here is a recent purchase for the Widdicomb Furniture Co. of Grand Rapids Michigan. For 145 years, the Widdicomb name has been recognized in the furniture world. The earliest Widdicomb company was organized in 1857, by George Widdicomb, a British trained cabinet maker, employing 12 men, plus his four sons Harry, William, George Jr., and John. Except during the Civil War, a Widdicomb furniture firm was run by the family until 1916. The John Widdicomb Co. was founded in 1897 when John left the parent company to form his own firm. Though he died in 1910, that firm continued under his name until the 1990’s, and purchased the title of the original company in the 1970’s.

THE EPHEMERA OF BUSINESS

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