The All American: Newsletters from the American Crayon Company

Seventeen issues of The All American newsletters from the American Crayon Company are housed in the business collections of the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center. The newsletters covered company news, information about the managers and employees of the company, photographs, poems, and travel articles. This item from the June 1922 issue paid tribute to the company president, L.L. Curtis, on the occasion of his seventieth birthday.

George Koch described the Art Department of the Kroma division of the American Crayon Company in the July 1925 issue. He stated that the view from his office, which faced Sandusky Bay, often gave him inspiration for his work. The employees in the Art Department created cover designs for the various styles and sizes of products.

In this article by C.W. Hord, who was with the American Crayon’s sales department for many years, he describes the process by which “Old Faithful” was chosen as a trademark for the company.

Though the American Crayon company is no longer in operation, for decades the company provided jobs locally and in other states for hundreds of individuals. To view the historic newsletters, which range in date from 1921 through 1925, visit the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.

Erie County Residents Were Inventive

      

For several decades, the Hinde and Dauch Paper Company was a leading company in the production of corrugated paper products. James J. Hinde is credited with developing the corrugated process that revolutionized the shipping industry in the early 1900s. Below is an advertisement for an early bottle wrapper that allowed products in glass containers to be shipped safely.

The American Crayon Company began with the development of chalk being molded into a stick. Later the company made crayons and other educational products, and provided employment for hundreds of area residents.

Willard A. Bishop was a photographer in Sandusky for many years. (You can see several of Mr. Bishop’s photographs at the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.)

He was issued a patent for a copying camera in 1914.

Wilbert G. Schwer was issued Patent Number 1,696,584 on December 25, 1928, while he was associated with the Sandusky Tool Company. His patent related to the improvement of planes.

Though the company went out of business in the late 1920s, planes from this firm are still highly sought after by collectors.

Did any of your ancestors have a patent issued to them? It is easy to search Google Patents by keywords. For example, by putting in the terms "Otto Kromer" and "Sandusky," a search retrieved several patents by Mr. Kromer, a former Sandusky resident who was well known as a machinist in the late 1800s. 

Art Works by George Koch

Above is a painting by George Koch, which is on display in the Children’s Services area of the Sandusky Library. It depicts children building a snowman in the 1940s. 

George William Albert Koch was born in Germany in 1878. At the age of 14 he emigrated to the U.S. He graduated from the Pratt Institute in New York, and for several years he was a freelance artist in Connecticut. In 1921 George Koch moved to Sandusky, where he worked as the Art Director for the American Crayon Company. An article in the July 8, 1938 issue of the Sandusky Star Journal stated that Mr. Koch was “a brilliant colorist who is responsible for the many developments in the color line and head of the art department.”  Mr. Koch was a participant in many local art shows, and he often served as a judge in art shows. He took both first and second place in an exhibition of the Sandusky Camera Club in December of 1939, and in November of 1946, he took third place in an art show for his painting “Lengthening Shadows.” 

George W.A. Koch died on March 2, 1947. He was survived by his wife Maude, a sister, niece and nephew. Below are illustrations he made for promotional materials for the American Crayon Company.

 

Charles Evans Hughes Made Campaign Stop in Sandusky

On September 26, 1916, Charles Evans Hughes campaigned for the U.S. presidency in Sandusky, Ohio. He had resigned from the Supreme Court to run for President. He is pictured above, speaking in front of the American Crayon Company, near the Hayes Avenue subway.  The factory was decorated with patriotic bunting and flags, and a large crowd came out to hear what the Republican candidate had to say.

                             

Because the train was an hour late, Ackley’s band entertained the crowds that had come out to hear the candidate speak. Once he arrived, Justice Hughes spoke for fifteen minutes, speaking about the power of progress, social justice, and the conditions of the American worker. Governor Myron T. Herrick and Erie County Auditor Hayes Adams also gave remarks.  In the November 1916 election, incumbent President Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic candidate, defeated Hughes.

During his 1908 presidential campaign, William Howard Taft spoke at the Ohio Soldiers' and Sailors' Home (now the Ohio Veterans Home), and Theodore Roosevelt gave a whistle-stop speech at the foot of Columbus Avenue to a large crowd of Sanduskians in May of 1912. Read an earlier blog post to learn more about other political campaigns in Sandusky

Sales Representatives of the Kroma Color Company

Pictured above are sales representatives of the Kroma Color Company, along with officials from its parent company, the American Crayon Company in about 1941. Carey W. Hord, who had been associated with both companies throughout his long career, is the first man on the left in the front row. The Kroma Color Company had been organized as an independent watercolor company in 1912, and Mr. Hord was appointed its first president. In 1941, the Kroma Color Company became a subsidiary of the American Crayon Company. 

The first Kroma Color plant was on East Market Street. By 1921 the company had outgrown this building and moved to the six-story building (later known as the Keller Building) at the northeast corner of West Water and Decatur Streets, which had formerly been occupied by Hinde and Dauch Company.  

Here is how a portion of the building looked, with several Hinde and Dauch employees, when that company was still on West Water Street.

 

Louis Prang, "Father of the American Christmas Card"

Louis Prang, a German immigrant to Boston in the early 1850s, is known as the “Father of the American Christmas Card,” and most notably brought art into the American home as well as the public classroom by way of chromolithographs and school art supplies. He was born in Germany in 1824 and was one of several children. Due to his persistent ill health at a young age, which prevented him from attending school and obtaining a formal education, he accompanied and was apprenticed to his father, Jonas Louis Prang, a French Huguenot, designing, engraving, printing, and dying various mediums from the age of 13 to 18 years old. Perhaps due to his political views, Prang was forced to leave his country and travel throughout Europe. On Nov. 1, 1851, he married Rosa Gerber, a Swiss woman he had met during his travels, in Boston. “Bouquet of Roses,” one of the first chromolithographic prints he created, was fashioned in her honor.

It was the American public’s fascination with Civil War territory disputes, battles and troop movements coupled with the lack of newspapers’ ability to print photographic images which provided Prang with a unique opportunity to put his skills to use. He manufactured some of the first mass produced maps with red and blue lines, which illustrated troop movements and positions of opposing forces on the battlefields. It allowed those on the home-front to track troop advances and retreats through victories and defeats throughout the war. By 1864, the soaring popularity of these maps provided Prang with enough money to travel with his wife and daughter to Europe. Around 1864, he took the concept of well wishing cards from the 1840s and published a series of Christmas themed prints, intended to decorate private dwellings. At the suggestion of a London colleague’s wife in the 1870s, Prang omitted the names and addresses on his popular trade cards and instead inserted seasonal greetings, thus creating the modern Christmas card. The end of the Civil War and Prang’s return to the United States set in motion his efforts to produce commercial art prints replicating the high quality of European art at a semi-affordable price, yet he was unsure of American acceptance and reaction to finer and more expensive art at about $6.00 a print. He produced his first chromolithograph, which he dubbed as “chromos,” in 1866. They were cheaper yet high quality reproductions of original oil paintings he had admired elsewhere. Culture purists and opponents labeled Prang’s reproductions as “frauds” and “shams.” Despite his critics, he won a host of awards on the international scale for his work. In 1898, tragedy struck as his wife, Rosa Gerber Prang, passed away. On April 15, 1900, Louis Prang married long time business associate, Mary Dana Hicks, and the two remained happily married until Louis Prang’s death in 1909 at a California sanitarium. He had been an outspoken advocate for bringing art, previously enjoyed only by the privileged few, into the classroom through the introduction of products like watercolor paints, which immortalized his name for generations of schoolchildren. The Prang Educational Company oversaw these efforts, which were taken on by American Crayon Company upon the merger of the two.

The American Crayon Company

The American Crayon Company, steeped in Sandusky’s colorful history as one of the premier and foremost manufacturers of school art supplies and other industrial products in the nation during its time, originally grew out of the need for a high quality chalk. It soon branched out of a humble kitchen into a national company primarily operated and concentrated in the city of Sandusky. It expanded over time by merging with and absorbing other companies and redirecting its product line focus, and also established itself as a lifetime employer of countless Sanduskians. With the acquisition of Prang’s Educational Company around 1915, the American Crayon Company adopted and incorporated Prang Educational Company’s mission to make art accessible to the common American household and child by way of the public classroom, thus cementing its historical impact on a local and national scale.

In 1835, Dr. Francis F. Field, a dentist in Waltham, Massachusetts experimented with chalk, which was later developed into a commercial product by Parmenter, Powell & Powers Company to become known as Waltham Crayons. Similarly, Marcellus F. Cowdery, the first superintendent of Sandusky’s Public Schools, frustrated by existing chalks constantly scratching slate boards, encouraged his brother-in-law, William D. Curtis, to formulate an improved chalk. In the 1860s Curtis began conducting experiments in the kitchen of his small home, located on Hayes Avenue near Polk Street and was able to create a few sticks of pure white, processed chalk. Plentiful gypsum and limestone deposits, used in the production of this chalk, were conveniently located nearby, alongside Sandusky Bay. Initially, the business remained small and was operated out of Curtis’s kitchen, as he peddled the product from house to house. The invitation of John S. Cowdery, Marcellus’s brother into this new business venture, sparked company growth, as by 1869, John Cowdery’s cellar on Columbus Avenue became the center of operations for chalk production for the Mississippi and Ohio River Valley markets. By the late 1860s, the American Crayon Company had made the first tailor’s chalk, the first carpenter’s chalk, and in 1878 created the first railroad chalk. Originally labeled as the J.S. Cowdery Manufacturers the company quickly renamed itself Western School Supply in 1884 after expanding production facilities in 1881 near Hayes Avenue and Polk Street to meet the growing demands for school related products.

In 1890, the Sandusky based Western School Supply Company merged with Tiffin Crayon Company and the Parmenter Crayon Company in Waltham, Massachusetts to officially form and establish the American Crayon Company. On October 4, 1901, a fire destroyed the company’s original Sandusky plant, and a larger one on Hayes Avenue south of the New York Central Railroad tracks was opened in September 1902. The revitalized company began purchasing additional art supply companies in New England and the Midwest.

World War I interrupted commercial trade between many nations including the United States and Germany. Prang’s heavy reliance on German chemicals and products to manufacture its own items was impeded by decreased availability before and during World War I. These circumstances pushed Prang Educational Company and American Crayon Company into a merger in 1913. The combined companies organized their own small independent watercolor factory in Sandusky called Kroma Color Company. American Crayon Company’s complete take- over of the Prang Educational Company around 1915 gave them the rights to use the unmistakable “Prang” trademark of the “Old Faithful” geyser at Yellowstone National Park as their advertising logo symbolizing quality, value, and tradition. The American Crayon Company manufactured a long line of crayons, chalks, blackboards, erasers, watercolors, pencils, paste, cleaners, and other more industrial items, such as chalk for tailors, carpenters, textile mills, and railroad stockyards. The growing success and popularity of the American Crayon Company led to its prosperous operation at the original Sandusky plant through the 1920s to the 1950s.

In January 1957, the American Crayon Company became an affiliate of Joseph Dixon Crucible Company, based in Jersey City, New Jersey. The news was followed by high hopes and promises to continue labor operations in Sandusky and deter little from the existing set up. The unpredictable nature of business and changing economy led to the Bryn Mawr Corporation’s 1984 purchase of American Crayon’s parent company, Joseph Dixon Crucible. Dixon Ticonderoga, established much earlier than American Crayon Company, produced similar products but tended to focus more on industrial supplies. Although predictions and negotiations continued and were meant to reassure the ongoing operation of the Sandusky plant following its acquisition, gradually labor and plant operations along with a host of selected employees were outsourced to Canada and Mexico. Eventually, all the operations were progressively moved out of the original Sandusky plant, and it closed its doors in 2002 after 167 years of service in Sandusky, Ohio as a loyal and long-term employer in the community. American Crayon Company opened a new world of art to young children and provided a major source of employment for the local community, earning itself an important place in Sandusky’s history of development and business.

New Finding Aids for Old Collections

I know this is coming a little late (the work was finished in August), but I would like to recognize and publicize some new resources produced by our summer intern this year. He created several new finding aids for materials that had been "buried" in the archives, because they had not been fully described as distinct collections. We're hopeful that these new information sources will bring increased attention to some interesting historical items, and provide more information of value to researchers. Although none of these collections is very big, there will certainly be some bits of information useful to genealogists, local historians, and others with an interest in history and culture.

Many of these new finding aids describe collections of papers and artifacts produced and gathered by local families and individuals. The Stubig Family Collection (1852-1926) contains materials relating to the life and times of Christian Stubig, a German immigrant to Sandusky, and his son Carl Stubig, a newspaper reporter and local political figure. Among the items in this collection are letters written in German between family members and Stubig's Weekly, a political newspaper published by Carl Stubig, 1915-1918.

The Wilbor & Wilcox Family Collections (bulk 1848-1873) provide insight into business and personal activities in 19th-century Sandusky. The collection contains records of dry goods business transactions and personal correspondence among family members.

The Cable Family Collection (bulk 1895-1916) offers a description of the business activities of Laurence Cable and his sons Edward and Frank, including legal documents and correspondence, some relating to the Cable Park residential development in Sandusky.

The John F. McCrystal, Sr. Papers (bulk 1893-1925) include approximately 175 items relating to Mr. McCrystal's participation in legal and civic issues, particularly during his time as chairman of Sandusky's Legal Advisory Board in the World War I period.

The Frohman Family Collection (1891-1990) is a small collection of memorabilia relating to the Sandusky family, beginning with brothers David and Henry, who arrived in the 1850s, to Charles Frohman, the businessman and local historian who died in 1976.

The Chapman and Pendleton Family Correspondence consists of 120 letters sent between family members between 1843 and 1870. They offer a rich description of life of that time, including reports of travel and migration, diseases, death and other hardships, as well as other personal matters that help to describe the era.

Also, the library holds several small collections relating to local businesses. Although none of these collections represent the complete records of a company (or even a significant portion), they offer perpectives of various local industries. Included are: the Hinde and Dauch Company Collection (1894-1995), consisting primarily of advertisements and other business ephemera; the American Crayon - Prang Collection (1878-1980), containing advertising, some correspondence, catalogs, and secondary articles relating to the company's activities; and the M. Hommel Winery Collection (bulk 1897-1915), including records of the company relating to competitions at international expositions and fairs, some business records, and advertising materials.

For more information about these collections, or any other collections in the Archives Research Center, please contact the Sandusky Library, via phone (419-625-3834) or email, or come in and visit the library.