The Sandusky Wheel Company

After having started in 1860 as a business that made wheel hubs and bent stock, the Sandusky Wheel Company was incorporated in 1867. Eventually it became an important manufacturer of wheels and wheelbarrows, and had over 200 employees. The entire stock and shops were destroyed by fire in 1872, but the company rebuilt and the business was back in operation by the summer of 1873.  

The 1886 Sanborn Map below shows that the Sandusky Wheel Company took up a large portion of an entire city block, along Water Street between Shelby and McDonough Streets.

Besides wheels, the Sandusky Wheel Company made all the wooden components for buggies, carriages, and wagons. A variety of woods, in different qualities, allowed for a full range of pricing for the vehicle companies that sent orders to the Sandusky Wheel Company. 

W. J. Comley and W. D’Eggville wrote in their book Ohio, the Future Great State (Comley Bros, 1875) about the Sandusky Wheel Company: “The unexampled success of this company in the manufacture of carriage woodwork has followed, as the legitimate result of well-digested plans and sound principles of construction. Discarding alike all foreign precedents and crude American examples, the officers of this company, by the application of scientific principles, careful observation, and mature judgment, influenced and corrected by practical experience, have brought to perfection a class of work which in material, design, proportion, and details of construction have not been excelled in this or any other country.”

In 1889, the Sandusky Wheel Company became a branch of the American Wheel Company, which had its headquarters in Chicago. By the mid-1890s, the company was known as the Standard Wheel Company. On the evening of July 7, 1900, the Standard Wheel Company was destroyed by fire, with losses estimated at $100,000. In the 1920s, ruins of the former company were still standing.

 

George and Freeland T. Barney

George Barney and Freeland T. Barney were both sons of Mr. and Mrs. Throop Barney. Another brother, Charles Barney, died during the cholera epidemic of 1849. Both George and Freeland T. Barney were well known pioneer businessmen in Sandusky, Ohio.

George Barney was born in the state of New York in 1814. In 1842 George married Caroline Stebbins Lawrence in Michigan. After residing for a a time in Milan, Ohio, George and Caroline Barney moved to Sandusky in 1855. By 1860, George Barney was a member of the firm, Horning, Pringle and Company, which was a brass foundry and machine shop. Later, Barney and his son, George L. Barney, ran a hardware store in the Hubbard Block of Sandusky. From about 1869 to 1888, George Barney and Joseph F. Kilby were the proprietors of Barney & Kilby, a machine works and foundry. According to the Sandusky City Directory, Barney & Kilby manufactured stationary and portable engines, rolling mill machinery, circular saw mills, woodworking machinery, and mill furnishings.

George Barney was also vice president of the People’s Electric Railway and the Sandusky Savings Bank. Mrs. Caroline Barney died in 1891, and George Barney died in 1898. They were buried in the Barney family lot at Oakland Cemetery. An obituary which appeared in the November 19, 1898 issue of the Sandusky Star stated about George Barney, that he for years he was one of Sandusky’s “most substantial and progressive businessmen.”

Freeland T. Barney was born in New York in 1805. He married Mary Moore in 1836, and moved with his new wife to Sandusky, Ohio. In the 1860 Sandusky City Directory, F.T. Barney was associated with three different businesses: Barney and Barber, which was a dock and warehouse; Barney and Cowdery, a hardware store; and the banking company of Barney, Hubbard and Durbin. By 1867 the hardware store was known as Barney and Ferris, operated by F.T. Barney and B. F. Ferris. Freeland T. Barney was known as the “father” of the Sandusky Wheel Company. In its day it the Sandusky Wheel Company was one of Sandusky’s largest factories, and employed many local residents.

Freeland T. Barney died on September 9, 1875. An obituary which appeared in the Sandusky Register on September 13, 1875 reported that the Rev. W. W. Farr, rector of Grace Episcopal Church, gave a fitting tribute to F.T. Barney, “who fulfilled his mission well and whose days were crowned with the honors of the good and successful business man.”   F.T. Barney was buried in Sandusky’s Oakland Cemetry. To read more about the Barney family and other pioneer families of Sandusky and Erie County, visit the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.