Excursion of Kilbourne and Jacobs Employees to Cedar Point

Each summer between 1903 and 1911, the employees of the Kilbourne and Jacobs Manufacturing Company in Worthington, Ohio were treated to a day at Cedar Point. A banner bearing the company’s  name was placed on a Pennsylvania Railroad car. 

An article from the July 22, 1905 issue of the Sandusky Star Journal provides with details about the festive event.

James Russell Kilbourne provided each employee with two tickets to Cedar Point. Four separate trains from the Pennsylvania Railroad brought the visitors from Columbus to Sandusky. Once in downtown Sandusky, the employees then boarded steamers to travel to Cedar Point.

Mr. Kilbourne and his party traveled in a private train car. When he arrived in town, he ran into a former military buddy from the Ohio Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home. The retired soldier wanted to chat, but Mr. Kilbourne said, “I’m too busy to think or talk politics. I want to see that all my people have a good time here.” Besides visiting the beach and other attractions at Cedar Point, the group took part in several contests, including a smoking contest and another one in which they had to guess the number of seeds in a watermelon. On the day of the visit of the three thousand employees of Kilbourne and Jacobs to Cedar Point, the Knights of Columbus brought in a group of one thousand visitors to the Point.

Of course the surname Kilbourne is very familiar to Sandusky residents. The great grandfather of James Russell Kilbourne, was an early surveyor of the lands in Ohio. James Kilbourne (1770-1850) was instrumental in the founding of Sandusky and Worthington. Hector Kilbourne, son of the elder James Kilbourne, was responsible for laying out the plat of Sandusky in the shape of the Masonic emblem.