MANUFACTURING
Spokes, hubs, wheels, etc. – In the second half of the 1800s, Frenchtown was a major manufacturer of spokes, hubs and entire wagon wheels made from local supplies of oak and hickory.
NEW JERSEY SPOKE & HANDLE WORKS was the first to make spokes in Frenchtown. The mill, owned and operated by Philip Reading and William Hedges, fronted on Third Street east of the Methodist church on a lot that went all the way to Second Street where the firehouse is now. Reading & Hedges started in 1845 with a lumberyard there, and in 1855 they began making spokes and ax handles. They shipped their spokes and wheel rims to buyers as far away as England and Australia. The factory was roughly back-to-back with the building that became Borough Hall.
In 1859 the partners were Reading and Peter S. Kugler. In 1868 or '69 the mill burned down and it was rebuilt by Kugler and Frank Fargo, who are listed as owning it in 1872-75.
Other partnerships at that site included Fargo, Kerr & Niece; Fargo, Baldwin & Kachline; Kerr & Taylor; and Kerr & S.R. Opdycke. The Kerr was Civil War veteran Lorenzo S.D., who soon became the sole owner.
In 1903 the L.S.D. Kerr & Co. Wheel, Spoke, Hub & Rim Manufactory was employing a crew of 17, and powering the operation with a coal-fired steam engine.
When local hardwood had been depleted, Lorenzo Kerr was left holding a factory that was like a runner dying on base at the end of an inning. In 1911, he dismantled the old mill, using parts of it to build two houses there on Third Street. He sold the excess land, dividing it between the borough and the neighboring Methodist Church.
VOORHEES, HANN & CO. operated a spoke mill in 1871 where the Queen Anne Stick Style mansion now stands at 112 Harrison Street. The mill was sold to James Hann and E.G. Williams in 1875. Voorhees got out just in time; the HANN & WILLIAMS spoke factory and bending works burned up in the Great Fire of 1878, along with an old house, the former LaRoche residence, on the southeast corner of Harrison and Second streets, that served as their office.
SLACK & HOLCOMBE manufactured wagon-wheel parts across the street from the cemetery in the 1880s, but they moved to a new wooden factory on Lower Sixth Street in 1889. Wilbur Slack sold the factory to the Crosby Manufacturing Co. in 1900 and moved his operation to Trenton.
FRENCHTOWN SPOKE WORKS – was established in 1866, according to the Frenchtown Star. It may have started at the corner of Bridge and Cemetery streets, but it flourished in the old stone mill beside the Little Nishisackawick Creek. It was an enterprise of the Shurtz family. Nathan (1818-1902) and son William, with partners who came and went, including William Quick, William Slack, and someone named Baldwin, probably Munson Baldwin, inventor of the floating velocipede. (More about that later.)
The Shurtzes' products included oak and hickory spokes, entire wheels, and sledge and hammer handles. The 1883 Bailey panoramic map identifies the factory as Empire Spoke Works. An 1885 Sanborn map describes its products as wheels, hubs and rims.
In 1891 N. Shurtz & Co. was shipping hundreds of sets of wheels to South America.
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With no more local oak and hickory, the industry died. But the next big thing was already hatching. More on that soon.
From “Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia”