Mx – May 9th 1899 7 PM
Dear Folks,
Just read your letter Co. Why didn’t you call that dog back when you saw he was lame? Maybe he was hungry too – And lost.
I ‘spose you’ve read all about our big fire before this. The alarm was given about 8 o’clock – Just as we were about to close the office. Joe started off on the run. I cut out wondering whether to go to my rooms and right to bed, as I’d tho’t I’d do – when I saw that it was a big fire. I thot I’d better walk over that way and take a look at it, but decided to go to my rooms first and get rid of my umbrella and the box I’d bro’t from home. (I hadn’t been to my rooms at all.) So I went up there, threw down my bundles, took time to exchange my new sailor for my old gray walking-hat, and started out again. Down at the corner, I fell in with Miss Dirter (German teacher in the schools) who like me was alone. We went over to the station and there we stood for over two hours. Do you remember there’s a platform on the other side of the tracks and a fence? We crossed over to that, and from there had a fine view - could look right down on the Russell grounds. The building that was burned was that long shaped new looking building. I wish you folks could have seen it. For a long time I tho’t likely the whole shops would go. And I wondered that the firemen didn’t feel utterly hopeless about it and give it up. To stand back there, it looked as if those streams of water were doing no good whatever. But of course we couldn’t see all that was being done. How they were watching the other buildings, and working inside of them. We saw a man climb out of a window and come down a ladder from the burning building. Oh how it did blaze up. After the first portion of the wall fell, we soon heard there were two men under it. They were working under an archway that had a tin roof and when the wall fell it broke the roof down on them. But I ‘spose you have read about all that. How one of the poor fellows was dead when they got him out and the other badly hurt. It was awful to think of those men being under that smoking mass of bricks. Every little while some more of the wall would come crashing down and then the fire would blaze up higher than ever. The East End of the building was divided from the other by a fire wall and it was quite a while before the fire burned its way through but finally in spite of the work that was done the flames began to creep along the roof and then to show at the windows, and soon that part of the warehouse was burning as fiercely as the other had burned. There was a lot of oil in one part of the building and that made a great blaze. It was quite a sight. To look down at the crowd reminded me of a country fair. Wherever I looked were crowds of people and the fire made every place so light. We did not go down nearer the fire at all - that we could see it better from the platform. When the 940 train came in, everybody was looking out at the fire. The crowd laughed at the people in the sleepers – some of them had the curtains pulled back just a little piece, and were peeping out while others had the curtains clear back from the window and were comfortably lying there watching the fire, not caring how much they were guyed. As why should they. No one knew who they were. Several freights passed through and it was strange that no one was hurt, because when a train was heard coming, people standing over by the station would flock across, so they wouldn’t be shut off from the fire by the train.
I wondered if I ought to come back to the office, but tho’t Russels wouldn’t want to send messages in the midst of all that excitement. Was sorry I hadn’t come when Nick Peacock told me this morning that I missed some business by not being here. But Mr. Hilbone said most of it was sent after midnight and I couldn’t very well have stayed that late at the office. Said he sent two cable grams and about a dozen messages – would have liked to give us some of them, but couldn’t save them till morning as he had orders to rush them off. But we had good business today. Guess we sent more messages than we ever sent here in one day before. It was about 10:30 when I got back to my rooms. Nick Peacock said he stayed down there helping to hand out sandwiches & coffee to the firemen and others who were working till 3 o’clock.
Wednesday Morning
Did you look for a letter this morning I wonder? I meant to send one last night, but didn’t get it written. We were rather busy. Yes, I found your collar button. Will send it when I have a chance.
So Queen wanted to go to the woods. How funny for her to not mention it at all.
Did I say anything about a Cleveland Operator who signs V. & who has been talking with Joe some lately? He sent Joe a couple of Kodak pictures Monday. One of a Branch Office in Cleveland with three messengers standing out in front and the other showed a man and two messengers sitting among a great lot of watermelons piled in front of restaurant with the signs, “Noon Lunch” “ Beer” etc. conspicuously displayed. The boys were eating watermelon while the man was sitting with both hands on his stomach and a comical expression on his face. He wrote a note saying that perhaps next week when he would be printing some pictures he would send one of his own and Jo and I could hang it in the office to throw spit-balls at in our leisure moments. I had Jo tell him I didn’t indulge in that pastime.
I can’t make up my mind what to do about working for Bessie, I don’t want to, but I suppose might lose my chance of getting that office and while I just hate to think of giving up this office, I ‘spose if I could get that one it would be very foolish to not take it. And another thing it would give Joe a couple of months work, and if he shouldn’t get a place before that it would be a pretty nice thing for him to have this I suppose. Wish you’d tell me how it looks to you. Bess said Jessie would like to come. I don’t have much idea Bessie will stay away altogether, but I suppose she might happen to get into something else. And if Jessie were working there she would naturally have the best chance of keeping the office. I tho’t perhaps Bess might be thinking of getting married. But she says not. Says Ed is not making a good salary and she doesn’t believe in people getting married unless they have something to live on.
3:30 PM
I was over at Ryder’s after dinner. The house is all torn up. They are having papering done and Mrs. R has a girl helping her to clean house. She was nearly frantic at the fire the other night. Frank is one of the volunteer firemen and when she heard some men were under that wall she was nearly crazy. Then Mr. Ryder went off upstairs to his office in the building nest to the warehouse -the one that was joined to it by that arch – to straighten up books and papers so they could be carried out if that building should burn. As they tho’t it would. She sent a man up to tell him to come right down. Mr. Ryder would probably have been buried under that wall if it hadn’t been for a boy who works in his department. He was standing there trying to pry open the door, when some man came up and warned the men that the wall was leaning and would soon fall. Then this boy caught hold of Mr. Ryder and made him come away. It was reported that there were three men caught under there. People knew Mr. Ryder had been working there and they supposed he was buried there with the two firemen. Al Miller came & told Mrs. Ryder that Mr. R was all right and Frank was too. When he didn’t know that they were at all and had heard Mr. R was under the wall. Mr. R was soaking wet when he got home from working around where they were throwing the water.
The Canton Fire Dept. came over, but the fire was under control by that time. A whole crowd of Canton people came over - some on wheels and some on street cars. They ran some extras over.
We heard people in the crowd laughing about a man who when he heard about the fire, hurried down and went into the burning building to get his overalls. There were about 180 new threshing machines in that warehouse. I wish you folks could have been here. It certainly was a fine sight.
Co did Harry send you some supplies?
6:15 PM
Just back from supper. Don’t suppose I’ll get any better tonight, but I’ll finish this up and go down to the Post Office for a walk. It seems that I can’t do any good at taking a walk at meal-time since I board here.
Joe’s gone out in the office to – to steal a newspaper. He has a nice little scheme. He goes out to the table sits down and reads a paper awhile. Then he just naturally brings it with him when he comes in. Of course it doesn’t make any difference as the paper has been read by someone & left there.
Well must stop.
Yours Lovingly,
Barney
I’m feeling ok again. I was rather sleepy Monday & Yesterday, but went to bed in good time last night.
Written By: Effie Barnaby - Manager Postal Telegraph Office
**A BIG Thanks To: Linda C. Joesph!**
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These engines were used extensively in rural North America to aid in threshing, in which the owner/operator of a threshing machine or threshing rig would travel from farmstead to farmstead threshing grain. Oats were a common item to be threshed, but wheat and other grains were common as well. On a "threshing day", all the neighbors would gather at that day's farmstead to complete a massive job in one day through cooperation. The women and older girls were in charge of cooking the noon meal and bringing water to the men. The children had various jobs based upon their age and sex. These jobs included driving the bundle racks, pitching bundles into the threshing machine, supplying water for the steam engine, hauling away the freshly threshed grain and scooping it into the granary. Steam traction engines were often too expensive for a single farmer to purchase, so "threshing rings" were often formed. In a threshing ring, multiple farmers pooled their resources to purchase a steam engine. They also chose one person among them to go to a steam school, to learn how to run the engine properly. There were also threshing contractors, who owned their own engine and thresher, and went to different farms, hiring themselves out to thresh grain.
Ploughing
The immense pulling power of steam tractors allowed them to be used for ploughing as well. Certain steam tractors were better suited for ploughing than others, with the large Minneapolis Threshing machine Co., J.I. Case, Reeves Co and Advance-Rumely engines being prime examples. Some of the largest steam tractors, such as the 150 horsepower (110 kW) Case, were capable of pulling 30 or more plough bottoms, while most were powerful enough to pull between 6 and 20. Differing soil conditions highly affected the ploughing abilities of these tractors._______________________________________________________________________________
RUSSELL STEAM ENGINES
On the night of May 9, 1898, the red glare of a magnificent fire stopped an opera in the middle of its performance in the Massillon, Ohio, opera house. The fire attracted a horde of sightseers from Canton, who saw the flickering on the horizon and bicycled 12 miles in the dark to take in the spectacle. “Drawn by the red glare in the skies,” wrote Edward Thornton Heald in The Stark County Story, “hundreds of other Cantonians rushed to the scene by train, interurban and carriages.”
Though the blaze provided a display for the sightseers, the Canton Fire Department arrived an hour and a half after the blaze started with a fire engine, wagon and four horses, it was not a good time for Russell & Co. of Massillon, the largest employer in the city and manufacturer of steam traction engines. It was their business that was on fire – again.
The Beginning
After their carpentery shop burned in 1840, a trio of Russell brothers – Charles, Nahum and Clement – formed C.M. Russell & Co. on Jan. 1, 1842, to make threshers and horsepowers in an old whitewashed two-story building called the “White Shop.” They used a blind white horse to drive an iron and wood trimming lathe and a grindstone. “The senior partner had seen and carefully examined the Pitts-Buffalo Separator, which had already been constructed and in use,” says Herbert T.O. Blue in The History of Stark County Ohio, “and on that examination Mr. Russell believed that he saw where improvements might be made, and with characteristic energy set about trying to make it better, and so succeeded that the improved machine took the premium at the Ohio State Fair at Columbus in 1845.”After the local shipping canal was clogged with boats filled with a bumper wheat crop in 1846, citizens realized a railroad was needed. The Russells not only bought stock in the Ohio & Pennsylvania Railroad to urge it to come through Massillon, they built railroad handcars and stockcars for the company, so their new business, N.S.&C. Russell, flourished. Three more brothers joined in 1864 and the organization became Russell & Co. In 1871 the company divided; C. Russell & Co. moved to Canton, to make reapers and mowers.
On May 17, 1878, a fire destroyed the Russell iron-working machinery, wagon stock and 36 years’ stock of patterns, worth $75,000 – a small fortune. Other losses totaled an additional $75,000 and insurance covered only $53,100, a third of the total. This threw 250 men out of work. Two-thirds of the main building was saved, and the next day new machinery was ordered. Several companies actually loaned machinery to the company until theirs came. With the addition of gas put into the works, a week later, the iron department was in operation again on double shifts, and within 30 days the full complement of machines was being turned out again.
Russell Steam Traction Engines
Surprisingly, almost nothing is mentioned about when the Russell brothers starting making Russell steam traction engines. One reference says they started shortly after their 1878 incorporation.Of course, the company was busy making its many various other products: threshers, horsepowers, railroad cars, sawmills, feeder knife grinders, etc., but it seems odd that the history is blank about the product for which they’re known best.
So little is known about the company and the building of their portable steam engines, stationary automatic steam engines and road rollers until that fateful May night in 1898 (one reference says 1899), when the Russell business burned for the third time in their history. During this time they began making Russell stationary engines and spun off the Russell Engine Co. to manufacture them.
By 1909, the plant covered 21 acres and had produced 18,000 farm, traction and stationary engines, as well as 22,000 threshing machines. They also made sawmills, pneumatic stackers, feeders and steam road rollers.
The early Russell steam traction engines were prized for their simplicity and ease of repair. “All moving parts,” writes Jack Norbeck in Encyclopedia of American Steam Traction Engines, “were in plain sight, and any parts needing adjustments were within easy reach of ordinary tools.”
Like so many of the steam traction engines, the Russells were behemoths: the smallest one they produced in 1912, the 8 HP, weighed 9,000 pounds without the 60 gallons of water it could hold.
In 1909, Russell entered the gas tractor race, building a 3-cylinder machine that was not of its own design, but actually adapted from a British tractor. “Dubbed the ‘American’,” writes C. H. Wendel in his Encyclopedia of Farm Tractors, “its three 8-by-10-inch cylinders developed 44 brake horsepower,” although only 22 were delivered at the drawbar. Russell tractors were solidly built, like all of their products, but not particularly innovative and that perhaps cost them part of the market share.
They built tractors with some of the earliest cabs, mortised and tenoned wood of matched lumber, bolted together and costing $100 extra. The cab had windows and sashes.
By Bill Vossler
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McCormick devised his famed wheat reaper and started his legendary binder business. The McCormick Company eventually moved to Michigan Avenue, in Chicago, Illinois, across from the Wrigley Building. In 1859, McCormick's reaper earned a gold medal award at the Royal Exposition, in London, England.
J I Case introduced an eagle logo for the first time in 1865 after a legendary Wisconsin Civil War Regiment's mascot. Case constructed his first portable steam engine in 1869, an engine used to power wheat threshers. This engine is in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. Case won first place at the 1879 Paris Exposition in France for his thresher; this was the first thresher sent abroad by the Case company and was the first of thousands which would later be exported internationally. It is at this time that Case created his first self-propelled traction engine, with a drive mechanism on one of his portable engines.
Meanwhile, in 1871 the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the McCormick factory. Despite Case's offer to help McCormick with the manufacturing of their machines, McCormick Company refused the offer and a new facility, called the McCormick Works was built, in southwest Chicago. The McCormick company introduced the first of many twine binder machines in 1881, leading to the so called Harvester Wars that gained the attention of the farm industry during the 1880s. (An interesting bit of trivia: this also was the origin of the generic term 'binder' or 'corn binder' for any International Harvester tractor or truck by fans (or detractors) even to this day.)
Another interesting piece of trivia: Case made a visit to a farm named after him in Minnesota during 1884, upon receiving news that one of his thresher machines was not working. Infuriated by the fact that he could not fix the machine himself, he set it ablaze the next day, and sent the owner a brand new thresher machine upon return to Wisconsin.
In 1890, the Case Company expanded to South America, opening a factory in Argentina. In 1891, the company's founder, Jerome Increase Case, died at age 72. By this time the Case company produced portable steam engines to power the threshing machines, and later went into the steam traction engine business. By the turn of the century Case was the most prolific North American builder of engines: these ranged in size from the diminutive 9 HP, to the standard 15, 25, 30, 40, 50, 65 HP and up to the plowing 75 and 80 HP sizes. Case also made the large 110 HP breaking engines with its notable two story cab. Nine massive 150 HP hauling engines were made, in addition to steam rollers. Case engines were noted for their use of Woolf valve gear, feedwater heaters, and the iconic 'eagle' smokebox covers.
Information from wikipedia