Hagerstown
was well situated to participate in the rapidly
developing fertilizer industry of the late nineteenth
century. In addition to being near the major centers
of production and distribution in Baltimore, the
city was ideally placed between the two regions
of the country using fertilizer most intensely –
the Mid-Atlantic States and the soil-depleted South.
Furthermore, when an extensive system of railroads
was laid in the 1870s, Hagerstown found itself at
an important intersection of rail lines with direct
access to major seaports and other urban centers.
Most of the fertilizer companies in the 1880s
were independent and owned only a single factory.
The fertilizer industry in Hagerstown in the 1880s
was made up of a handful of small factories in
the second category of fertilizer companies –
those producing only mixed fertilizers.
Lechlider Bros. Fertilizer Works was a one- and
two-story building located on a railroad spur
a small distance to the west of the Cumberland
Valley Railroad Round House, but still near downtown.
It had an engine room powered by steam, suggesting
mechanized mixing processes.It appears that the
company contracted for rail delivery of guano
and other fertilizer materials, mixed them, and
distributed them locally. Lechlider Bros. continued
operation at least until1897, but by 1904 their
Hagerstown presence seems to have been limited
to storage in warehouses. The business may have
figured that simply distributing fertilizer materials
was more economical than mixing them.
Further north on the Cumberland Railroad –
just west of present-day Prospect Street –
were the two- and three-story buildings of Huyett,
Schindel & Co., Fertilizer & Agricultural
Chemical Works. Huyett had a room for steaming
bones and a room for “grinding and mixing.”
In this second room was a bone mill to grind the
steamed bones and ample space to mix it with other
materials. Across the railroad spur from Huyett
was a one-story warehouse to store the finished
product. South of the warehouse and between the
spur and the main railroad line was a large stock
yard owned by the Cumberland Valley Railroad.
Despite the company’s name, the operation
seems to have consisted of mixing bone meal with
other fertilizer materials. By 1892, Schindle
and Schindle Sawing and Turning had occupied the
plant.
Attached to the Huyett buildings were two warehouses
for J.D. Simmons. These warehouses remained in
1892 even after the Huyett operations moved out
of the adjoining buildings. By 1897, however,
Simmons no longer used the warehouses.
In 1887 Stonebreaker & Son Bone Mills was
a building in Funkstown (just outside of Hagerstown)
on the Antietam River. The operation here appears
to have consisted entirely of grinding bone for
mixing companies or for direct sale to farmers.
In the one-story rear of the building, along the
tail race leading into the river, a steam boiler
was used to steam the bones prior to grinding.
Two turbine water wheels on the tail race powered
the bone mill. In the front part of the building
(facing Baltimore Street) ground bone was mixed
on the first floor and then stored on the three
upper floors. The elevator shaft in used for raising
and lowering the bone meal addressed Baltimore
street in the manner of a projecting church steeple
and was topped with a decorative cupola. A set
of scales located just outside the elevator shaft
and practically in the street indicates that the
elevator was also the point at which bone meal
left the mill to be loaded onto carriages. The
mill had no heat or light and probably operated
only in the warmer months of the year. Fifteen
people worked here.
By 1892 J.W. Stonebreaker & Sons, Makers
of Fertilizers had begun operations on the banks
of the Antietam River. Unlike its more horizontal
predecessors, Stonebreaker’s plant was four
stories tall, with operations stacked on top of
each other: the part of the plant closest the
spur was three stories: the first floor for materials
storage, the second for mixed fertilizer, and
the 3rd for “shipping.” Behind this
room was the four-story portion with storage of
bones on the first floor, a stock room on the
second floor, steaming and grinding on the third
floor, and sifting on the fourth floor. Steam
was obtained from the Antietam Paper Mill. The
Stonebreakers apparently felt they could do better
by integrating their bone mill operation with
fertilizer mixing. Also on the railroad spur and
slightly to the west of the main plant was a small
warehouse (apparently a ware house for fertilizer
bags in 1897). By 1897, the firm had added an
extra room for bone storage and an iron-clad boiler
house cut into the banks of the river (Figure
5). The operation does not appear to have survived
past 1910.
In summary, though showing some variation in architecture
and processes, the fertilizer companies in Hagerstown
at the end of the nineteenth century were all
of the same sort: small, family-owned, locally-oriented
businesses which contracted for materials that
were either mixed and ground and then sold, or
simply distributed directly to farmers.
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