Around 1890 a former school teacher and farmer
named Daniel A. Thomas entered this rather unsophisticated
fertilizer market in Hagerstown. One source indicates
that Thomas established a fertilizing plant for
the manufacture of fertilizers from bones in 1892.
Livestock bones were shipped in from meat-packing
centers; bison bones came in from western plains.
The location of Thomas’s operation prior
to 1904 is not known, but at some time between
1904 and 1910 the Thomas firm located operations
in the old Huyett/Simmons fertilizer complex on
the Cumberland Railroad. Thomas bought raw materials
and compounded them into fertilizers. From 1000
to 1200 tons of fertilizer were manufactured annually.
By 1913 one of Thomas’s specialties was
the “celebrated” Thomas’ Dissolved
Bone. This name suggests that Thomas had some
means of acidulating the bone to produce superphosphates.
The 1910 Sanborn maps, however, only show rooms
for storage and mixing and do not show areas for
steaming, grinding, or acidulating .
At the same time, Thomas bought, and may have
traded fertilizer for, livestock in Virginia,
North Carolina, Tennessee, and Chicago. Thomas
had stock yards complete with a cattle scale on
the other side of the Cumberland Valley Railroad
from his fertilizer plant. In the fall, Thomas
sold this livestock on commission to Hagerstown
residents. In the spring Thomas bought stock in
Hagerstown and sold mostly to large cities, such
as Baltimore, Chicago, and New York. In this sense,
Thomas took advantage of Hagerstown’s “gateway”
function; he took advantage of the “resources
of the South,” but also enjoyed the “advantageous
freight rates” to the large cities of the
North. The business handled about 8000 cattle
and 5000 hens annually as well as sheep and other
livestock.
The Thomas family had operated the DA Thomas
Fertilizer Company in Hagerstown since approximately
1890, providing ground bone and other animal byproducts
to farmers, as well as acting as livestock brokers.
Thomas Fertilizer products included “the
celebrated ‘Thomas Dissolved Bone’
” as well as some early mixed or compound
fertilizers. Although their principal business
appears to have been buying and selling livestock,
the fertilizer component of the business was moving
between one and two thousand tons of material
annually by 1904. The plant was located fairly
close to town on Virginia Avenue, adjacent to
the railroad and appears to have been in operation
at least until 1918. Central Chemical was established
in 1911 by Daniel Thomas’ son Franklin,
on a large plot of land at Mitchell Avenue on
the outskirts of town.
In 1910 Thomas constructed a large office building
on West Jonathan street. Thomas located his own
offices in the Thomas building, but also rented
suites to other firms. In 1913 D.A. Thomas &
Co. was listed as “Manufacturers of and
Dealers in Fertilizer.”
A close relation between father and son extended
into the business as they were both variously
listed as president and/or vice-president of Central
Chemical for the first twenty years of its existence.
By the mid-1920s, Franklin Thomas and Central
Chemical have a discreet but prominent profile
in the local trade organizations. In 1927, Thomas
was a member of District Committee #3, which included
Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, of the
American Fertilizer Association and in 1929 Central
Chemical participated in an industry survey prepared
the National Fertilizer Association. Thomas also
appears active in the industry on the national
level, attending and speaking at a Special Convention
called in 1927 to respond to trade practice codes
proposed by the federal government. Devastating
fires in 1943, 1961, and 1965 may have subsequently
impacted the companies profile in the industry.
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