Northwestern Barb Wire Company Incorporated By Dillon-Griswold

Retrieved from The Daily Gazette
Transcribed, and minor corrections made, by Dana Fellows ~ 2011

Northwestern Barb Wire Company Incorporated By Dillon-Griswold

After trying various lines of work in New York, St. Louis, Dixon, Ill., and perhaps elsewhere, Washington Dillon was close to finding in sterling, the one which would occupy him for the rest of his live.

Washington Dillon was the great grandson of Moses Dillon, who had established the first iron forge in Ohio, at Zanesville. Although there is no information that Washington Dillon ever worked in the iron works, he undoubtedly had heard much about the business from his grandfather and others.

Washington Dillon was mechanically inclined…he was a tinker, some have called him, and his partnership with his step-brother, William C. Robinson, in the hardware and farm implement business in Sterling gave him the opportunity to satisfy that inclination. It also was to bring him a new and broader opportunity.

Like others serving in t a farm trade, Robinson and Dillon were well aware of the pressing need for satisfactory fencing at a reasonable cost. When the newly invented barbed wire became available, they were quick to stock the item. They were further intrigued by its success and the difficulty in getting enough to satisfy the wants of their customers. As demand multiplied, blacksmiths, hardware dealers and others of a mechanical bent began making the special wire.

Only 10,000 pounds of barb wire were sold in the United States in 1874, it is estimated. This was the year Haish, Ellwood and Glidden was granted their first patents.

In the next four years, 1875 to 1878, at least 114 barbed wire patents were recorded and the total amounts sold boomed to 26,665,000 pounds. By 1880, the volume was up to 80,500,000 pounds.

Incorporation

Washing Dillon was quick to join the rush to this new manufacture and he began experimenting with the manufacture of barbed wire in the rear of the hardware store.

IN 1875, Dixon began making barbed wire in a building on First Avenue, in Sterling, where Leaths Furniture Store is located today, according to his son, P. W. Dillon.

Washington Dillon made his own barbed wire machines which required the use of both hands and one foot to operate. Before 1878 ended, he and W. C. Robinson were ready to incorporate and launch the new business on a larger scale.

Dillon was then 36 years-old and Robinson, 39, but Robinson was apparently not in good health. It is evident in one of his letters of that time that he had been working extremely hard in civic enterprises as well as in the hardware business and he now “hoped to have some relief.” The men were not only cousins, their mothers having been sisters, but they were also stepbrothers. Washington’s widowed mother had married Robinson’s widower father in 1850.

Capital

To provide capital for the new enterprise, Dillon and Robinson put in $2,500 each. Two other men, David H. Law and James M. Ball, Chicago, also invested $2,500 each, providing a total original capital of $10,000.

The application for incorporation of the Northwestern Barb Wire Company was filed in the office of the Illinois secretary of state on Feb. 28, 1879, and this is considered the official date of incorporation. However, the signatures of Robinson and Dillon on the application were notarized by John G. Manahan on Feb. 20, and the signatures of Law and Bell were notarized on Cook County on Feb. 22.

The original certificate of incorporation was signed by the Illinois secretary of state on March 29, 1879.

The company was incorporated for “the manufacture and sale of barbed fence wire.”

The capital stock of 10,000 was divided into 100 shares of $100 each.

Four directors were to be elected annually: the principal office was to be in Sterling and the live of the corporation was to be 50 years.

The minute book of the company records that the first meeting of the “commissioners of the Northwestern Barb Wire Company” was held on March 17, 1879.

Stockholder Law presided over the election of four stockholders and directors, who in turn elected Washington Dillon, president; Law, secretary and W. C. Robinson, treasurer. Bell was never mentioned by name again in the minutes or the record available, although it can be presumed that he attended the second meeting of stockholder and directors on Nov. 1, 1879 and the third meeting held in July of 1880.