Lyons, Iowa lumber history
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Established by Elijah Buell in 1835, Lyons, Iowa (later incorporated into Clinton, Iowa) had a rich lumber history. The town had a levee which afforded admirable facilities for the location of lumber mills upon its high and dry banks. The sloughs just above Fulton, Illinois and between Clinton, Iowa and Lyons, provided excellent harbors for the storage of logs.
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[edit] First mills
Samuel Cox and G.W. Stambaugh were the pioneer lumbermen of Lyons. Cox & Stambaugh built a mill in 1854 upon the site later occupied by the machine shop of Cummings Bros. This mill, which ran a planer and lath machines, was burned in 1856 and immediately rebuilt by Stambaugh alone, who continued to operate it until his death: in 1867 it was dismantled and the frame was for many years utilized as an ice house. During its operation J.D. Regan ran the lath machinery, and rigged a machine on the bolting saw of the lath mill, for sawing 6-inch shingles for local use. In the latter part of 1855, Cox, Johnson & Cox built a mill which was doing a fine business until the financial crash of 1857, when the firm closed. In 1855-6, John Pickering built a mill just above the location occupied by the mill of David Joyce. In 1857 Capt. Beckwith built and operated a mill near the upper debouchment of the slough into the main river, and about the same time A.T. Cross built a mill on the site later occupied by the warehouse of the paper mill. In 1856, Daniel Dean and William Swanson built a shingle mill just above the Stockwell site. In 1860 Ira Stockwell purchased the old Cox mill and in 1867 bought the Stambaugh mill, which he ran until 1870, when to concentrate his business, the machinery of the Stambaugh mill was added to that of the Cox mill, giving it a sawing capacity of 100,000 feet daily; fire destroyed this mill on May 19 1876. In the spring of 1874, L.B. Wadleigh, E.P. Wells and D.J. Batchelder purchased the Haun property and reconstructed the old saw mill, putting in two rotaries and a gang giving it a capacity of 60,000 feet per day, and converted the stone grist mill into an auxiliary building, closing the gap between the two with a brick engine and boiler room.
[edit] Gardiner and Joyce families
In 1877 the firm of Welles, Gardiner & Co. was instituted, Stimson B. Gardiner with his two sons Silas W. and George S., having purchased the interest of Mr. Wadleigh. In 1878 the Gardiners and D.J. Batchelder purchased the interest of E.P. Welles, making no change in the firm name until, in 1879, C.F. Welles was added to the company, which took out articles of incorporation under the name of “Gardiner, Batchelder & Welles,” with capital stock of $200,000; S.B. Gardiner was elected president, D.J. Batchelder vice-president, and S.W. Gardiner secretary and treasurer. In 1881 the company built another mill just above the first one, in which they placed one rotary and a Wickes gang (the first of this make on the river), giving the mill a capacity of 100,000 feet of lumber, 40,000 shingles and 30,000 lath per day. In 1887 the old Haun mill was improved with a Wickes gang and Wilkins band mill, and a large planing mill was added to the plant. With these improvements the cut of the company reached 225,000 feet of lumber per day, or 40,000 feet of lumber and 10,000,000 shingles per season. The operation was closed in 1894 with the exhaustion of the timber supply of the company. In 1861 David Joyce leased the Stambaugh mill, purchasing his log stock in the raft and disposing of his lumber in a retail yard. In 1869 in company with S.I. Smith he erected a mill containing one circular and a gang locating on what was known as the Ringwood Slough. This mill had a sawing capacity of 60,000 feet of lumber, 40,000 shingles and 15,000 lath daily. In 1873 Mr. Joyce purchased the interest of his partner and became sole owner. This mill was burned in July, 1888, and the erection of a new mill was at once undertaken which began operations in May, 1899, equipped with two bands, together with shingle and lath machinery, for the manufacture of 100,000 feet of lumber, 40,000 shingles and 20,000 lath per day, which he continued to operate until his death April 7, 1895, subsequent to which time the mill has been operated by his son W.T. Joyce; connected with the mill was an extensive planning mill for the finer manipulation of the stock before shipment. For many years previous to 1889 a sash, door and blind manufactory was carried on by Mr. Joyce in connection with his lumber manufacture.
[edit] David Joyce biography
[edit] Stimson B. Gardiner and family biography
Stimson B. Gardiner, who was identified with the lumber manufacturing business in Clinton and Lyons beginning in 1867, is a lineal descendent of and the seventh generation from Lieut. Lion Gardiner, one of the earliest settlers of East Hampton (village), New York. [“The earliest English soldier immigrant was Miles Standish; later came John Endicott, Israel Stoughton, John Mason, John Underhill, Simon Willard, Robt. Seeley and Lion Gardiner, all of whom participated in the Indian wars in Connecticut. Of such were the founders of New England.” (Vide “Lion Gardiner and His Descendents,” p. 45) Lieut. Gardiner and wife landed at Boston, November 28, 1635, where the town authorities soon after engaged him, as engineer, to complete the fortification of Fort Hill. In the spring of 1636 he built Fort Saybrooke, at the mouth of the Connecticut river, and commanded it throughout the Pequot Indian war, after which he bought from the Indians what is now known as Gardiners Island, an estate of some 3,300 acres, lying east of Long Island. His son, David Gardiner, born April 29, 1636, was the first child born of English parents in Connecticut.] Stimson B. Gardiner was born in the town of Wayne, New York, August 28, 1819. His father, Lion Gardiner (sixth generation), had been married twice, and was the sire of nineteen children, eleven by his first and eight by his second wife. Steuben was a heavily timbered county in those days and lumbering a large industry, largely with beautiful white pine, whole sections of which produced 100,000 feet to the acre, the product going by water (canal, lake and river) to Albany and other markets in the eastern part of the State and so it came about, after four or five years of farming, that Gardiner engaged his services in the lumbering operations of Richard L. Chapman, who was operating on an extensive scale, having a saw mill near Penn Yan, New York. While engaged at this mill he met for the first time Mr. Chancy Lamb, then a wheelwright and millwright, who had formerly lived at Lake George (village), New York. While repairing this saw mill, and, later, in building another and larger one on the same site, a strong friendship grew up between these two men, and after Gardiner was married (May 2, 1844, to Miss Nancy Bonney, daughter of Jethro and Abigail (Genug) Bonney of Penn Yan, New York, they, Mr. and Mrs. Chancy Lamb and child (Artemus) and Stimson B. Gardiner and wife moved together west near Mt. Carroll, Illinois, where they continued to dwell as neighbors and friends for three years. In the spring of 1847 Gardiner was offered again the charge of the “Chapman mill” at Penn Yan, and with his wife and infant son of seven months (Silas Wright Gardiner, what had been named for the illustrious governor of York state by a great admirer of his, Mrs. Chancy Lamb), he returned to the Empire State again to engage in lumbering. The business flourished for several years and in its enlargement Gardiner, in 1851, went to Tioga, Pennsylvania, taking his family, and erected a large gang saw mill for Mr. Chapman, but soon after its erection there came a crash in lumbering affairs which swept away Chapman’s fortune and that of his associates. On March 9, 1848, a daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, was born to Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner at Penn Yan, who. On October 17, 1866, was married to Lauren C. Eastman of that place. They moved to Clinton, Iowa where Mr. Eastman was chief in the office force of C. Lamb & Sons for over twenty-five years. They had two daughters, Nina (Mrs. W.B. Rogers later of Laurel, Mississippi), and Ida Gardiner Eastman. After the Chapman failure, Mr. Gardiner engaged in various pursuits, one of which was the manufacturing of chain pumps at Napanee, Canada. In 1854 he entered into a copartnership at Penn Yan, New York, with Mr. B.W. Franklin, the business being the sawing of lumber and the manufacture of land plaster or fertilizer, which was made by grinding to flour the peculiar rock found and quarried at Cayuga Lake. On April 12, 1854, his youngest son, George S. Gardiner, was born. (George S. was married in Clinton, Iowa, April 24, 1877, to Catherine, daughter of Chas. B. And Theresa Marshall, and had two daughters, Juliet and Rachel; they later made their home in Laurel, Mississippi, where he was president of Eastman, Gardiner & Co. lumber manufacturers at that place.) During the great oil excitement in Western Pennsylvania in 1864-5, Gardiner made some investments there that for a time were very remunerative, but subsequently lost his investment when the bubble burst. In 1866 he sold his farm in the town of Benton, near Penn Yan, and moved west. After living in Chicago a year, he moved to Clinton, Iowa, in the summer of 1867, and began working for C. Lamb & Sons, and in 1869 bought a small interest in one of their saw mills, known as the Lamb-Byng Co. mill. The business of this mill was soon enlarged by the purchase of the Wheeler & Warner mill, and both were operated by the Lamb-Byng Co. until the spring of 1877, when Gardiner sold his interest to C. Lamb & Sons, and with his sons, Silas W. and George S., bought out most of the L.B. Wadleigh interest in the Wadleigh, Wells & Co. mill at Lyons, Iowa. In 1891 this business was incorporated as Gardiner, Batchelder & Wells, with Stimson B. Gardiner as president and Silas W. Gardiner secretary and treasurer. It operated the two saw mills, producing about forty million feet annually until 1894. Mr. Gardiner his sons, Silas W. and George S, and Messrs. Lauren C. and Chas. S. Eastman later transferred their investments to the long leaf yellow pine lumbering business of “Eastman, Gardiner & Co.” at Laurel, Mississippi.
[edit] References
- "History of the Lumber and Forest Industry of the Northwest" by George W Hotchkiss Illustrated Chicago 1898 p 594 Lyons Iowa
- "The Clinton Morning Age" Saturday December 8, 1894 p. 4
- "Wolfe's History of Clinton County Iowa Illustrated" Volume I B..F. Bowen & Company Indianapolis, Indiana 1911 p. 381, p. 456, p. 542 & P. 1060
- "The Clinton Herald" Friday November 13, 1903 p. 8
- "The Clinton Herald" Wednesday October 26, 1938 p. 19
- "The Clinton Herald" Friday June 14, 1907 p. 1
- "The Clinton Herald" Thursday February 28, 1924 p. 6
- "The Clinton Herald" Monday March 3, 1924 p. 6
- "The Iowan" September 1956
