Marseilles, IL: A town built with water power

The industrial ruins along the river front have been replaced by the headquarters building for Illinois Valley Cellular, which donated river front land for the Middle East Conflicts Wall Memorial.

Marseilles has seen a succession of men who have exploited the 15-foot drop of the Illinois River at the Grand Rapids. Ephraim Sprague set up a water wheel at the head of the rapids to operate a sawmill. But in 1833 Lovell Kimball determined that Sprague did not yet have a legal title to his water frontage, so he established overlapping claims and in 1833 built a dam that turned the water away from Sprague's shallow mill race.

Boasting of the mills and workshops he intended to put up, he refused to lease any of the power he controlled, and Sprague had to close his prosperous little sawmill.

In bitter rage, he stood on the river bank and with upraised hands, prayed that fire should burn and flood should wash away everything in Marseilles, as long as the memory of Kimball should last. (Story of Marseilles 1835-1960, text)

Kimball hired a surveyor to lay out a townsite of what is now east of Main Street and recorded the plat on June 3, 1835, and he chose the name Marseille. After he set up a ferry across the river and a sawmill to furnish lumber for later use, he left on a trip through Pennsylvania and upper New York to talk to business men to get working capital and promise of credit for his Marseille Manufacturing Company. In 1841, he built the largest grist/flour mill in the United States.

The grist mill was finished in black walnut, no expense being spared to make it the best of its kind. It had, when finished in 1841, eight run of fifty two inch stones and nine water wheels. It was five stories high, including basement, and forty five by seventy five feet." (O'Byron)

Nine months later his sawmill and flour mill were destroyed by fire in 1842. His insurance claims were denied because a director of the Illinois Mutual Insurance Co., Mr Woodworth, was also a director of the Marseille Manufacturing Co (Genealogy, written in 1877). So Sprague did seem to get his revenge. In fact, Kimbal believed Sprague set the fire. Kimball's creditors took everything that he had, and he died in the cholera epidemic of 1848.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal was completed in 1848 with the stretch between Marseilles and Morris being the last to be excavated. Locks 9 and 10 are near Chicago and Perl Streets. "It was said that as many as a hundred river steamboats at a time might be tied up in the basin near Peru, awaiting shipments on the canal." (Story) Marseille orginated freight with a coal mine and two grain elevators.

The Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad reached Marseilles in 1853 and Rock Island in 1854. Even though the canal lost its passenger service and most of its freight traffic, it was able to operate profitable for about twenty-five years because of bulk freight such as lumber, coal, and grain.

Chicago Street, the first street east of Kimball's plat, became the focus of business development---harness shops, blacksmith shops, groceries, bakeries, and boarding houses for the canal and railroad workers. The new railroad built a depot south of the tracks. But when the railroad tried to get more land for a freight house, the owner, Dr. Daniel Ward asked for too much---life-time passes for him and his family for all railroads, not just the Rock Island. So when a newcomer to town, Roderic Clark, who had bought almost all the land west of Main Street and along the railroad tracks east of Main starting in 1857, offered 15 acres for a new depot site near Main Street, the railroad accepted and named Clark their station agent.

After the new depot was built, Clark's town lots started selling, and the new residents thought the post office should be moved from near the vacant depot to the new business district that was forming around the new depot. One winter night in 1868, some of the "Clarktowners" moved the post office. It got stuck in a pasture, and it wasn't until later that Spring that the move was finished. The feud between the two sections of town continued for a generation with Perl Street being the neutral ground. Efforts to combine the two school systems were defeated until 1893 when a 4-year high school was built for the entire town. Until then, each section had just a 2-year high school.

In 1866, Clark, along with Isaac Underhill and O. W. Young of Peoria, formed the Marseilles Land and Water Power Company. An 8-foot high, 1000-foot long dam was built to divert water to newly excavated millraces. The Brown & Norton Paper Company and the William Rickard & Company Oatmeal Mill made the first leases for power in 1867(O'Byron). Clark searched for manufactures in need of the power they were now prepared to lease. In addition to water power, the area offered coal for steam power when high water or ice gorges closed the water power. And the canal and railroad offered easy access to markets in St. Louis, Chicago, and beyond.

Clark convinced August Adams and some of his 7 sons to expand their plow making foundry in Sandwich, IL, into other lines of farm machinery. They revived the name Marseilles Manufacturing Company and soon were making large corn shellers and machinery to dig wells, grind feeed, saw wood, load hay, and pump water. Later they developed an international trade for their steel windmills. The corn shellers also were sold internationally. A key to their success is that two of the mechanically inclined sons would visit farms and mills to watch their machines in operation so that they could identify problems and rectify them with newer designs.

In an era of bad labor relations, the foremen tried to keep good workers on payroll, in hard times as well as good, and skilled mechanics were proud to say that they worked in the Adams plant. So it was a shock to the community "when it was announced in 1912 that the company, its patents and much of its equipment had been sold to the John Deere Company of Moline, IL." The plant was to be closed, but continued employment was provided for all workers that were willing to move to Moline.

When another farm implement company, H. A. Pitts' Sons Manufacturing Company, had their factories destroyed by the 1871 Chicago fire, Roderic Clark convinced them to transfer the production of their threshing machines to Marseilles. Soon they employed more workers than any other company in town.

Many of the mills and factories set up at this time had very limited capital, and were dependent for their operation on loans from wealthy investors and speculators in the East. These loans had been negotiated through Roderic Clark. His sudden death led to many bankruptcy proceedings disastrous to the new business enterprises and to the town. (Story)

Control of the water power passed to our fourth entrepreneur, Bird Bickford, and he organized the Marseille Land and Water Power Company in 1867. He began construction in 1882 of a paper mill that would be the largest in the United States at that time. Bickford's predictions of the future glory of the mill amused the workers who coined it the "New Jerusalem". But Bickford had invested heavily in other ventures, and by 1884 was ruined financially. The "New Jerusalem" stood unfinished for ten years.

Lucius Clark also worked for the Water Power Company to sell other manufactures to locate their plants in Marseilles. He induced Ferdinand Schumacher, who had made a fortune in cereal manufacture in Ohio, to build his factory for the production of cartons by buying the water power rights and the "New Jerusalem" mill. "The mill was completed and equipped to make cartons, and money was spent freely to improve the water power." (Story)

John F. Clark became manager of a small mill in 1882 and began production of glazed paper for book publishers. He established additonal mills to make wrapping paper, strawboard used for egg cases, and composition paper board for cartons for bakery products. He also built a pulp mill to supply wood fiber for this type of board. For a time, Marseilles had a "golden age" of plant construction and new employment opportunities.

W. D. Boyce had made millions in the newspaper business when he partnered with John Clark to manufacture book paper. He also bought Clark's pulp mill and expanded it into newsprint facilities that were the dominant industry of the town for several years. In 1900(Story) or 1903(Wiki) he bought the water power rights, built a new dam across the river, and improved the races and power plant. When he retired from the publishing business, the manufacture of newsprint cane to an end.

In the meantime, bakery companies increased their demands for paper cartons. The National Biscuit Company noticed that the paper board supplied by Marseilles mills was superior to the product received from other companies. The Howe and Davidson Company took over the Clark mills used for this purpose, and built the largest plant in the city.

After turning his chief operations over to the companies named, John F. Clark continued other types of production until his tragic and untimely death in 1905, at the age of fifty-one years. It was recalled that his chief pride had been that he had managed to keep his workmen steadily employed, in some way or other, in hard times as well as good. 

The National Biscuit Company bought the Howe and Davidson plant in 1902, and began to supply cartons to all the Nabisco bakeries. In 1921 the National Biscuit Company built its present eight-story plant, at that time the largest industrial building in the state outside of Chicago, and the first air-conditioned factory in this part of the country. (Story)

I have found evidence of other industries in Marseilles that were not mentioned in the Story of Marseilles 1835-1960.

From the town's collection of historic photos, I found:

http://www.marseillesil.net/PhotoHistory.html

 
In 1904, George M. Brown in East St. Louis, Illinois, started the General Roofing Manufacturing Company. It was the predecessor of today's CertainTeed Corporation. These buildings no longer exist and I confirmed Marseilles not one of their current locations.

From eBay, we learn there was also a Joshua Moore company that made road graders and a Wrights Dairy.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RARE-1891-JOSHUA-MOORE-ROAD-GRADER-AD-MARSEILLES-IL-/330387151596?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4cec9bdaec

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Wrights-Dairy-Marseilles-ILLINOIS-Milk-Bottle-One-Quart-/400701932840?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5d4bb24528

This aerial photo from 1922 would have the Boyce dam and two mill raceways that were reconstructed in 1900 or 1903.

http://www.marseillesil.net/PhotoHistory.html

Glen Miller posted
For $95 you could be in the road grading business in the 1890's.

Update: I assume Pitts Thresher Works was one of the companys along a waterway.