Greetings all:
Last week Leo expressed an interest in National Silica at Oregon, Illinois,
so below is some corporate history from Secretary of State and family records
plus something on an earlier post concerning the deal between National and
the sand plant on the Q at Ottawa. Among the people involved, John Putnam is
my grandfather and Charles Gale my great-grandfather (and Putnam?s
father-in-law). As far as customers and other details, I still have to quiz
my mother who worked in the office for awhile.
Regards,
Bill Diven
The National Silica Company incorporated in Ohio on July 11, 1908, listing
George W. Ashbaugh, president, and Wm. G. Stevenson, vice president.
Stevenson, an officer of The Ohio Silica Co., gets credit for starting the
new business after recognizing marketable sand deposits from his train window
in the Chicago, Burlington & Northern cuts just west of Oregon.
The Ohio company registered in Illinois as a foreign corporation on May 29,
1912. John F. Putnam, Stevenson?s nephew and previously a salesman forthe
Columbus Buggy Company, had been sent to Oregon as a salesman and is listed
as one of two company directors living in Oregon.
The company stated its business purpose as, ?Mining, manufacturing, buying
and selling glass, sand and flint, also mining, washing and dealing in sand
and gravel for all purposes with such other lines of business as are usually
connected therewith.? The capital stock is listed as $100,000. In 1918
Putnam, as director and business manager, reported the value of the Oregon
assets as $217,380.68, mostly for real estate and machinery. In 1919 he
married the daughter of Oregon banker Charles M. Gale.
On Oct. 12, 1925, H. R. Holmes and Frank T. Rogers, respectively president
and secretary, signed an affidavit discontinuing the business as a foreign
corporation on that date. That document was filed Oct. 19, 1925, the same
day incorporation papers signed on Oct. 1 were filed for an Illinois
corporation also called The National Silica Company. Putnam, Rogers, Gale
and two other Oregon men--John C. Seyster and Leslie R. Crawford (Gale?s
other son-in-law)--are named as investors. The business purpose is now
?...Glass, pottery and porcelain supplies of every kind and nature, including
sand and flints....?
This corporation survived until 1957 when Putnam and Rogers, who had
collected most of the stock, retired and sold out to Portage-Manly Sand
Company of Rockford. Articles of dissolution were filed Dec. 10, 1957,
signed by Karl O. Geng, president. Later P-M became a subsidiary of
Martin-Marietta, and I lose track of it after that.
A 1968 history of Oregon states the following: ?During World War I twenty to
twenty-five railroad cars of sand were shipped daily from the plant which
then employed one hundred ten workers. In addition to sand, much flint was
shipped. Flint is sand that is ground to a very mine mesh and used in
potteries for making such things as dishes, insulators, floor and wall tile,
and sanitary ware. The depression years bought seriously depressed sales of
sand. In order to protect the sale of flint, National Silica. Co. met with
other sand companies who agreed to take over the National Silica contracts
for the sale of sand and pay $.25 per ton during the life of those contracts
in return of staying out of grinding sand for flint. During the remainder of
their ownership of National Silica Co., Rogers and Putnam shipped only
flint.? In 1967 the plant shipped 522,000 tons of sand, mostly for glass,
and employed 35 in operations and eight in administration. Plans called for
producing a million tons annually in the future.
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