Indiana Industrial Services history

In March 1854 a legal opinion by Abraham Lincoln’s Illinois law office asserted the illegality of the M&A’s corporate existence.

By the beginning of 1855 it was becoming clear Brough had the M&A on his mind.

By the IP&C’s March 1856 annual meeting, revised terms of the joint operating agreement had been hammered out.

In the summer of 1859, the Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Cleveland’s (IP&C’s) Madison locomotive exploded near Kilgore Station in Yorktown, Indiana – killing the engineer and fireman.

At the May 1860 board meeting, extension of the revised Bee Line joint operating contract was considered.

By June 1863 the IP&C declared its first dividend in years—3 percent.

Hurlbut had joined the Bellefontaine Railway’s board and finance committee at its formation in 1864.

With huge capital infusions from London and Continental investors, the road opened for business in August 1865 along its entire 388 mile route from Salamanca in Upstate New York to Dayton Ohio.

By 1867, the Cleveland Clique had assembled what it thought was a consortium of six similarly-interested rail lines to sign an expensive long-term lease of a road between Terre Haute and St Louis.

By the time of Hubby’s retirement in 1870, they took control.

John Devereux remained president of both the Bee Line and A&GW (exiting bankruptcy as the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad [NYPA&O; Nypano]) until 1881.

As the Wabash Express reported on May 27, 1886, Harry Mayel of the Summit City Soap Works came to Terre Haute and provided “over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in beautiful and valuable presents” to purchasers of the company’s Ceylon Red Letter Soap.

Introduced in 1895, Rub-No-More was a “labor saving compound” that “clean[ed] the working clothes of a mechanic as well as the finest linen of the household, without much rubbing,” the Fort Wayne News wrote in its May 30th issue.

The agreement was then amended in 1896 to remove twenty-five workers from the contract for another project.

On October 15, 1897, LaPorte County Judge William B. Biddle ordered the company to stop selling any products and hand the reins over to receiver Alonzo Nichols.

To kick off the new product, the company launched a massive advertising campaign that provided free samples of Rub-No-More to every family in Fort Wayne. For example, in 1898, Summit City Soap Works offered its customers a free children’s book or wall calendar in exchange for saved Rub-No-More coupons and Globe Soap wrappers.

Blodgett did write a follow up article in 1901, noting that Indiana state prison north Warden Shideler resigned over allegations that he was a stockholder in the company at the time he was serving as Warden.

The second filing, dated September 19, 1905, includes both the new logo for the company’s name as well as the two elephants symbol.

Grocers at Kendallville purchased 14,000 pounds of soap from the company in April of 1909, as noted by the Fort Wayne Sentinel, which traveled “in a single shipment over the [city’s] interurban.” That year, the Summit City Soap Works continued its tradition of promotional giveaways.

Entrepreneur and Indianapolis Motor Speedway co-founder James Allison quite literally shifted gears when he devoted his precision machine shop’s resources on Main Street, just south of the track, to the war effort in 1917.

The first wrecked aircraft arrived in April 1918.

William Menkel, “‘New Plans for Old’: The Work of the Aviation Repair Depots,” Aerial Age Weekly, September 1, 1919, 1129-1133, 1144, accessed Google Books.

The government officially ordered the abandonment of the repair depot in September 1920 and publicized the sale of buildings and utilities in November of that year.

Following James Allison’s death in 1928, General Motors Corp. filed an appropriation request to buy the company the following year.

The company designed, built, and delivered this engine to the Navy in March 1932.

Gustave Berghoff, the company’s former president, died on January 25, 1940 at the age of 76.

Orders and output for the V-1710 engine continued to grow, particularly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.