HARDWOOD RECORD 



21 



NeWs Miscellany. 



The Passing of a Veteran. 



Isaac I. Cole of New York has passed to the 

 great beyond. His death marks the close of a 

 busy life to which the foreign and domestic 

 hardwood lumber and veneer trade owes much. 

 He was the accredited inventor of the vertical 

 veneer slicing machine and a pioneer in the for- 

 eign hardwood lumber and veneer trade. His 

 death took place at Hackensack, N. J., April 

 5, in his eighty-eighth year. He was one of the 

 three oldest lumbermen in the metropolitan dis- 

 trict, and during his entire business career was 

 esteemed for integrity and renowned for busi- 

 ness acumen. 



Mr. Cole was born in 1S17 at Old Tappan. 

 Bergen county. N. J. His youthful educational 

 advantages were very limited and he commenced 

 his life work in a menial capacity. Of an ener- 

 getic character and inventive turn of mind, he 

 conceived and carried into successful construc- 

 tion the first flat cutting veneer machine. The 

 primitive machine sliced a veneer only three 

 feet long and four inches wide. While it was a 

 crude affair, its product quickly became appreci- 

 ated. One of Mr, Cole's earliest customers was 

 Seth Thomas, the famous clock maker, who used 

 his material for veneering the sides of his 

 famous Yankee clocks. The machine was set 

 up on his farm and the slicing knife was pro- 



THE LATE ISAAC I. COLE, 

 Of New York City. 



jected by means of a lever in the hands of a 

 powerful young man. After the veneers were 

 cut they were dried by being set on edge along 

 a picket fence. For many years it was Mr. 

 Cole's delight to talk of the many interesting 

 developments of the veneer industry, which had 

 Its inception from his early invention. For 

 many years past Mr. Cole has maintained a re- 

 tail foreign hardwood log and lumber business 

 in New York city. His death will be mourned 

 by a large number of friends and his memory 

 be revered by them for his many sterling qual- 

 ities of character. 



Mr. Cole is succeeded by his son, George 

 0. Cole, who has been associated in business 

 with his father for the past thirty-three years. 

 Mr. Cole, the younger, is regarded as one of 

 the foremost expert judges of fancy woods in 

 the trade. 



of lumbermen, his father having been engaged 

 in the business at Columbia, Pa., for many 

 years. He was a soldier in the Civil War and 

 came to Chicago in 1S65, entering the employ- 

 ment of the late Jesse Spalding at his plant at 

 Cedar River, Mich. Afterward he was engaged 

 in several business enterprises here, and even- 

 tually became connected with the Beidlers in 

 the South Branch Lumber Company, of which 

 house he became the chief buyer and a large 

 owner. Some twelve years ago, in connection 

 with the same interest, he organized the Eastern 

 Lumber Company of North ToAawanda, N. Y., 

 and later with the same parties in interest 

 bought a large tract of cypress timber on the 

 Santee river in South Carolina, and established 

 the great milling plant of the Santee River 

 Cypress Lumber Company at Ferguson, S. C. 

 He was also largely interested in real estate 

 in Chicago and in the East. By his will he 

 provided annuities for numerous relatives, but 

 the income from the bulk of his estate, which 

 will amount to upwards of $40,000 annually, is 

 demised to the city of Chicago for the purpose 

 of buying statuary with which to ornament its 

 parks and boulevards. 



Mr. Ferguson was an interesting figure in 

 the lumber history of this country. Among his 

 confreres on the chain of lakes he had the rep- 

 utation of being the most sagacious lumber 

 buyer of his time, and the reputation that he 

 then established has not been dimmed In recent 

 years. Personally he was an exceedingly mod- 

 est man and very quiet in his tastes. Of inti- 

 mates he had scarcely any outside of his family 

 circle, and since the death of his wife, which 

 occurred some years ago, he has been a remark- 

 ably lonely man and has spent a large portion 

 of his time in travel, both at home and abroad. 

 He was a lover of good books, pictures and of 

 artistic things generally, and this taste, prob- 

 ably more than his inherent love for Chicago, 

 induced the splendid bequest that he has made 

 the city. 



& Brother, New York City ; Oden, Wilkinson & 

 Co., Parma, Mo. ; Bacon-Underwood Veneer Com- 

 pany, Moblle.'Ala. ; Allen Panel Company, John- 

 son City, Tenn. ; Acme Tea Chest Company, Glas- 

 gow, Scotland ; More-Whitmore Company, South 

 Milwaukee, Wis. ; A. M. Luther, Reval, Russia, 

 and Sutter Brothers Company. Cattaraugus, 

 N. Y. Two of the foregoing concerns are In- 

 stalling their second dryers of this make, which 

 is an eloquent testimonial of the esteem In 

 which they are held. 



The Coe Manufacturing Company, 105 Ber- 

 nard street, Painesville, O., will be glad to send 

 all interested in the rapid and economical dry- 

 ing of veneers, or in veneer machinery, its new 

 catalog No. 5, and they will also be supplied 

 with details of a special proposition on the 

 installation of drying machines. 



Death of a Prominent Chicagoan. 



Benjamin F. Ferguson, a pioneer Chicago 



lumberman, died at bis home in that city on 



Monday. April 10, at the age of sixty-six years. 



Mr. Ferguson was a descendant from a family 



The Drying of Veneers. 



After years of disappointing experiments and 

 after having seen a vast expenditure of time 

 and money go for naught, veneer manufacturers 

 seem at last to have had produced for them a 

 satisfactory appliance for drying their products. 

 In the advertising department of this issue of 

 the Hardwood Record there is illustrated and 

 discussed the automatic roller dryer conceived 

 and perfected by the Coe Manufacturing Com- 

 pany of Painesville, Ohio, which the makers al- 

 lege offers a complete solution of the veneer 

 drying problem. 



These dryers are guaranteed to thoroughly dry 

 any veneer or thin lumber of any size or shaped 

 sheets up to one-fourth of an inch, in from 

 eight to eighty minutes, the time depending on 

 the thickness of the stock. By the use of this 

 system the saving is very great, as stock can be 

 dried in any weather and the machines can be 

 tun night and day if necessary to keep up with 

 the cutting capacity of the mill. 



The stock handled through these machines Is 

 dried perfectly, without checks, wrinkles, splits, 

 discolorations or waste. The dryer is very sim- 

 ple in construction and operation, and two boys 

 can work it to a capacity of from 25,000 to 

 150,000 feet a day. The machines are built to 

 meet special requirements of individual users, 

 and are installed under a positive guarantee as 

 to output and quality of work. 



The points of superiority alleged by the manu- 

 facturers of the Coe Automatic Roller Dryer 

 are quick and perfect drying. large output, cheap 

 operating expense, Low first cost and no waste 

 product. 



Recently installations of these machines have 

 been made by the Carrison Woodwork & Veneer 

 Company, Columbus, Ga. ; William E. Uptegrove 



The American Walnut Company. 

 While Kansas City ranks high as a great 

 wholesale lumber market, it has never been 

 noted as a lumber manufacturing center. The 

 statement, therefore, that this busy city is not 

 only. the home of the largest walnut company 

 in the country, but contains within its limits 

 the largest walnut lumber manufacturing plant 

 in the world, may occasion some surprise. 

 Nevertheless it is true. 



The American Walnut Company, whose head- 

 quarters were removed April 1 from Chicago to 

 Kansas City, occupying a handsome suite of of- 

 fices in the Dwight building, has an output equal 

 to sixty per cent of the entire production of the 

 United States, which means the world, as it is 

 a fact that marketable walnut only grows in 

 this country. It handles 15,000,000 feet of 

 lumber and 5,000,000 feet of logs annually. 



The mills of the company, four in number, 

 are situated in the various centers of the 

 walnut belt, viz., East Chicago, East St. Louis, 

 Cincinnati and Kansas City. These four great 

 railroad centers enable the company to ship in 

 logs from surrounding territory from all di- 

 rections, and to select the best timber from 

 the various districts. At the mills of the 

 company the logs are sawn into suitable sizes 

 as requited for the export trade and shipped to 

 Great Britain, Germany, France, Holland, 

 Belgium, Sweden and Russia. Each mill has a 

 corps of explorers who travel through the sur- 

 rounding territory and locate suitable trees, 

 which they purchase and have forwarded to the 

 mills. As the Kansas City mill alone employs 

 forty-five men for this purpose, the extent of 

 these explorations may be imagined. 



The officers and directors of the American 

 Walnut Company, among the foremost walnut 

 manufacturers and experts in the walnut trade, 

 are as follows : President, J. N. Penrod of 

 Kansas City, Mo. ; secretary, Max Kosse of Cin- 

 cinnati, Ohio. The directors are : Hon. S. F. 

 Prouty of Des Moines. Iowa ; F. P. Abbott of 

 Chicago. 111., and Alexander Lendrum of Kansas 

 City, Mo. 



The individual companies comprising the 

 American Walnut Company, with brief descrip- 

 tion of same, are as follows : 



Of first importance is the Penrod Walnut Cor- 

 poration, Kansas City. Mo. J. N. Penrod is 

 president of this company, which was established 

 nine years ago by Mr. Penrod and Hon. S. F. 

 Prouty under the name of the Des Moines Lum- 

 ber Company. In 1901 the name of the com- 

 pany was changed to the Penrod Walnut Cor- 

 poration. The mill was totally destroyed by 

 fire in November, 1904, but during Its exist- 

 ence it produced over 45,000,000 feet of walnut 

 lumber. A new and thoroughly modern mill has 

 been erected very close to the old site, and It 

 began running April 10. It has a capacity of 

 22,000 feet a day and the company has In stock 

 about 2,000,000 feet of walnut. 



The president of the K. & P. Lumber Com- 

 pany, Cincinnati, Ohio, is Max Kosse. It was 

 established in 1900, and the mill has a capacity 

 of 5.000,000 feet of walnut a year. The mill 



