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100 Years Ago


Agriculture
Black History
Canal
Civil War
Downtown
Education
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Gold Rush
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Industry Index Page

There was no business or industry of any kind in the early 1800s when settlers first entered what is now called Shelby County, Ohio. The area was heavily forested and farming of a very primitive sort was the main enterprise. Survival was an all-consuming occupation with families working from dawn to dusk to eke a living from the inhospitable landscape. As people gradually began to gather together, (at first for joint survival and then for social interaction), the seeds of commerce were also ‘planted’.

The economic climate of Shelby County, vibrant and on track in the late 1990s, owes a large part of its success to the aggressive innovation and lemanufacturingprogram.gif (13537 bytes)adership of its early industrial entrepreneurs. This community is blessed by a tremendous industrial engine that continues to create jobs and economic benefits for its citizens. Recessions have had less of an impact here than across the nation because of the variety of manufacturers and businesses that make Shelby County their home.

It is easy to take such a ositive economic oasis for granted but these benefits did not come into being by accident. Sidney has always been noted for the diversity and strength of its industrial base. Earliest recorded history shows that community leaders made a continuing effort to build this base by expanding existing businesses and attracting new ones.

Change was a constant throughout Sidney's industrial history, as it was across the nation. As technology advanced and new products appeared, some companies survived, but many did not. A number of successful enterprises flourished here, but now no trace remains. School desks, candy, beer, automobiles, and road scrapers are examples of products that were once made locally. But, even in their failure, these enterprises created an economic climate and labor base that supported new businesses that developed and remain today, with companies such as CopelandStolle and Amos Press.

"Sidney has...always enjoyed a steady and healthy growth; not is she yet at rest.  Improvements are continually going on, and everything appertaining to her moral, social, industrial, commercial, educational and professional life has an upward tendency...investors should investigate and be convinced.   For further information, inquire of THE SIDNEY COMMERCIAL CLUB."  A City Noted For Its Mfg., 1910.

INDUSTRIES
Local Industry
Automotive Industry
Beer
Wooden Shoe
Broom Makers
Butter Churns
Candy

Cigars

Cookware
Grain Mills
Iron & Foundry
Machine Tool
Monarch Machine Tool
Mills and their Byproducts
Paper Folding Machines
Pole & Shaft
School Desks
School Furniture Company
Steel Scraper
Steel Plow
Tanning
Transportation
Woodworking

IMPORTANT PEOPLE
J.O. & Delia Amos
W.H.C. & Ida Goode
Benjamin Slusser
Philip Smith
Philip Smith
Lafayette M. Studevant
I.H. Thedieck: Man of Vision
I.H. Thedieck
Da
niel Toy
Wagner Family

FACTORS INFLUENCING DEVELOPMENTS
1805 to 1830/Immigration
1837 to 1850/Canal Era
1851 to 1870/Railroad
Financing
Commercial Club
Recruitment
Available Resources

PRESENT DAY BUSINESSES
Amos Press
Copeland
Monarch Machine Tool
Peerless Bread Machine
Ross Aluminum
Stolle Corporation

RURAL INDUSTRY
Grain Mills
Inventors
Saw Mills
Tile Mills
Industry Faded

MISCELLANEOUS
Sidney Companies in WWI (part I)
Sidney Companies in WWI (part II)
Chicago Fire
Trust Busting

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LINKS

 

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