The Bedrock: Arcole Iron Works Gypsy Pot
In 1834, the Arcole Iron Works in Madison Township, Ohio was the largest industry in the state — producing 1,500 tons of iron annually, sustaining a port community larger than Cleveland. This gypsy pot carries the W.S. & Co. mark of the Wilkeson and Seeley partnership that ran the foundry during those peak years. The mark has worn with 190 years of honest existence. It is still there. Most people who collect cast iron will never hold one of these in their lifetime.
J.H. Day & Co. Patented Safety Kettle with Fire Shield
MADE ONLY BY. Four words cast into a hinged iron door mounted on the front of a Cincinnati hearth kettle, backed by two patents filed three years apart — 1874 and 1877. J.H. Day & Co. was not a stove works. They were an industrial machinery manufacturer who also invented a new way to manage fire around a kettle, protected it twice, and put their exclusivity claim in iron on every piece. This is the most complete example known: fire shield intact, hinged, latched, and operational after 150 years.
Dayton Malleable Iron Co. Patented Smelting Ladle
A brass brush brought it back: DAYTON MALLEABLE IRON CO. / PAT AUG 15 / 1871. Not just the year — the month and the day. August 15, 1871. The same day M. Hose & Lyon, across town in Dayton, patented their own competing ladle design. The dried slag in the diamond-form cup is still there. The thermal patina is still there. SSC will not remove either one. This is what a working foundry tool looks like after 155 years when you choose preservation over restoration.
Yourtee, Hollister & Co. Cast-Iron Stove-Top Kettle | Dated 1871 | Cincinnati, Ohio
Cast-iron stove-top tea kettle bearing the raised markings YOURTEE HOLLISTER & CO. / CINCINNATI O. / 1871, with a No. 6 marking at the spout. Contemporary Cincinnati directories identify Yourtee, Hollister & Co. as manufacturers of stoves, hollow ware, and castings and as proprietors of Miami Stove Works, with their foundry at California, Hamilton County, Ohio and their Cincinnati office and warerooms at 94 West Second Street.
The firm's connection to the California foundry can be traced to Nicholas Patterson & Co., whose earlier Miami Foundry manufactured stoves, hollow ware, and castings at California. Yourtee, Hollister & Co. advertised itself in 1871 as successor to N. Patterson & Co.
The partnership was dissolved effective January 1, 1874, by limitation and mutual consent. Samuel L. Yourtee, N. H. Sinclair, and T. G. Randall Jr. immediately formed Yourtee, Sinclair & Randall to continue the stove-foundry business; Hudson Hollister did not join the successor partnership.
The 1871 marking is original physical evidence on the kettle and is consistent with the documented operation of Yourtee, Hollister & Co. that year. However, no surviving catalog or production record has yet been located proving precisely what the date signified or identifying the exact production history of this particular No. 6 kettle. The evidence strongly supports manufacture within Yourtee, Hollister & Co.'s documented California, Ohio foundry operation; it does not support the former attribution to Lawrenceburg, Indiana
Greer & King Mfg. Co. No. 8 Three-Legged Bail Bean Pot Kettle
The Greer & King Mfg. Co. of Dayton, Ohio received their patent on November 3, 1868 — three years after the Civil War ended, when Reconstruction was still unfinished and the western frontier had not yet closed. The bean pot sitting on these three iron legs predates Wagner by two decades and Griswold Erie by more than twenty years. This is the oldest patent-dated piece in the SSC Museum Collection, and one of the primary surviving physical records of a Dayton foundry that the standard reference databases have never documented.
Two Small Castings, One Word I Recognized: Bryan Plow Co. and an Unsolved Piece of Home
Two small cast iron pieces marked BRYAN PLOW Co. of Bryan, Ohio, once wrongly called a plow seat and footrest. Their true identity is still unknown; the maker's history is documented.