J.H. Day & Co. Patented Safety Kettle with Fire Shield
Pre-1905 Collection, Ohio Cast Iron, Hollow Ware, SSC Museum Collection, Pre 1905 Cast Iron Steve Thaman Pre-1905 Collection, Ohio Cast Iron, Hollow Ware, SSC Museum Collection, Pre 1905 Cast Iron Steve Thaman

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.

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Yourtee, Hollister & Co. Cast-Iron Stove-Top Kettle | Dated 1871 | Cincinnati, Ohio
Pre-1905 Collection, Ohio Cast Iron, Hollow Ware, SSC Museum Collection Steve Thaman Pre-1905 Collection, Ohio Cast Iron, Hollow Ware, SSC Museum Collection Steve Thaman

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

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