Yourtee, Hollister & Co. Cast Iron Stove-Top Kettle
SSC MUSEUM COLLECTION
Catalog No. SSC-YH-KET-001
Stove-Top Tea Kettle | Dated 1871 | Size 6 | Cincinnati, Ohio
1871 • Yourtee, Hollister & Co. • Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio • Manufactured via Miami Stove Works, Lawrenceburg, Indiana
The Yourtee, Hollister & Co. dated 1871 cast iron stove-top kettle, fully restored. The round body with flat stove-top base, integral spout, and wire bail handle sit beneath the domed lid carrying the circular maker’s mark. Restored through lye tank, vinegar rinse, and SSC Museum Sealer treatment, April 2026.
This kettle was made in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1871. It bears one of the most complete and specific maker’s marks in the SSC Museum Collection: YOURTEE HOLLISTER & CO. / CINCINNATI O. / 1871, cast in a full circular arrangement around the lid’s central knob. The firm that put those words in iron existed for less than three years. The kettle survived 155 years.
Yourtee, Hollister & Co. was a Cincinnati stove and hollow ware trading firm that operated from 81 West Second Street — “the old stand” in the city’s established iron trade district — from early 1871 through January 9, 1874, when the partnership was formally dissolved by mutual consent. The firm never operated a foundry. They were merchants and distributors in Cincinnati’s booming stove trade, sourcing their branded hollow ware through the Miami Stove Works of Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and selling it alongside their line of named stove models into the homes of the Ohio Valley.
To find a piece marked with a dated 1871 attribution to a firm that was dissolved in 1874 is to hold one of the rarest possible windows into the Cincinnati stove trade at its commercial peak. The kettle was produced in the first year of the firm’s existence. It has been restored to displayable condition. The bottom carries structural damage — several holes and significant weakness — documented fully in this record. It is a piece for the collection, not for the stove.
Cincinnati, Ohio: The Queen City and Its Stove Trade
Top view of the kettle showing the full lid marking: YOURTEE HOLLISTER & CO. arcing across the upper register, CINCINNATI O. across the lower, and 1871 at the base of the circular arrangement. The central knob handle sits within the concentric raised rings that characterize the lid’s casting. The wire bail handle is visible at left.
By 1870, Cincinnati, Ohio — the “Queen City of the West” — was one of the great manufacturing cities of North America. Located on the north bank of the Ohio River at the confluence of routes connecting the eastern seaboard to the interior frontier, Cincinnati had grown from a frontier outpost founded in 1788 into a metropolis of nearly 217,000 people by 1870. Its position on the Ohio River made it the natural commercial hub of a vast watershed: pig iron from the furnaces of southern Ohio and eastern Kentucky floated downriver; finished goods flowed back up and overland to markets throughout the Midwest and South.
The stove trade was one of Cincinnati’s defining industries of this era. In the decade of the 1870s, Cincinnati foundries and stove trading houses produced over 185,000 stoves and ranges annually for nationwide distribution — a figure that made the city a national leader in the trade. The names of this industry read like a roll call of Cincinnati commerce: W.C. Davis & Co. (Great Western Stove Works), William Resor & Co., Mears Olhaber & Co., Bonnett Duffy & Co., Pomeroy, Peckover & Co. Cincinnati’s geographic position was the key: pig iron from the Hanging Rock Iron Region of southern Ohio and Kentucky could reach Cincinnati cheaply by river, and finished stoves and hollow ware could be shipped to dealers across the country by rail or by water.
West Second Street, where Yourtee, Hollister & Co. operated at No. 81, was the heart of this trade — a commercial corridor of stove merchants, hardware dealers, and foundry agents within easy reach of the Ohio riverfront and the rail connections that had transformed Cincinnati’s commercial geography since the 1840s. To operate at “the old stand, 81 West Second Street” was to plant a flag in precisely the right place for a Cincinnati stove firm.
Yourtee, Hollister & Co.: A Documented History
Detail of the lid marking showing YOURTEE HOLLISTER & CO. arcing across the upper portion of the circular cartouche. The raised lettering is cast directly into the iron. The quality of the casting and the legibility of the mark after 155 years testify to the foundry skill at Miami Stove Works.
Yourtee, Hollister & Co. was formed in early 1871, taking over an existing stove and hollow ware business at 81 West Second Street — a “well-established trade address” in Cincinnati’s iron district. The Yourtee family had been involved in Cincinnati’s stove trade before this partnership, and their name would survive through multiple successor firms long after the Hollister name disappeared.
The firm operated as a merchant and distributor, not a foundry. Their commercial model was standard for the Cincinnati stove trade: they held agency relationships with foundry producers, branded the resulting hollow ware under their own name, and sold both stoves and accessories — including kettles like this one — to the Ohio Valley household market. Their documented stove line included the Miami (Open Front cook stove), the Lioness No. 6 (heating stove), and the Banner (Todd) — all with Miami Stove Works as the listed repair parts supplier, confirming the foundry relationship.
Williams’ Cincinnati Directory of June 1873 lists the firm as active, with T.G. Randall Jr. — who would appear in the successor partnership — associated with the company and residing across the Ohio River in Covington, Kentucky, typical of Cincinnati business principals of the era. On January 9, 1874, the Cincinnati Commercial published the formal dissolution notice: “The partnership existing between the undersigned under the firm name Yourtee, Hollister & Co., is dissolved by limitation and mutual consent.” The phrase “dissolved by limitation” indicates the original partnership agreement had a defined term that simply expired. There was no dispute, no failure, no controversy recorded — just a partnership that ran its course.
The successor firm — Yourtee, Sinclair & Randall — appeared at 30 Vine Street and exhibited at the Cincinnati Exposition of 1875. The Yourtee family stove business continued in various configurations through at least the late 1870s and 1880s, always in commercial relationship with Miami Stove Works. The Hollister partner vanished from the record entirely after the 1874 dissolution.
Miami Stove Works: The Foundry Behind the Brand
The kettle in this collection was not made in Cincinnati. It was made at the Miami Stove Works in Lawrenceburg, Indiana — Dearborn County, approximately 25 miles upstream from Cincinnati on the Ohio River — and branded by Yourtee, Hollister & Co. for sale through their Cincinnati operation. This arrangement was the commercial norm for the 1870s stove trade, where Cincinnati merchants served as the distribution hub and commercial front for foundries operating throughout the Ohio River watershed.
Miami Stove Works appears in the Stove Index (Betts & Rader, New York, c. 1885) as the repair parts supplier for every stove model attributed to the Yourtee enterprises across multiple partnership configurations — Yourtee, Hollister & Co., Yourtee, Sinclair & Randall, and Samuel Yourtee & Co. The consistency of this relationship across at least 15 years of Yourtee commercial history confirms Miami Stove Works as the primary foundry relationship, not a transactional arrangement.
The “Miami” in Miami Stove Works references the Great Miami River, a major Ohio tributary and a central feature of the regional industrial geography. Lawrenceburg, Indiana, at the mouth of the Great Miami where it joins the Ohio, was well positioned to receive pig iron from the Hanging Rock furnaces and ship finished castings to Cincinnati by river. The arrangement — Indiana foundry, Ohio River transport, Cincinnati distribution — was economically rational and geographically elegant.
The Piece
The kettle with lid tilted open, showing the interior of the body and the underside of the lid with its circular raised cartouche. The bail handle pivot is visible at right. The interior shows the characteristic surface of a piece that has been through lye treatment and seasoning — genuine, honest iron after restoration.
The Yourtee, Hollister & Co. kettle is a round-bodied stove-top tea kettle of the type standard to the 1870s Cincinnati hollow ware trade. The body is cast in a single piece, with a flat base designed for stable placement on a flat-top cooking stove — a design adapted to the stove-cooking era rather than the earlier open-hearth tradition. The spout extends from the upper body at a gentle angle, integral to the casting; it carries the stamped numeral 6, likely designating the size or capacity class of this piece within the Yourtee / Miami Stove Works product line.
The lid is the piece’s most distinctive feature. Circular, domed, with a solid cast knob handle at the apex and two concentric raised rings framing the central knob recess, it carries the full maker’s mark: YOURTEE HOLLISTER & CO. arcing across the upper register, CINCINNATI O. across the lower, and 1871 at the base — all cast in raised lettering in the annular space between the outer ring and the knob recess. The mark is a complete attribution: maker, city, and year of production, legible after 155 years.
The wire bail handle is present and functional, pivoting at two cast ear bosses on the body below the rim. The handle is appropriate to the period. The overall form — round body, flat base, integral spout, bail handle, domed lid with maker’s mark — is the definitive stove-top kettle configuration of the 1870s American iron trade.
The Casting Marks
Detail of the lower portion of the lid cartouche showing CINCINNATI O. and 1871 in raised cast lettering. The “O.” abbreviation for Ohio was standard practice among Cincinnati hollow ware makers of this period. The 1871 date is cast production year, not a patent date — distinguishing this piece as a dated production piece, rare in the Cincinnati hollow ware record.
The complete marking on the lid reads: YOURTEE HOLLISTER & CO. / CINCINNATI O. / 1871. Three elements, each significant.
YOURTEE HOLLISTER & CO. is the full firm name as documented in Williams’ Cincinnati Directory of 1873 and the dissolution notice of January 1874. The casting matches the recorded partnership name exactly. CINCINNATI O. uses the standard period abbreviation for Ohio — “O.” — and confirms the commercial origin of the piece as Cincinnati, even though the physical casting was made at Miami Stove Works in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. In the 19th-century stove trade, the city marked on a piece was the merchant’s city, not the foundry’s city. This is Yourtee, Hollister & Co.’s kettle; it says Cincinnati because they were in Cincinnati.
1871 is the production year, cast directly into the lid. This is not a patent date — no patent marking accompanies the number. It is a production date, and its presence on this piece is unusual and valuable. The practice of dating cast pieces was more common in the early 1870s when manufacturers and distributors were establishing brand identity in a competitive market; most contemporary Cincinnati kettles circulate without any date at all. A dated piece from a firm whose entire operational life spanned only three years is a gift to the historical record.
The spout of the Yourtee, Hollister & Co. kettle showing the stamped numeral 6. This designation likely indicates the size or capacity class within the Yourtee / Miami Stove Works product line. The integral spout — cast as part of the body rather than riveted on — is characteristic of the quality hollow ware of the period.
Restoration and Condition
Bottom view of the kettle showing the flat stove-top base and the structural condition: several holes and significant weakness in the bottom iron are visible. Two small original casting holes noted by the seller, with additional weakness revealed through restoration. These are fully disclosed and documented. The piece is a collection artifact, not functional cookware.
This kettle was acquired in unrestored condition and has undergone full SSC restoration protocol: lye tank treatment to remove decades of accumulated residue and old seasoning, vinegar rinse to neutralize and stabilize the iron surface, and application of SSC Archival Black™ Museum preservative to protect the restored iron and bring out the original casting character. The restoration has revealed the piece in its true form — the casting marks are fully legible, the exterior surface reads cleanly, and the overall form presents well.
The bottom of the kettle carries significant structural damage. Several holes are present in the base iron, and the overall thickness of the bottom is compromised. The seller disclosed two small holes in the original listing; the full extent of the damage became apparent through restoration and cleaning. This is documented here fully and without qualification: the bottom of this kettle is not sound. The piece is a collection artifact and a historical document, not functional hollow ware. It will not hold water. It will not go on a stove. It will stand on a shelf and tell a story that is worth telling, and its condition is part of that story.
The honest disclosure of damage is an SSC collection standard. A piece with a compromised bottom from 155 years of existence is still a rare dated piece from a three-year Cincinnati firm. The iron endures. The marks are clear. The damage is real. All three facts belong in the record.
The Stove-Top Kettle in 1870s American Domestic Life
The flat-base stove-top kettle represented a generational shift in American cooking technology. The three-legged bail kettle — older than the Republic — had been designed for the open hearth and the campfire: it needed legs to stand over coals. When the flat-top wood and coal stove became the dominant cooking appliance in American homes through the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, the form of the kettle changed with it. The legs disappeared. The base flattened. The kettle became a stove-top object rather than a hearth object.
In 1871, that transition was still recent enough to matter. Households that had grown up cooking over open fires were now cooking on stoves; the stove-top kettle was part of the new domestic technology they were adopting. A Cincinnati stove firm selling a branded kettle alongside its named stove models was offering a complete package: buy the stove, buy the kettle, keep the water hot on the stove’s surface throughout the day. The kettle was both accessory and advertisement — a marked piece of iron that sat on the stove bearing the firm’s name, visible to every visitor to the household kitchen.
The practice of bundling kettles with stove purchases was documented in the 1870s trade. A Chattanooga stove firm’s period advertisement lists the accessories furnished with each stove: iron pots, iron skillets, iron griddles, coffee boiler, and “1 Iron Tea-Kettle.” The Yourtee, Hollister & Co. kettle likely entered its first household exactly this way — as part of a stove purchase, marked with the seller’s name, intended to keep water hot on the stove surface from morning until night. It would have held place in that kitchen for years or decades before its long journey to the SSC collection began.
Piece Details
Manufacturer
Yourtee, Hollister & Co., 81 West Second Street, Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio
Foundry Origin
Miami Stove Works, Lawrenceburg, Dearborn County, Indiana (foundry partner; piece branded by Yourtee, Hollister & Co.)
Piece Type
Stove-Top Tea Kettle / Hollow Ware Stove Accessory
Size Designation
6 — stamped on spout; designates size/capacity class within product line
Form
Round cast iron body; flat stove-top base; integral cast spout; wire bail handle at two cast ear bosses; domed lid with cast knob handle and circular maker’s cartouche
Casting Marks
YOURTEE HOLLISTER & CO. / CINCINNATI O. / 1871 — cast in raised lettering in circular arrangement on lid; 6 stamped on spout
Date Inscribed
1871 — year of production, cast into lid; not a patent date
Material
Gray cast iron throughout; period wire bail handle
Restoration
Lye tank, vinegar rinse, SSC Museum Sealer — completed April 2026
Condition — Exterior
Good — surface clean and stable post-restoration; casting marks fully legible; lid, bail handle, and spout structurally sound
Condition — Bottom
COMPROMISED — several holes present in base iron; significant weakness in bottom thickness; piece will not hold water; for display and collection purposes only; not functional hollow ware
Firm Active Period
c. Early 1871 – January 9, 1874 (dissolved by limitation and mutual consent)
Dissolution Source
Cincinnati Commercial, January 9, 1874, p. 5
Directory Listing
Williams’ Cincinnati Directory, June 1873
Successor Firm
Yourtee, Sinclair & Randall — 30 Vine Street, Cincinnati (1874–c. 1876)
Place of Manufacture
Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio (commercial origin); Lawrenceburg, Indiana (foundry origin)
Date of Manufacture
1871 — confirmed by cast date mark; produced in firm’s first year of operation
Acquisition Source
eBay — Seller: linspekin
eBay Item No.
255896267468
Order No.
07-14457-93917
Acquisition Date
April 3, 2026
SSC Catalog No.
SSC-YH-KET-001
Collection Category
Ohio Cast Iron — Pre-1905 Hollow Ware / Cincinnati Stove Trade
Why This Piece Matters
Yourtee, Hollister & Co. existed for less than three years. Their dissolution notice appeared in the Cincinnati Commercial on January 9, 1874 — exactly 152 years before this piece entered the SSC collection. In those three years, they sold stoves and hollow ware from 81 West Second Street in Cincinnati’s iron district, sourced their castings from Miami Stove Works in Indiana, and put their name and the year 1871 in iron on at least one kettle that has survived to be documented here.
This piece matters because the 1871 date is cast into it. Not stamped, not applied, not inferred — cast in iron in the year it was made, by a firm that no longer existed three years later. That is a level of specificity that the collector record almost never provides for Cincinnati hollow ware of this era. Most of it is undated. Much of it is unmarked. This kettle tells you exactly who made it, where they were, and when.
It matters because the Cincinnati stove trade of the 1870s was one of the defining industrial ecosystems of post-Civil War American manufacturing, and the pieces that survive from it are the physical evidence of that history. Yourtee, Hollister & Co. does not appear in the standard cast iron hollow ware reference databases. They are not in the CastIronCollector foundry listing. They are not in the WAGs compiled foundry catalog. This kettle and the handful of known surviving examples are essentially the complete material record of their production.
It matters even with its damaged bottom — perhaps especially so. A piece that has survived 155 years carries 155 years of history in its iron. The damage in the bottom is part of that story. The restoration brought it back to display condition. The marks are there. The date is there. The name of a three-year Cincinnati firm is there, as clear as the day it was cast.
The iron endures. The marks tell the truth. The firm is gone. The kettle remains.
Sources & Further Reading
Physical examination of piece: YOURTEE HOLLISTER & CO. / CINCINNATI O. / 1871 cast in raised lettering in circular arrangement on lid dome; 6 stamped on spout; round body with flat stove-top base; integral cast spout; wire bail handle at two cast ear bosses; domed lid with cast central knob; several holes in bottom iron with significant weakness; restored April 2026 via lye tank, vinegar rinse, SSC Museum Sealer. Seven seller photographs examined prior to acquisition.
SSC Museum Collection Internal Research Report: Yourtee, Hollister & Co., Cincinnati, Ohio, 1871–1874. April 2026. Primary research document. Sources therein: (1) Cincinnati Commercial, January 9, 1874, p. 5 — partnership dissolution notice; (2) Williams’ Cincinnati Directory, June 1873 — firm listing and T.G. Randall Jr. residential note; (3) Austerlitz, E.H., Cincinnati, from 1800–1875 (1875) — Yourtee, Sinclair & Randall at Cincinnati Exposition of 1875; (4) The Stove Index (Betts & Rader, New York, c. 1885) — Yourtee, Hollister & Co. product listings and Miami Stove Works repair supplier confirmation.
Favorite Stove & Range Co. — The Cast Iron Collector. castironcollector.com. Context for the Cincinnati stove trade ecosystem of the 1870s; W.C. Davis & Co. (Great Western Stove Works) and Favorite Stove Works history; Cincinnati to Piqua transition 1889.
Cast Iron Canada — Favorite Stove and Range History. castironcanada.com. Cincinnati stove trade context; 185,000+ stoves annually in 1870s; W.C. Davis, Boal, Great Western Stove Works lineage; union strikes and foundry relationships.
Lawrence Register — A Story About Iron Furnaces. lawrencecountyohio.com. Cincinnati Commercial (January 17, 1870) excerpt on Woodrow, Mears & Co. hollow ware foundry at 21 East Second Street — confirms West Second / East Second corridor as Cincinnati’s iron trade district.
National Museum of American History — Upriver to Cincinnati, 1840–1860. americanhistory.si.edu. Cincinnati as Midwest leading commercial and manufacturing city by 1850s; Ohio River commerce and iron trade context.
Chattanoogan.com — “Teapot is Steeped in Local History.” October 2008. Documents stove-bundled kettle practice: period advertisement listing iron tea-kettle among 36 accessories furnished with each stove purchase; confirms commercial context for stove-accessory kettle branding.
eBay acquisition record — Order No. 07-14457-93917, seller: linspekin, April 3, 2026. Item: 1871 Yourtee’ Hollister & Co. Cast Iron Kettle Teapot Cincinnati Ohio OH (item no. 255896267468). Seller noted two small holes in bottom in original listing.
SSC Internal Collection Records — Ohio Cast Iron / Pre-1905 Hollow Ware / Cincinnati Stove Trade category. SSC-YH-KET-001 is the first Yourtee, Hollister & Co. piece in the SSC collection; firm active only 1871–1874; one of the rarest dated Cincinnati hollow ware attributions in the pre-1905 collector record.
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Steve’s Seasoned Classics is an online museum dedicated to preserving and documenting the heritage of American cast iron, with a focus on Ohio foundry pieces from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The SSC collection features over 130 pieces with detailed provenance, historical research, and photography for each item.
