Note: The Icon acquired a manuscript titled “A Brief History of Bluffton’s Industrial Developments.” This publication was prepared by the classes in Marketing and Small Business Administration from Bluffton College, under the director of Dr. Howard Raid. Publication date is May 1959. We’ve updated some current addresses so viewers may identify locations.

A homemade muzzleloader rifle is a lone reminder of a once well-known foundry and inventor’s shop operated in Bluffton by the Benroth brothers, Albert, Jule and Ferdinand.

The boys had a natural inclination for mechanics and so their father, George Benroth, built a shop for them on Cherry Street, which later became known as the Cherry Street foundry.

It was located at the rear of 140 Cherry Street where Millard Oberly now live. (in 2017 it is the fourth house west of First National Bank.) Here the boys and their friends spent many evenings tinkering around.

Ferdinand, a machinist, was most interested in the shop, but Albert and Jules also developed a number of interesting products, which they never took the trouble to patent. Among their products were a number of tools used early in the auto mechanics trade.

The brothers also made windmills for farmers and in spare time tinkered with such items as a homemade rifle.

The shop operated until shortly after the turn of the 20 century.

Ferdinand left the shop to work for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. There he developed typhoid fever and died in 1903.

Jule is known as one of the first Bluffton men to put electric lights on an auto by means of a magneto, which he developed. Until that time auto lights were mostly the carbide type. He was also one of the first in Bluffton to operate an auto with an electric starter. He left Bluffton to make his home in Arizona.

Albert later went into the automobile business and operated one of the earliest Ford agencies with Menno Bixel in the building where Bob Williams now operates his Chevrolet agency. (Most recently Groves Bear building on North Main Street.)

Reference: Gene Benroth
Interviewers: Ruthann Dirks and Fred Lehman