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.

In 1883, Al St. John relocated his sucker rod and handle factory from Lima to Bluffton, to become almost overnight the major employer of men living in Bluffton.

St. John, a native of New York, moved to Ohio when he was a young man.  He was always in the lumber business in one phase or another.

The plant was located on the site of the present Harmon Stadium football field.

Products of the plant were marketed on a national scale and like the other village businesses at the time, success of the industry couldn’t have been possible without the town’s newly acquired railroads, offering outlets to all part of the country.

An abundance of native hickory trees in the woodlands of the area was the magnet, which brought the factory to Bluffton, for the wood was highly prized as the best material for hoe, fork, shovel and other handlers made in the plant, along with sucker rods, which were used in oil fields.

The sucker rods were octagon shaped rods, about two inches in diameter, ranging from 10 to 60 feet long. Their purpose was to carry the oil being pumped from the wells to the tanks.

Within a few months after operations started here, St. John was shipping his products across the U.S. A full time working force of 20 men worked at the factory, each putting in 6o hours a week.

In 1884 the reproduction of the sucker rod and handle factor was in full force. The enterprise manufactured and shipped 40,000 sucker rods and 200,000 forks and hoe handles.

His Bluffton factory operated on a large scale for nearly two decades. It finally closed near the turn of the 1900s when select timber required for handles grew care in the Bluffton area.

References: I.B. Beeshy, Wilhelm Amstutz and Ted Biery
Interviewers: John Post and Harold Garverick