Wood Canoe and Boat Manufacturer Advertising Covers

Here is another one from my neck of the woods. A. Bain and Company was founded in 1878, a partnership between investor Alexander Bain (a dentist from down Skaneatles way) and Xavier Colon, a Clayton, NY, boatbuilder who is often credited with inventing the St. Lawrence River Skiff. In 1888, the company name was changed to the St. Lawrence River Skiff, Canoe, and Steam Launch Company.

Pawtuxet, as opposed to Pawtucket - I had never heard of such a place!  The Pawtuxet website does specifically mention that the Rhodes casino / dance hall development included a "canoe center".

Ryan

Hi gatodiablo

Based on your moniker, gatodiablo (Devil Cat), are you Latin?

Do you have any covers from Old Town Canoe?

Edited:  There are 3 of these villages/cities, 1 in Connecticut: Pawcatuck (Connecticut), Pawtucket, Pawtuxet
www.whipple.org/docs/paws.html

Jerry B

No, I'm not of Latin origin. The name is the name of our business, Gato Diablo Specialty Coffee Roasters, which came out of spending several winters in Costa Rica over the last few years, and is one of the places we source our beans from.

I have a few Old Town covers, here is the earliest, from 1917 (fortunately the catalog that came in it is in much better condition than the envelope):

In 1888, A. Bain & Co. hired a young naval architect named Fred Martin. To reflect the skills he brought to the company, its name was changed to the St. Lawrence River Skiff, Canoe, and Steam Launch Company. This incarnation of the company would span the years 1888-1895, after which it was moved from Clayton, NY, to Ogdensburg, NY, and renamed the Spalding St. Lawrence Boat Company. Several employees would stay in Clayton and form their own boatbuilding businesses, including L. E. Fry and Wilbur & Wheelock.

Here is a postally unused catalog request form that was given out at the 1893 Columbian Exposition.






Of course, wherever two boats meet, a race is bound to happen. This photo is of the extreme racing St. Lawrence River Skiff "88" class sailing of Clayton.

The numbers of canoes and boats built by Old Town are indeed astonishing. Between their founding in 1900 and 1975, 250,000 were built. We are fortunate that Old Town recorded the details of every one on a build card, which survive today and have been digitized. This means that the owner of an Old Town watercraft can get the details of their boat by providing a serial number.

Here is another Old Town cover from 1938 with the same stamp. It appears there was another stamp that fell off or was removed.



Here are a couple of photos from the Old Town factory from around 1920.

Hi gatodiablo

Thanks for showing the covers. Living a short distance from the factory, and putting miles and miles on a Maine Guide, leaves me with a sense of nostalgia. I had a friend living in Old Town proper and one on the Penobscot Reservation in the river. A lot of his family worked in the factory and that is how I got to see how it was done. The output is mind boggling, about 3,300 / year.  

I had friends in Taunton, Massachusetts (we lived there a couple of years) and the name Shurgot sounds familiar but, most probably, did not know him.

Jerry B

Hi gatodiablo

I did not know that boats were made in Skowhegan.

Jerry B

And one from the W. H. Mullins Company of Ohio. Mullins was famous for their metal boats, which they built for a long time. They got into building wood canoes around 1910, but unlike many other manufacturers, got out of the wood canoe and boat business in 1923, and concentrated on their metal boats going forward.

1912

Lastly, for the time being, as alas I have run out of covers, is a nod to the many canoe builders north of the border, where the canoe is one of the modern wonders of the world.

These are a series of postally unused postcards from 1907 put out by Walter Dean, a builder of some renown in the Toronto area.

I knew nothing at all about canoes with sails on them so I had a look online.  I see your name a lot!  An example compendium, for those also wondering about canoes with sails on them ....

Canoe Sailing Resources 2010

Ryan

Actually, the Old Town Canoe Company built a number of Sail Sled models in, as I recall, the 1930s. More to the point, the American Canoe Association was founded in the 1880s with the decked sailing canoe (the "poor man's yacht") as the standard. Here are some images taken by Seneca Ray Stoddard taken in the late 1880s from my collection:

Here is another one, from 1947.

e.

Here are a couple more that arrived in Cape Vincent while I was down under.

That they are addressed from the Chestnut Canoe Company to the Peterborough Canoe Company may seem unusual - why send mail to a competitor? However, Chestnut and Peterborough were collected under the same holding company way back in the 1920s, and while maintaining brand identity, were in many ways one and the same company with factories in both Ontario and New Brunswick. The Canadian Canoe Company, also of Peterborough, was also part of this conglomerate.

The smaller envelope has a 1957 postmark, the larger I think is 1956, but it is hard to read. I particularly like the loon stamp.

Dan