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16315.2371 Herbert Huse 9 Bigelow, son of Andrew Steele 8 ( Zelotes jr. 7, Zelotes 6 , Daniel 5 , David 4, Lt. John 3, Joshua 2, John 1) BIGELOW and Celestia P. (HUSE) BIGELOW, was born 18 May 1870 in Brookfield, Orange County, Vermont, The oldest of three children, he was to lose his father while only four years of age. Some years later the family moved to Iowa. Herbert received his early education in Vermont and Iowa schools. He worked his way through Grinnell College in Iowa by selling, during vacations, the book "In Darkest Africa" by Henry Stanley, "Review of Review" magazine, and calendars for a company based in Red Oak, Iowa.
The year 1894 saw Bigelow married to Nina Penny of Fullerton, Nebraska,
where Herbert briefly had an interest in a lumber
yard. They went on a honeymoon to the Black Hill, but Bigelow prudently
stocked up on calendars along the way.
He continued in this business until he met a St. Paul printer named
Hirm Brown. The two men shortly came to a business
agreement, and organized as Brown and Bigelow, with Brown investing
$3000 and Bigelow investing $1500. Brown was never active in the business,
and died in 1905. Bigelow's wife Nina having died in 1897, he then married
Mrs. Frances Gillette, a
widow, and her son Leon was adopted by Bigelow.
Brown and Bigelow expanded rapidly, constantly seeking larger quarters,
until by 1904 it employed over 400 persons. It was
shortly after this that Bigelow purchased Quality Park, and erected
its modern building.
Other than purchasing a large farm, Bigelow continued to live abstemiously,
plowing all the company profits back into the
business. In its early days Brown and Bigelow was a model facility
with large areas of glass and light, landscaped grounds and
recreational facilities (both indoors and out) for its employees. It
is said that Bigelow was a very paternalistic employer and
admired Elbert Hubbard (the business man's philosopher), and wished
to accomplish what Hubbard had done in his New York plant.
Herbert Bigelow was absolutely opposed to the unionization of any industry,
for in his business there was no need of a union to
protect the working-man's rights. He was equally outspoken on the subject
of income tax. As early as 1905 Bigelow inveighed
against taxes on either income or earnings. He considered such taxes
an immoral penalty on initiative. Instead, he proposed a
tax on what he considered unearned increments, that is, taxes on the
property of landholders who merely sit back waiting for
development to increase the value of their holdings.
Inevitably, Herbert Bigelow met head-on with the U.S. government, which
was having difficulty enforcing its 1913 income tax
law. The law W2S being widely ignored, and in the post Teapot Dome
era, in the early 1920,s, the federal government chose
to prosecute a few selected businessmen from each geographic area.
One of these was Herbert Bigelow, who expected to be
fined, but instead was sentenced to three years in prison. He served
the minimum eight months at Leavenworth penitentiary, and it is typical
of the man that while he was in prison he spent his time and money ameliorating
the lot of his fellow-prisoners and
their families. In particular, he became interested in one Charles
Ward.
For many years after Bigelow's release from Leavenworth, the company
followed the policy of employing ex-convicts whom
they considered worth rehabilitating. Among these was Charles Ward
who rose. first to general manager, and eventually
company president after Bigelow's death.
Early in 1934 Bigelow's adopted son Leon died. In August of the same
year Herbert's wife Frances died after a long illness,
and a month later Bigelow himself died by accidental drowning in Bass
Lake, Minnesota. (Note Newspaper accounts of
Herberts death put his death in 1933)
He left an estate of three million dollars. One third went to his sister
Helen (Mrs. Robert Porter Galloway) whose husband had
joined Brown and Bigelow, coming from National Cash Register Company.
One third, plus the farm, went to Charles Ward.
The remaining third was divided between Leon Bigelow and Leon's son
Herbert Bigelow II. (The latter died at age 40 in a car
accident ) There were numerous other bequests, both large and small,
to employees and relatives, including Herbert's sister
Gertrude, who never married. Sole family survivor at present is Helen's
son Herbert Galloway, a plastics manufacturer.
Material for this article was contributed by a ranking company member
who volunteered that these facts could be checked in
any large public library and that he himself is undertaking a definitive
study of the life of Herbert H. Bigelow. Our thanks to him
for details on the life of an enigmatic and purposeful man.
The above information was current in 1974
Herbert H. Bigelow Chairman of the board of the Bigelow Press here and St. Paul, Minn., capitalist, evidently drowned in a
The bodies of Mr. Bigelow, aged 63, and Mrs. Ralph Mather, 39, also
of St. Paul, were recovered late Wednesday from
Basswood lake, 20 miles north of Ely, Minn. Search was continued for
Howard Schaeffer, woodsman guide of Ely.
The trio drowned last Saturday when their canoe, lashed by high wind
and waves, overturned while they were returning from a
fishing trip into Canada. Mrs. Mather's husband, returning in another
canoe, escaped uninjured.
The body of Mr. Bigelow was found about 500 feet from Chicago island,
near the spot where the overturned canoe of the
party had been found. The news was flashed to Ely from a radio equipped
launch aiding in the search. Basswood lake is in
international body of water between the United States and Canada.
The searchers who found the bodies said it appeared that Mr. Bigelow
fought against drowning for sometime, inasmuch as he
had removed part of the heavy clothing which he wore. The clothing
probably was removed after the canoe capsized and while
he clung to its side.
The bodies were to be taken to St. Paul today.
Second Article From the South Bend N. T. 9-22-1933
BIGELOW RITES TO BE SATURDAY
C. J. Jackson, President of Local Branch, to Attend Funeral.
Claude J. Jackson, president of Bigelow Press, Inc., of South
Bend, will leave for St. Paul, Minn., Friday night to attend the
funeral Saturday afternoon of Herbert H. Bigelow, chairman of the board
of the printing company, who lost his life last
Saturday while fishing on Basswood lake near Ely, Minn.
The funeral service will be held at 2:30 p. m. Saturday from the home
of R. P. Galloway, treasurer of the Brown & Bigelow
Co., of St. Paul.
Mr. Bigelow and two companions were in the fishing boat when it capsized
on the lake during a storm' last Saturday. His
companions who perished with him were Mrs. Ralph Mather, socially prominent
of St. Paul, and Howard Schaeffer, a guide
from Ely, Minn.
The bodies of Mr. Bigelow and Mrs. Mather were recovered from the lake
on Wednesday but according to reports received
by Mr. Jackson from St. Paul, Friday morning, the body of Schaeffer
has not yet been found.
Mr. Bigelow went north for a rest and a vacation two weeks ago accompanied
by Mr. and Mrs. Mather. Mr. Mather was in
another boat when the mishap overtook the Bigelow boat.
Mr. Bigelow was a St. Paul millionaire who held extensive investments
in the printing business both in St. Paul and South Bend.
He became interested in the printing business here three years ago
and was a frequent visitor in this city.
FROM ARTICLE IN "Brown and Bigelow Remembrance Advertising", St. Paul,
MN:
Edmond B. Osborne and Norman d. Murphy were college chums in
the 1880's. Partners after graduation, operating a weekly paper at
Red Oak, IA, the young men wanted to run a picture in their publicastion
of a projected new court house. Unable to pay for a "woodant" since
this would use up the entire week's revenue from their paper, Osborne hit
on an idea. He outlined to his partner a plan for printing a wall
calendar, surrounding it with advertising of local merchants. About
twenty-five businessmen went for the idea and the young advertising calendar
pioneers netted $300.00 on the deal. They put out 1,000 calendars. Sensing
the future in this field, Murphy and Osborne went on to form companies
in Red oak, IA and Clifton, NJ, before splitting up to establish their
separate firms.
The man who was to found the largest calendar
firm in the World today was their first salesman. He was Herbert
Huse Bigelow, who teamed up with a printer in 1896 to start Brown and Bigelow
in St. Paul, MN. In the first year of operation the firm had a total
business of $13,000.
Bigelow pumped life into the partnership through
emphasis on quality and after three years, enlarged quarters were necessary.
These six paragraphs are from an article on
Vintage Calendars, Narrative and Illustrated provided through courtesy
of Brown and Bigelow of St. Paul, MN. This article was in the summer
1967 issue of Relics First Edition of Relics, Vol. I, No. I published by
Western Publications, Inc., P.O. Box 3668, Austin Texas 78704. Article
originally sent by Ed and Pat Bigelow to Society and added to Bigelow data
8 June 1998.
Sources:
Bigelow Society,The Bigelow Family Genealogy Vol II, pg 503;
Howe, Bigelow Family of America;
Brookfield vital records;
correspondence with descendants of Zelotes Bigelow, Jr.
Bigelow Society historian/genealogist records [prior to 1995].no children.
Note:
see http://bigelow.simplenet.com/ShoeBrush.html
for Don Bigelow article below:
From the Forge Volume 3, No. 2 page 25 comes the following information.
Halfway between Minneapolis and St. Paul is a forty acre tract of land
originally called Quality Park by its owner. It houses a
three story building of brick, granite, and glass built in 1913, and
is the home of Brown and Bigelow, the worlds largest
company manufacturing advertising specialities.
Although founded as early as 1896 by a Vermont - born Bigelow, the company
did not achieve world-wide fame until its
printing of a calendar featuring an unclothed movie starlet named Marilyn
Monroe (who received $50 as a modeling fee from
the photographer).
Millions of copies of that calendar were sold in a decade, but it was
not Brown and Bigelow's first pin-up calendar. Their first
art calendar was in 1913 and featured "Colette", a portrait painting
by Angelo Asti. The craze for pin-up calendars has long
passed, and a company spokesman, in a recent news interview, commented
that scenic, and wildlife calendars are their best
sellers.
Brown and Bigelow is not limited to calendar printing. They produce
a full line of advertising specialities. For instance, Bigelow
Society has a small lady's purse-mirror imprinted by Brown and
Bigelow, and Mrs. Robert Dibble (Faye Bigelow) of Grand
Rapids, Michigan donated two plotters with 1935 calendars, also labeled
Brown & Bigelow. We also note that the company
holds U.S. and Canadian patents for a desk-memorandum device, among
other things.
The company's founder and chief officer until his death in 1934 was
Herbert
9 Huse Bigelow, a man of frugal tastes and
hard-working habits who is said to have worn twenty-five dollar suits
when he was three times a millionaire.
(see below) for another owner
He was born 18 May 1870 in Blooksfield, Orange county, Vermont, the
son of Andrew Steele 8 ( Zelotes
jr. 7 , Zelotes 6,
Daniel 5 , David
4,
Lt. John 3, Joshua
2,
John 1) BIGELOW and Celestia
P. (HUSE) BIGELOW. The oldest of three children, he was to lose his
father while only four years of age. Some years later the family moved
to Iowa. Herbert received his early education in Vermont and Iowa schools.
He worked his way through Grinnell College in Iowa by selling, during vacations,
the book "In Darkest Africa" by Henry Stanley, "Review of Review" magazine,
and calendars for a company based in Red Oak, Iowa.
The year 1894 saw Bigelow married to Nina Penny of Fullerton, Nebraska,
where Herbert briefly had an interest in a lumber
yard. They went on a honeymoon to the Black Hill, but Bigelow prudently
stocked up on calendars along the way.
He continued in this business until he met a St. Paul printer named
Hiram Brown. The two men shortly came to a business
agreement, and organized as Brown and Bigelow, with Brown investing
$3000 and Bigelow investing $1500. Brown was never active in the business,
and died in 1905. Bigelow's wife Nina having died in 1897, he then married
Mrs. Frances Gillette, a
widow, and her son Leon was adopted by Bigelow.
Brown and Bigelow expanded rapidly, constantly seeking larger quarters,
until by 1904 it employed over 400 persons. It was
shortly after this that Bigelow purchased Quality Park, and erected
its modern building.
Other than purchasing a large farm, Bigelow continued to live abstemiously,
plowing all the company profits back into the
business. In its early days Brown and Bigelow was a model facility
with large areas of glass and light, landscaped grounds and
recreational facilities (both indoors and out) for its employees. It
is said that Bigelow was a very paternalistic employer and
admired Elbert Hubbard (the business man's philosopher), and wished
to accomplish what Hubbard had done in his New York plant.
Herbert Bigelow was absolutely opposed to the unionization of any industry,
for in his business there was no need of a union to
protect the working-man's rights. He was equally outspoken on the subject
of income tax. As early as 1905 Bigelow inveighed
against taxes on either income or earnings. He considered such taxes
an immoral penalty on initiative. Instead, he proposed a
tax on what he considered unearned increments, that is, taxes on the
property of landholders who merely sit back waiting for
development to increase the value of their holdings.
Inevitably, Herbert Bigelow met head-on with the U.S. government, which
was having difficulty enforcing its 1913 income tax
law. The law was being widely ignored, and in the post Teapot Dome
era, in the early 1920,s, the federal government chose
to prosecute a few selected businessmen from each geographic area.
One of these was Herbert Bigelow, who expected to be
fined, but instead was sentenced to three years in prison. He served
the minimum eight months at Leavenworth penitentiary, and it is typical
of the man that while he was in prison he spent his time and money ameliorating
the lot of his fellow-prisoners and
their families. In particular, he became interested in one Charles
Ward.
For many years after Bigelow's release from Leavenworth, the company
followed the policy of employing ex-convicts whom
they considered worth rehabilitating. Among these was Charles Ward
who rose. first to general manager, and eventually
company president after Bigelow's death.
Early in 1934 Bigelow's adopted son Leon died. In August of the same
year Herbert's wife Frances died after a long illness,
and a month later Bigelow himself died by accidental drowning in Bass
Lake, Minnesota.
He left an estate of three million dollars. One third went to his sister
Helen (Mrs. Robert Porter Galloway) whose husband had
joined Brown and Bigelow, coming from National Cash Register Company.
One third, plus the farm, went to Charles Ward.
The remaining third was divided between Leon Bigelow and Leon's son
Herbert Bigelow II. (The latter died at age 40 in a car
accident ) There were numerous other bequests, both large and small,
to employees and relatives, including Herbert's sister
Gertrude, who never married. Sole family survivor at present is Helen's
son Herbert Galloway, a plastics manufacturer.
Ward's presidency of the company saw much increase of business volume
because of the end of the great Depression; and the
beginning of post-war prosperity. Little improvement, however, was
made in the physical plant during Ward's lifetime, a period
which saw great technological changes in the printing industry.
Shortly after Ward's death in 1959, Brown and Bigelow became part of
a conglomerate, and today is a subsidiary of Saxon
Industries. At its height, it has employed five thousand employees,
and is at present undertaking long needed improvements,
according to a company representative.
Material for this article was contributed by a ranking company member
who volunteered that these facts could be checked in
any large public library and that he himself is undertaking a definitive
study of the life of Herbert H. Bigelow. Our thanks to him
for details on the life of an enigmatic and purposeful man.
The above information was current in 1974 -- Have something to add please
E-mail me, and I'll include everything in this
section
Note:
Subject: Herbert H Bigelow
Date: Wed, 03 Nov 1999 13:44:09 -0600
From: < jholmgre@uswest.net
>
Hello, I am interested in getting a hold of the person from Brown and
Bigelow who is interested in Herbert Bigelow's
life. They (Ward and Bigelow) had a cabin on the same lake in
Northern Minnesota as ours. My mother, and uncle, and
many locals knew these two, and we have their old wooden cabin cruiser,
the "Dodge Water Car". I have collected a
lot of personal history on these two, as I am doing a history of reminiscences
of the original settlers of Cook County, and in particular, Lake Caribou.
I would love to share information. jholmgre@pop.mpls.uswest.net
Note2:
Subject: Co founder of Brown & Bigelow
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2000 17:55:19 -0700
From: Lynn Glocker Condley < condley@pacbell.net
>
Dear Mr. Bigelow,
I came across your web site and am curious to know if you know
of all the founders of Brown & Bigelow. My great grandfather was George
Linton Swift. Co-founder of Brown & Bigelow. He was listed
as in charge of all manufacturing
in 1908. His obituary reads in part....."He was one of the founders
of the institution. Mr. Swift was well known in manufacturing circle
of the northwest."
George L. Swift had a son named after Herbert Bigelow.
His name was Herbert Bigelow Swift. In turn Herbert B. Swift had a son
Herbert B. Swift Jr. Known as "Bud". Bud Swift passed away
June 10, 1999 at the age of 70.
All of his children have passed on, but he does have 3 grandchildren
still living, my Uncle Clarke Taube, who was born and raised in Mpls, MN.
He is 85 years of age and now resides in Tryon, North Carolina, (Clarke's
sister Janet was my mother, she passed on March 22,1 998.). Also
there is Peggy Swift Smith and Marlyn Swift Landgren. Peggy resides
in Arizona and Lyn resides in California. As do I.
I would be happy to keep digging for information for you.
You can visit my web page at http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/GlockerCondley
or just go to the page that has a photo of George L. Swift: http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/GlockerCondley/GeorgeLintonSwift.htm
I would love to be able to have our web sites linked together for further
information.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Lynn Glocker Condley
Note3:
Subject: Brown & Bigelow
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2001 11:27:26 EDT
From: Evan Goranson Swchrch@aol.com
Good Morning. Yesterday at my local thrift store I purchased
a beautiful framed display of 4 Brown & Bigelow prints..."Great American
Documents"...including the preamble to the constitution; the Star Spangled
Banner, The Gettysburg Address and The American's Creed. I
found your site while looking up Brown & Bigelow and have been interested
to learn a little about the company. Do you know when these
were likely produced? Is the company still extant? Thanks for
any direction you can give me.
Evan Goranson.
see
http://www.brownandbigelow.com/
bigelow@slic.com
Rod Bigelow at SLIC