More Small Details - W.K. Lewis & Brothers Gherkins
Last month we explored the Small
Details on the mural in the Putman Canal Store at Yankee Hill Lock – part of
the Schoharie
Crossing State Historic Site. In
this post we will examine another interesting piece of that artwork and its
historical context – W.K. Lewis & Bros. Pickles.
The W.K. Lewis & Bros. Company is featured on the mural
as the manufacturer of a container of gherkins. This jar seems destined for ill-fate as a
canal cat is trouncing its way across the shelf – a bit of whimsy included by
the artist.
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| William K. Lewis |
W.K. Lewis was established by William K. Lewis around 1835
after several years apprenticed to and partnered in Boston, Massachusetts with William Underwood –
the first pickle manufacturer in America and whose company is more noted now
for the devilishly handsome cans of Deviled
Ham. Shortly thereafter Lewis
associated with his father on the enterprise and later the addition of his
brothers into the business brought about the addition of Brothers to the
company name after the death of William Sr. in 1859.
Lewis took what he had learned from his time with the William Underwood Company and implemented
the production of processed meats, preserves and sauces in a building on Broad St. in Boston –
right next to his former employer. The
company expanded in 1842, including a facility in Portland, Maine – Lewis’s
hometown – that was producing “hermetically
sealed meats, soups, fish, vegetables, poultry and milk.” These items were in an increasing demand as
west-ward expansion flourished. Most
particularly, the mass movement of people to California in 1849-1850 as part of
the gold rush
brought prosperity to canning companies like W.K. Lewis. Between the years 1849 and 1854 the company
retained the Broad Street building but added to its capacity a factory on
Purchase Street as well as three other buildings near the Broad Street
storehouse & offices as part of the Tilden Block. 
In 1859 W.K. Lewis purchased the right, under the patent of Gail
Borden, to manufacture condensed milk; for which the company developed a
factory at Shirley
Village. 1865 saw the building of another
condensed milk factory at West Brookfield. These factories utilized what was at the time
the most state of the art machinery and technology to manufacture and can such
products. By the late 1870’s the monthly
production of the West Brookfield factory was at 36,000 one pound cans of condensed milk, as well as 6,000
quarts of what was dubbed as “plain condensed milk.”
The W.K. Lewis Company added a factory in Maine on the Isle au Haut,
specifically to can lobsters, in 1860.
This operation was enlarged several times and more factories were added
to the ever growing company holdings over the successive years within Nova
Scotia and Halifax – as well as other towns along the coast. By 1879 they were collectively putting to
market over 9,000,000 lobsters by this method.
The pickle production of the company was increased in 1869
when they established another processing factory in Lincoln, Massachusetts – a “noted pickle
producing region.” In 1873 the Broad
Street facilities moved to Somerville (a hop across the Charles River) and
employed nearly one hundred men whom produced over ten million pickles a
year.
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| The New Orleans Daily Democrat September 01, 1877 |
There is a slight indication that by the later part of the
decade the pickle enterprise hadn’t worked out that entirely well.
“Among the canned baked beans on the market
were those of W.K. Lewis & Brothers, of Boston. The product spread quickly
to distant points. An ad appearing in the Galveston (Texas) Daily News on Feb.
23, 1878 announced that three-pound cans of they beans were being “Sold by All
First Class Grocers in Galveston.”
Had it not
been for Lewis, the baked bean “freak*” would not
have occurred in the late 1870s. A Gettysburg, Pa., newspaper, the Star and
Sentinel, noted on Aug. 21, 1888 that “W. K.
Lewis of Boston received the first patent for canning beans, in 1877.”
Lewis had gone
broke as a pickle dealer in Boston in 1875, being able to pay creditors only 50
cents on the dollar, according to news accounts of the time, but apparently
rebounded because he knew his beans. - ROGER M. GRACE, Metropolitan
News Company 2006
*freak
in this context & form outside of today’s colloquialism means “whim” or “fancy”
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| W.K. Lewis Company Ketchup Bottle |
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| The Hawaiian Gazette April 04, 1877 Honolulu - Oahu, Hawaii |
The W.K. Lewis & Brothers Company is represented on the
mural at the canal lock grocery as part of an interpretation of how the stocked
items of the Putman family business may have looked somewhere around the 1860’s
within the first decade to fifteen years of its operation at that
location. While pickles were only a
small portion of the items the company produced or imported, the gherkin bottle
is there as part of a larger story that is included in the overall narrative of
westward expansion and the inter-connectedness of people and commerce.
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| The New Orleans Daily Democrat., January 27, 1878 |
Check out this really
interesting advertisement for W.K. Lewis & Bros. Baked Beans
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| Northern tribune., September 01, 1877 - Cheboygan Michigan -Click to enlarge- |
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| The New Orleans Bulletin., November 22, 1874 |
Contributor:
D. Brooks - Education Coordinator for Schoharie Crossing State Historic Site
Schoharie Crossing
PO Box 140
129 Schoharie Street
Fort Hunter, NY 12069
(518) 829-7516
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