Sweeping Industry

 Sweeping Industry

John D. Blood and Ebenezer Howard owned the first broom factory in Fort Hunter. It opened on the eve of the Civil War in 1859 and produced mostly deck brooms for the canal boats. Being located on the      corner of East Church Street and Main Street, it was directly on the Enlarged Erie Canal, in an area where boats may have stopped and waited for Lock 30. Due to some other investments, Blood sold his interest in the company in 1869. This broom factory was successful; producing 12,000 dozen brooms in 1870, valued at $45,000. Sadly, a fire in 1873 destroyed the building.

A New Venture

   Ebenezer Howard and his son Charles rebuilt the factory in 1876 at a new location, on the corner of Main Street and Maple Avenue. They renamed it Howard and Sons. Then in 1894, Howard and Sons merged with four other broom factories (two were local, one was in  Pennsylvania and one in Virginia) to create the American Broom and Brush Company. This was a stock company and combined it represented one-fifth of the entire broom and brush industry in the United States. Similar to how the traffic on the Erie Canal slowly gave way to the railroads, this company mostly sold their brooms to railroads rather than canal boats. A disastrous flood in 1901 destroyed the factory’s stock and some equipment so the American Broom and Brush Company moved to Amsterdam, where it operated as the largest broom factory in the world until the Great Depression forced its closure for good in 1934.

Into the 20th Century

   In 1902 Fred and Charles Wittemeir purchased the Howard building, changing the production of brooms from steam power to electricity. Not much is known about this time in the factory’s history, but the Wittemeir’s owned and operated it until 1917.
   The business was sold to Fred Bohney, who was already an experienced broom manufacturer, having had a business in Amsterdam. The factory was renamed the Premier Broom and Brush Company. Broom corn was no longer being grown locally; manufacturing of brooms was supplemented by other materials such as “rice corn” imported from China. Supplies arrived in 500 pound bales via the West Shore Railroad.  These supplies were kept in a storehouse on Railroad Street until the bales could be brought one by one down to the factory. By 1952, with brush broom contracts for only the department stores of Grant (in business from 1906 to 1976) and Kress (in business from 1896 to 1981) running out, broom manufacturing in Fort Hunter finally ended.
   Since 1952, the building was used as a cabinet shop and for antique storage. The machinery was sold to another broom company in Nashville, Tennessee. The abandoned and depilated structure was torn down in 1976. Today Oklahoma and Texas are the main areas where broom corn is grown in the United States.

Dusty Brooms

   Figures for American brush and broom manufacturing in 1952 are not readily available, but in the U.S. the broom industry during this time had dozens of smaller manufacturers. The era saw a decrease in   domestic broomcorn production overall, and the introduction of new materials and methods, such as synthetic fiber took over the broom industry.
   Data does reveal that 171 entities produced over 90% of the total U.S. broom output in 1952. Of those, 139 were commercial producers and 32 of them were workshops for the blind. Production of broomcorn was already declining in the mid-west at the start of the 1950’s, by 1967, in most areas’ broomcorn production had almost ceased.
   In 2024, broom, brush, and mop production in the United States was valued at $3.4 billion. The production volume reached 1.4 billion units, marking a 1.8% increase compared to the previous year. While the overall trend from 2013 to 2024 shows growth, the period from 2019 to 2024 saw a slower growth pace. The US ranked third globally in broom, brush, and mop production, following China and India.