While reading some New Hampshire history, I came across the story of Pike Manufacturing Company, one that seemed to me to embody the enterprising spirit of Granite Staters. It begins in 1821 in the tiny settlement of East Haverhill, NH (later named Pike).

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       Legend has it that Person Noyes, while chopping wood, picked up a piece of stone and attempted to sharpen his axe. The stone gave such good results that he gathered several more pieces from a nearby ledge, broke them into rectangular scythe stone shapes, and sold some of them to neighboring farmers.

 

       For centuries, sharpening stones—sometimes called whetstones or scythe stones—have been essential tools the world over. The same was true for the early residents of Pike, who were essentially farmers. Like thousands of others trying to carve out an existence in New England, they faced a major obstacle. Except for the meadows along the rivers, the land they hoped to farm was covered with dense forests. Their ability to feed and shelter themselves depended entirely on their ability to master two tools: the axe and the scythe. Acres of farmland had to be cleared using nothing but hand axes and brute strength. Once cleared, they needed to plant grain, hay, and corn—crops that were harvested using the long, curved blades of scythes. Both of these endeavors required sharp tools, so every homesteader and lumberjack carried some kind of whetstone in his pocket year-round.

 

       East Haverhill, NH had three natural features that were key to the Pike family’s success. The first was a rare deposit of mica schist—a special type of metamorphic rock—which was among the finest quality of any in the world. The second was the Oliverian Brook, which flows down the western slope of Mount Moosilauke, through the village of East Haverhill, down excellent falls, and then into the Connecticut River. Water from this brook powered the mill where the Pike family’s whetstones were cut and shaped. The third was the location of the mica schist quarry, which lay high above the brook, meaning that transport of the heavy stone to the mill was downhill.

 

       When Isaac Pike arrived in Haverhill in 1819, he was nineteen years old. He acquired land, cleared it, and built a home, where he engaged in lumbering and farming. For many years, he ran large quantities of logs and lumber on rafts down the Connecticut River to Hartford, CT—a trip that reportedly took 25 days, round trip.

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       Isaac Pike married the widow of Mr. Noyes, the man mentioned above. Isaac found one of the scythe stones among Mr. Noyes’s belongings. After inquiring about its origin, he bought the mining rights to the area where the stone had been found, opened a quarry, built a grinding mill along Oliverian Brook, and went into business. Loading boxes of stones onto his river raft, he delivered them to Burlington, VT and Hartford, CT along with his logs and lumber. He sold his first stones in Europe in 1846. When the railroad arrived in 1853, he may well have made deliveries by rail to other destinations. Isaac Pike ran his little whetstone business until he died in 1860. A more fortuitous legacy from his wife’s first husband could scarcely be imagined. Over the next 150 years, Isaac Pike's sons and grandson, built Pike Manufacturing Company into the largest sharpening stone manufacturer in the world.

 

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Two Pike Mfg. Co. whetstones with its logo

 

       Alonzo Pike was Isaac’s fourth child. When his father died, he took over the whetstone business, as well as the running of a general store his father had bought. When the company’s production began to grow, Alonzo arranged to have his younger brother, Edwin B. Pike, return to Haverhill to work for the company as its principal salesman. Edwin was a very different type from soft-spoken and generous brother Alonzo, being more independent, authoritative, and sometimes difficult. At first, Edwin and Alonzo argued over the management of the company, to the point that Edwin actually started his own rival company. But he had too little capital to make it work and ultimately settled in as Vice President of Pike Manufacturing.

 

       Edwin, through his contacts as a former hardware salesman, saw more potential in the business than Alonzo was realizing. He persuaded Alonzo to finance a selling trip to the larger cities of the country which ultimately resulted in huge increases in sales. Early in the 1880's, they purchased a quarry in faraway Arkansas, from which they produced world famous Arkansas and Washita whetstones. In 1889, the business was incorporated as the A.F. Pike Manufacturing Company for “quarrying and vending of scythe stones, whetstones and stones of every description to be used for the sharpening of all kinds of edge tools, in the United States and foreign countries and for the purpose of manufacturing and dealing and lumber and timber of all kinds for the stone business.” Alonzo was named President and Edwin, Vice President.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Page from 1898 Pike Mfg. Co. Catalog

 

       Throughout the 1890s, with the talented Edwin in charge of whetstone sales, the business thrived. The Pike brothers acquired new quarries and received and handled stone in large quantities from Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Arkansas, Nova Scotia, England, Germany, Belgium, Scotland, Turkey, and from other parts of the world. They had agencies in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Baltimore. Local newspapers tracked the changes the company’s facilities in Pike Station, as the village had come to be known. By 1880, it had its own Post Office. By 1882, the company had built a boarding house and several tenements. In 1892, Pike’s factory included a new mill with new stone dams and wheels. In 1896, all the buildings were electrified. In 1897, a new and larger boiler was installed at the quarry, so large that it took 10 horses to pull it up the hill. In 1898, Pike Station had a new village hall and a new store. In 1899, it had a new boiler house with an 80-foot chimney and 125hp boiler, which was also used to heat the adjacent boardinghouse known as the Whetstone Inn.

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​​1892 drawings of the Scythe stone Works of Pike Manufacturing Company

 

       As the company grew, the character of the valley changed, mostly due to the influx of workers. In addition to the men who blasted out chunks of stone at the quarries, then split, cut, and ground them, there were also men who built packing crates for the whetstones, and others who drove wagons to carry the stone from the quarries and to deliver the finished product to the railroad station. Pike Manufacturing employed a small army of bookkeepers and salesman. The men who ground the stones used to work 12-hour shifts, around the clock. The Whetstone Inn contained two dining rooms: one for guests and one for workers. It had a library and barbershop, and one large dormitory room called the “ram pasture” used by laborers resting between shifts. It is said that at one time, up to 70 men would rotate through the “ram pasture” in a single day. Many girls worked wrapping and packing the stones, and they were housed in a separate dormitory.

 

       Shortly before Alonzo’s death, Edwin bought out his brother Alonzo’s interest and became the president of the company in 1891. Under Edwin’s leadership, the company grew to employ about 250 people, nearly 100 being engaged at Pike Station. In 1894, the company was reported to be making three fourths of all the whetstones in the world. This is how the Littleton newspaper described Pike Station in 1901, ten years after Edwin took charge:

 

At Pike Station…, there is a little village of more than 500 inhabitants. There is a fine department store, whetstone mill, sawmill, box factory, wheelwright and blacksmith shop, grist mill, hotel, livery stable, a good hall and schoolhouse. It is a temperance place, and the people are ambitious, orderly and prosperous. More than 20 families are occupying houses built for them that they are paying for by monthly installments. They have their own minister, Sunday school, and a flourishing grange known as the Pike Station Grange. Another important organization in town affairs is this Pike Station band. The village can boast of a library, a reading room, and also has the advantages of the long-distance telephone, telegraph, and six mails a day. Here and in the surrounding country, there is every evidence of prosperity.

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                       Pike Manufacturing Company 1903

 

​​​​​​       In 1897, however, an event occurred which had enormous implications for the fate of the Pike community. Norton Emery Wheel Company of Worcester, MA introduced the first man-made sharpening stone, made of corundum from India, called the “India Stone.” Edwin had neither the inclination nor the infrastructure to add the manufacture of artificial stones to the Pike Station operations. After years of competing and negotiating, in 1899, Norton contracted to allow Pike Manufacturing to take over all the sales of Norton’s artificial India oil stones. With the addition of Norton’s artificial stones to its catalog, the company continued to grow, adding 30 feet to the mill and 100 feet to the workroom.

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Edwin B. Pike and Pike Mfg. Co. prize-winning exhibit at the 1908 World’s Fair, St. Louis, MO

 

       Edwin Pike died in 1908 following appendicitis surgery. His only son, E. Bertram Pike, had grown up with the business and was already the president of 10 different companies when he took his father’s place as president of Pike Manufacturing. Bertram was a man of wide interests and influence. In addition to his many commercial interests, he was very active in Republican politics and served in the Legislature. He was instrumental in founding Glen Cliff Sanitorium and Cottage Hospital in Littleton and served on their Boards. Indeed, it was Bertram Pike’s land on Mount Moosilauke that was the first purchase for the White Mountain National Forest. He purchased large tracts of land in and around Haverhill. Within a year of assuming the presidency of Pike Manufacturing, he incorporated three new businesses: the Lake Tarleton Club, Pike Woodlands Company, and the Pike Power and Lighting Company. These are but a few of Bertram’s many endeavors and commitments. There can be little doubt that he devoted far less time to the business of whetstone manufacture than had his predecessors. His distraction, in many ways, contributed to the demise of the company.

 

       In the early years under Betram’s leadership, the company did well, but, in the 1920’s, the company suffered from several devastating fires, first to its Littleton plant which was totally destroyed, then to its offices in Pike which destroyed all of its records. In 1926, Bertram Pike died. Eight years later, after selling all of the company’s forest land, the company stockholders voted to sell all of the company’s assets to the Norton Company which would continue to do business under the name of Norton Pike. In 1932, Norton Pike disposed of all company-owned property in Pike including: mills, tenements, stables, blacksmith shop, woodsheds, ice houses, warehouses, boarding houses, farms, 37 houses, and 21 horses.

 

       Isaac Pike’s little business grew into the largest supplier of natural whetstones in the world. Its products kept the tools that built the cities and towns of New Hampshire and the United States sharp, an enormous contribution to our history. Its success came from its unwavering adherence to its motto: “honesty and push” and to its commitment to hard work and perseverance. Its poetic message to its employees says it all.

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If in this world you wish to win

And rise above the common chump,

Take off your coat and pitch right in

Don’t wait; lay hold, hang on and hump.

Don’t wait until the iron is hot,

But make it hot by muscle.

Don’t wait for wealth your father’s got,

Take off your coat and hustle.