Bourne Fuller Company

History

Before it combined with Republic, Bourne-Fuller consisted of three entities: first was Bourne-Fuller Company, the sales agency or iron and steel jobber, which sold the output of its furnaces to its customers. The other two entities consisted of the Union Rolling Mill, a manufacturer of steel, and the Upson Nut Company, a manufacturer of nuts and bolts.

Bourne-Fuller acquired these two companies in 1920, although the three companies had already formed an alliance in 1911 to be “able to fight the United States Steel Corporation.” Bourne-Fuller Company wanted to purchase Upson Nut so that it would own a furnace.

These three companies were the largest independent steel companies in Ohio. The president of Bourne-Fuller Co., was B.F. Bourne, Horace A. Fuller was vice president (and president of Union Rolling Mill Co.). Horace Fuller’s father, Samuel Augustus Fuller, was founder and president of Condit Fuller & Co., which became Bourne-Fuller & Co., after Mr. Paul P. Condit’s death in 1886.

In 1912-1913 Anton Burchard designed the six-story brick and reinforced concrete office building for Upson and the one-story brick and steel forge shop.

In 1920, when Bourne-Fuller Company purchased Upson Nut and Union Rolling Mill, it added seven four and five story buildings designed and built by H.K. Ferguson Company on line with the 1913 forge shop. “The operations of the three companies include the entire process of steel manufacture extending from the making of pig iron to the manufacture of finished steel, structural, bars, plates, billets and finished products including nuts, bolts, rivets and the like.”

"The Union Rolling Mill was built in 1861 and 1862 to roll merchant bar iron." It was located a mile outside the center of Cleveland in the Newburgh township. Its excellent location, which covered seven acres of ground, was a part of the Newburgh township cemetery annexed by the City of Cleveland for the rapidly expanding steel industry in 1873. Union Rolling Mill and a railroad purchased the cemetery, moving more than 3,000 burials to a new place in 1881-1882.

“The mill employed 400 hands, covered seven acres of ground, and had a daily capacity of 120 tons of finished iron. . . With a capital of $500,000, the Mill’s annual capacity, with the remodeled Emma Furnace, was 55,000 net tons producing Bessemer foundry and forge pig iron. Its “daily capacity is 120 tons of finished iron . . . The specialties are “‘Union Refined’ bar, and cold-straightened shafting.”

In 1930 Republic Steel shut down the Union Rolling Mill and transferred its production to its Youngstown plants. At that time the plant had an annual capacity of 350,000 tons of steel ingots in its five furnaces. It disbanded its loading docks and other maritime equipment on Lake Erie. The steel needed for Bourne-Fuller’s finishing company, the Upson Nut Company was supplied by Republic’s Youngstown plant.

In 1893 Cleveland’s production of nuts and bolts surpassed all other American cities. Upson Nut Company (in 1864 it was called the Union Nut Company) was a foremost maker of cold and hot pressed and forged nuts, bolts and washers.

Finished steel was delivered from Republic’s Youngstown plant to Upson’s plant on 1970 Carter Road in Cleveland. Bourne-Fuller then became the nut and bolt division of Republic. Republic consolidated its operations by closing or revamping its smaller plants of which Bourne-Fuller was one, although with Upson’s open hearths in downtown Cleveland and a capacity of 240,000 tons a year of ingot steel production, it gave Republic a bolt and nut manufacturing business. In 1984, Republic Steel was merged with Jones Laughlin Steel Company to form LTV Steel and ultimately, the Upson Nut Plant was shut down.

Samuel Augustus Fuller founded and was president of Condit Fuller Company which became known as Bourne-Fuller Company. He was a direct descendant (ninth generation) of Edward Fuller who was a passenger on the Mayflower in 1620.

Samuel Augustus Fuller was born in Warren, Ohio, in 1837. His father, Augustus Fuller, moved there from Burlington, Connecticut, when Connecticut residents settled the Western Reserve. At the age of seven, young Fuller moved to Cleveland with his father who decided to set up a wholesale fur and cap business in the city.

This business, which was known as A. Fuller & Son, employed Samuel Augustus as an accountant at age 16 when he graduated from high school. He married Julia Clark in 1858, daughter of a well-known Cleveland banker who was cashier at City Bank and for many years an official in the U.S. Treasury Department. Julia died in 1880 and he remarried Mrs. Louise Wood.

At age 19, Fuller became a partner in his father’s business which was located in a large block on Water Street, Cleveland. In 1869 he joined the Cleveland Iron Company, which had been financed in part by his father-in-law, where he became secretary. From that time the iron business fully occupied his attention. The company, one of the first steel companies in Cleveland, had been established in 1849 to handle the output of mines in Northern Michigan and the Great Lakes region.

The impetus for the industrial development of Cleveland was in part the Ohio Canal and the waterways of the Great Lakes for the distribution of manufactured goods. The Cleveland Iron Company grew to vast prosperity. According to historians, “The development of the Cleveland Iron Company from the beginning was considered to have a profound effect on the commercial importance of Cleveland: It represented the most important operations of the times.” According to historians, “The development of the Cleveland Iron Company from the beginning was considered to have a profound effect

In 1878 Samuel A. Fuller started an iron mill in Canada and in 1880, Fuller joined with several prominent users of iron to take over the furnace of the old Union Ironworks in Newburgh which became known as the Union Rolling Mill Company. He was also involved in the development of the Gogevic Iron Development near the Montreal River in Wisconsin and Michigan. The ore from these mines proved to be the finest quality of manufactured steel and gave new impetus to the already tremendous success of the business of the Union Rolling Mill Company in Newburgh.

In 1881, Samuel A. Fuller began another venture known as Condit Fuller & Co., on Water Street. It was the sales office for iron and steel. His son, Horace Arthur Fuller, entered the partnership in 1883. The company changed the name of Condit Fuller Company to the Bourne-Fuller Company soon after Paul P. Condit died in 1886. (The company name was changed in approximately 1892.) The sales firm was first located on Water Street in Cleveland and later the office was moved to River and Main Streets, also in Cleveland.

Bourne-Fuller Co. was represented by James Dempsey of Squires Samuel & Dempsey, a leading Cleveland law firm. Dempsey, who was a director of Bourne-Fuller, was married to the sister of Irwin Bourne of Bourne-Fuller.

Horace Fuller went on to become treasurer and president of Union Rolling Mill Co., in 1911, as well as president of Bourne-Fuller & Co. in 1912 and president of Upson Nut. Horace Fuller held these positions until he died in 1924 at the age of 60.

Descendants

Samuel A. Fuller had 12 children and 41 grandchildren. He was active in the Cleveland community and once served as an alderman. He had three other surviving sons, Willard, Albert, Arthur, and seven daughters whose married names were Mrs. J. Souther, Mrs. C.H. Munger, Mrs. Norman Leeds, Mrs. O.J. Campbell Jr., Mrs. W. V. Brown, Mrs. J. I. Souther and Mrs. J.E. Kreps. Two children, Julia and Charles, died in childbirth, as did Samuel’s wife Julia, having given birth to her twelfth child, Emily, in 22 years of marriage. Of his descendants, O.J. Campbell was Professor of English Literature at Columbia University, head of its English Department and a Shakespearean scholar.