Hemp & Company and King-Seeley Thermos Company
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, even the Macomb Journal editor, Lewis Randolph, changed his tone on whether America should be involved in the war.
Fortunately for Macomb, a city that desperately needed jobs in the 1930s, a business named Hemp & Company had come to town and bought the Macomb Manufacturing Company.
Lewis W. Hemp & Company was a St. Louis manufacturer of tinware and sheet iron products. In the early 1930s, Hemp moved into the Macomb Manufacturing building on East Wheeler Street, which made insulated jugs. The Macomb Plant operated as a branch of the firm until around 1933, when the entire company moved to Macomb.
Hemp & Company soon employed around 100 people making kitchen stools, ovens, and thermos jugs. After a large fire in 1935, the factory was moved to the east end of Murray Street in a building once owned by W.S. Dickey Clay Manufacturing.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Macomb participated in the war effort in several ways. National Guard units had been called up for active duty, including Battery D of the 123rd Field Artillery. Those 250 men became part of the 33rd Division.
During 1942, Hemp & Company shifted its production to war materials. The president of J.L. Hemp, a World War I veteran, had been gassed and wounded in France, and was aggressive in obtaining contracts to support the war effort.
More than 500 local residents - many women - worked round the clock in three shifts to produce complete bombs, minus the explosive charges. Hemp & Company made bomb parts, rocket parts, and launchers. By the end of World War II Hemp had manufactured twenty million munitions items including 150,000 fragmentation bombs. Coleman military lanterns were also manufactured by Hemp and later King-Seeley.
It is quite possible that this is where the school mascot for Macomb High School derived from - the Bombers. Not because of their destructive war connection - no explosives were in the shells casings Macomb made - but because of the valiant effort and sacrifice of a small town in Illinois to help support our country and keep a major factory in business while our men were overseas.
Hemp & Company remains one of the most recognized mid-century American manufacturers for vintage outdoor and roadside gear. The flagship product line, widely recognized by its ceramic or stoneware lined interior, metal outer casing, wooden or metal bail handle and contrasting red drinking cup lid was known as the “Little Brown Jug” line. These were produced as gallon or larger insulated picnic jugs and water coolers.
Metal ice chests and coolers featured mid-century colors, textured metal siding (often woodgrain or painted enamel), and heavy latches. Hemp also made smaller hot/cold beverage jugs, camp drinking dispensers, and later licensed outdoor items such as Duncan Hines portable grills.
In 1955, the Thermos Company, then named American Thermos Bottle Company, acquired control of Hemp & Company Inc. of Macomb. To reflect the growing diversity of products, the name was changed in 1956 to American Thermos Products Company. Thermos products made a major impact in the 1950s and sold over two million units.
What was a thermos? In 1892 Scottish scientist Sir James Dewar invented the vacuum flask. Through his work in cryogenics, he identified a need to keep a chemical placed in a flask at a stable temperature. To do this, Dewar placed a glass bottle in another larger glass bottle, and evacuated the air between the two bottle walls. In doing so, Dewar created a partial vacuum to keep the temperature of the contents stable. Hiring a professional glass blower to make a sturdier flask led to the commercial manufacturer of the “Dewar Flask” in 1898.
The Thermos brand came about when Dewar’s glass blower Reinhold Burger and his business partner Albert Aschenbrenner were manufacturers of scientific glass devices. While producing fl asks for Dewar, they crafted a domestic vacuum fl ask with a protective metal casing and secured a patent for it.
Burger and Aschenbrenner hosted a contest to find a new brand name for the vacuum bottle business. A local resident submitted the word “THERMOS” derived from the Greek word “therm”, meaning heat. And the name stuck.
In 2004, the Smithsonian Institution museum featured Thermos products as part of its “Taking America to Lunch” historical retrospective of lunch kits from the 1880s-1980s.
In 1960 Thermos merged with the King-Seeley Corporation, entering the tent, camp stove and lantern field. King-Seeley was headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Besides wood/ metal working machinery, King-Seeley also made thermos bottles, metal lunch boxes, picnic coolers and refrigeration components. The manufacturer was founded in 1922 in Ann Arbor by auto sales manager Horace King and University of Michigan professor Halstead H. Seeley. They initially gained fame by inventing the first dashboard- mounted gas gauges for automobiles, including Chrysler, American Motors and Kaiser Jeep.
Through their Central Specialty Division in Ypsilanti, Michigan, they manufactured a vast array of woodworking and power tools for Sears, such as drill presses, bandsaws, table saws and lathes. King-Seeley acquired the American Thermos Bottle Company in 1960 and was renamed the King-Seeley Thermos Company.
In 1983, Macomb received a devastating blow. The King-Seeley Thermos Company plant, formerly the Hemp Company in Macomb since the early 1930s, was closing. This would leave 190 men and women from the Macomb area out of work. In May of 1984 the company moved to Mississippi as part of a broader corporate restructuring and shift of manufacturing to the southern United States.
An interview done by John Hallwas in 1990 with Mayor Robert Anstine captured the anguish that the mayor felt when King-Seeley closed. Anstine reflected: “When the King-Seeley Company left here in 1984, that was one of the most devastating experiences I’ve ever been through - the great loss of jobs in town and the struggle to see if I could do something to help”.
The plant was eventually purchased by Nick Estes, president of Royal Haegar Lamp Company of Macomb.
King-Seeley items today are still collectible, especially such iconic products as the “Barbie” metal lunchbox and thermos bottle made between a partnership of Thermos and Mattel. Older items are encouraged to be used for display only as the exterior paint may contain lead. One should also check old thermoses for rattling sounds and leaks as the glass bottles inside may have been broken over the years.
Production for Thermos and Stanley was moved overseas decades ago.
Credits: Macomb: A Pictorial History by John Hallwas Photos - WIU Archives and Special Collections
