Bicknell Manufacturing Company
/ Livingston Manufacturing Company
Rockland, Maine
Livingston Manufacturing Company (now Bicknell Manufacturing), on
Lime Street as it appeared in 1910.
The illustration above and quotations below are from:
Rockland Bicentennial Commission. (1976). Shore
village story: An informal history of Rockland, Maine. Courier-Gazette,
Inc., Rockland, ME.
- "Rockland was the location of two iron foundries as well as many businesses
which manufactured or otherwise produced fittings and fixtures for the
hundreds of ships built by Rockland yards."
- "Livingston Manufacturing Company was organized in 1893 as a producer of
stone working tools and equipment. With emphasis on tools for granite
and other hard stone [for cutting and quarrying], the firm grew from a
small local company to one which sends its products to every state in the
Union and to many foreign countries. Fred J. Bicknell was the first
general manager at the plant on Lime Street. That plant was replaced
by a much larger brick factory at the same location where the company remains
in operation today. Mr. Putnam Bicknell, the firm's second manager,
purchased control of the company from other businessmen who had started
it, and opened a branch office and plant in Elberton, Georgia. He
also changed the name of the company to Bicknell Manufacturing."
The book by Merriam,
Paul G., Molloy, Thomas J. and Sylvester, Theodore W., Jr., 1991, Home
front on Penobscot Bay: Rockland during the war years 1940 - 1945 discusses
the World War II role of Bicknell, listing the following tools that have
been produced since the 19th century:
- "Among the defense products the company manufactured were cold chisels,
blacksmith tools, ship scrapers, marlin spikes, soldering irons, rigging
screws used to hold light bulbs on ships, joint breaking wedges, crow bars,
pinch bars, drift pins, pavement-breaking tools, drill bits used by Army
and Navy constructions groups, and generator shafts for General Electric."
(pg. 55-56).
The company now goes by the name Bicknell
Supply Co. and has closed the Rockland branch. They have posted their history
on the web.
The Davistown Museum has a stone
chisel marked Bicknell Mfg. Co. in the Industrial
Revolution (IR) Collection.
