It Happened Here -- Knox: the Pillbox Capital

Co. Rte. 156, Knox

Marker of the Week*

The Town of Knox, one of the "Helderberg Hilltowns" was populated after the Revolution with  tenants leasing lands held by Patroon Stephen Van Rensselaer. (See last week's post.) It appears to have been named for either for John Knox (1514-1572) a Scots Protestant Reformer or Henry Knox   (1750-1806),  Washington's General of artillery (see post of 4/21/13). 
 

Nathan Crary, a resident of Knox, or Knoxville, as it was known then, began first producing wooden pillboxes in 1806 out of basswood, an abundant fine grained wood that was resistant to splitting.

The boxes, resembling miniature Shaker boxes were usually oval in shape with the sides made from a single shaving or "winding" with the ends glued together to form a hoop.  The bottoms and were made from a slightly thicker  basswood shaving, cut or stamped  out in an oval shape. Occasionally, customers might request a round profile. The pillbox covers were made in a similar fashion but slightly larger--designed to slip over the tops of the boxes. 

Before the American Revolution, most commercially produced medicines were imported from Great Britain.  The term "Patent Medicine" does not refer to these medicines being patented but rather to the practice that doctors  who treated members of the nobility or other famous personages with them, would attempt to get for their compounds an endorsement or "patent" from their famous patients to help market their "cures" to the general public.

It was after the Civil War that large numbers of returning veterans, many injured,  created a large market for patent medicines. The increase in demand was spurred on by extensive marketing.  Patent medicine manufactures spent as much as a third of their revenues on advertising.  Newspapers, which had become commonplace in the lives of both urban and rural Americans were filled with patent medicine advertising. ¹Colorful advertising cards (the forerunners of today's sports cards) were given away by medicine manufacturers, and  by the 1880's the Ayer's Company even published its own almanac as an advertising media.  Crary's family business was joined by others in Knox, becoming a major local cottage industry with six shops in Knox manufacturing pill boxes.  Such medicines as Sherman's Cathartic Lozenges, Doctor Ingoldsby's Vegetable Extract, James Compound Vegetable Pills, Doctor Newton's Jaundice Bitters, and Ayer's Cathartic Pills were sold in Knox pill boxes.  J.C. Ayers and Co.  of Lowell Massachusetts bought 1,000,000 pill boxes in a single year from Knox!

Though Crary's son John F. Crary, in 1870 had a long term contract to supply Benjamin Brandreith's company that produced the Vegetable Universal Pill, one of the most successful patent medicines, most of the pill boxes were sold through jobbers. Packed in 10-12,000 count "tierces" they were transported by wagon to the port of Rensselaer to be shipped to down the Hudson.  A full "tierce" might wholesale for $3.50.

Despite the increased demand,  the manufacture of pill boxes remained a cottage, family based, industry. Typically, the men of the family would harvest the basswood trees, hand sawing them into short logs, and splitting them into blocks, to be stored away and dried. When seasoned, the blocks would be cut by the men into the proper thickness "shavings" with a draw knife, on a shaving horse. A boy might be in charge of stamping out the tops and bottoms.  He might produce 30,000 a day. The only significant mechanization came with the use of a horse-powered rotary plane that made uniform shavings. The assembly of boxes was done mostly by women and girls. The precut “windings” were tightly wound around a roller and the ends glued together with a hot glue made from horse hoof trimmings, obtained from one of the two local blacksmiths in town. Heated in a double-boiler pot on the shop's stove the glue set quickly after it was applied. The ends were held in place by “gripes” – wooden blocks, with channels cut in them. After the glue set, the rollers were removed and bottoms or tops were glued on. In this way a worker might make 1,600 to 1,800 boxes per day for which they might receive $.03--.07 per 100 boxes.  While the patent medicine makers made millions, the farmers and their families of Knox worked incredibly long and tedious hours to make a pittance.  At the patent medicine factories a dozen or so pills were placed in the boxes and the boxes were sealed with labels.

For a century the tiny town of Knox produced most of the pill boxes made in America. Only after the stocks of local basswood trees were depleted , and new methods of mass producing glass pill vials and tin pill boxes were developed did production end.

 

1Newspapers became so dependent on patent medicine advertising dollars that when reformers in the 1890's began pushing for disclosure of patent medicine ingredients and restrictions on unsubstantiated claims, the advertisers negotiated so-called “red clauses” that voided advertising contracts if the newspapers' states passed any law restricting them. Subsequently, many newspapers avoided editorials supporting reform.

 

*This week's marker of the week deserves some explanation, so we will forgo a longer article that normally precedes it.