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L AS T S E AS ON S IN H AVA N A
Last Seasons in
HAVANA
The Castro Revolution and the End
of Professional Baseball in Cuba

C é sar Br i o s o

University of Nebraska Press

Lincoln & London
© 2019 by César Brioso

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

Names: Brioso, César, 1965–­author.
Title: Last seasons in Havana: the Castro Revolution and the
end of professional baseball in Cuba / César Brioso.
Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2019] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2018018103
isbn 9781496205513 (cloth: alk. paper)
isbn 9781496213778 (epub)
isbn 9781496213785 (mobi)
isbn 9781496213792 (pdf)
Subjects: lcsh: Baseball—­Cuba—­History—­20th
century. | Baseball—­Social aspects—­Cuba. | Castro,
Fidel, 1926–­2016. | Cuba—­History.
Classification: lcc gv863.25.a1 b753 2019 |
ddc 796.357097291/0904—­dc23
lc record available at https://​lccn​.loc​.gov​/2018018103

Set in Questa by E. Cuddy.

For my smart and talented cello-­playing son, Daniel. For my loving
and supportive wife, Karen, the best social media director any author
could have. And for my mom, María Luisa. The courage she showed
by returning to Cuba in 1980 to bring her family to the United States
still leaves me in awe.
 C O N T EN T S

List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
1. The House That Bobby Built 1
2. Winds of Change 21
3. Golden Age 40
4. “This Was a Shipwreck” 61
5. Year of the Pitcher 80
6. New Year’s Revolution 96
7. Caribbean Spice 109
8. “Bullets Were Falling . . . Like Hailstones” 123
9. Title Town 141
10. Regarding Cienfuegos 157
11. The Last Series 171
12. International Tensions 181
13. The Last Season 198
14. Casualty of the Revolution 216
Epilogue 232
Notes 237
Bibliography 259
Index 263
 IL LU S T R AT I O N S

Following page 140

1. Aerial view of El Gran Stadium
2. Havana Cubans
3. Bobby Maduro and Jim Davis
4. Don Zimmer and Pedro Ballester
5. Napoleón Reyes with Cienfuegos
6. Claro Duany, Quincy Trouppe, and Minnie Miñoso
7. Gene Mauch with Cienfuegos
8. Almendares first baseman Rocky Nelson
9. Minnie Miñoso dives into first base
10. Almendares pitcher Tom Lasorda
11. Joe Cambria with Cuban-­born Senators
12. Almendares infielder Tony Taylor
13. Leo Cárdenas with Cienfuegos
14. Mike Cuéllar, Tony Taylor, Ángel Scull, Mudcat Grant,
and Orlando Peña
15. Almendares pitcher Orlando Peña
16. Tom Lasorda celebrates
17. Fidel Castro warms up
18. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara at El Gran Stadium
19. Enrique Izquierdo, Raúl Sánchez, and Cookie Rojas
20. Fidel Castro with Sugar Kings
21. Fidel Castro congratulates Luis Arroyo
22. Fidel Castro with Minnie Miñoso
23. Cienfuegos ace Camilo Pascual
24. Cienfuegos pitcher Pedro Ramos
25. Luis Tiant
 PREFAC E

In the months after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba, his

government began rounding up batistianos, supporters of Ful-
gencio Batista. The deposed Cuban dictator had fled the coun-
try during the early morning hours of January 1, 1959. The
Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, an eighteenth-­century
fortress that stands along the eastern ridge of Havana harbor,
became the prison of choice for those apprehended in Havana.
My uncle, René Higinio Brioso, became a prisoner there on
April 14. He was not a Batista supporter. In fact, he had actively
participated in actions designed to topple Batista’s corrupt and
repressive regime, and like many Cubans welcomed Castro as
a hero when he triumphantly entered Havana after Batista’s
ouster. But none of that mattered.
In one step among the many he took to consolidate power,
Castro had installed new directors in the Sindicato de Omnibus
Aliados (Allied Bus Union). Those directors accused more than
fifty bus drivers, including my uncle, of being Batista sympathiz-
ers. So René was taken into custody, and for more than a month
he heard the daily sounds of firing squads in the courtyard of
La Cabaña and wondered when his name might be called by
the guards. Fortunately, he was eventually released unharmed.
But while René was still imprisoned, a family reunion revealed
the depths of the divisions being sown by Castro’s revolution.
As was the family’s annual custom, they gathered at my great-­
grandmother Conchita’s house in Havana on May 10, the Sat-
urday before Mother’s Day. Enrique, one of René’s uncles and
a Castro supporter, made a stunning pronouncement: “I wish I

xi
 Preface
was in charge at La Cabaña so I could take a .50-­caliber gun and
gun down every prisoner there,” he said, “rrrah, rrrah, rrrah,
rrrah, with a machine gun and kill everybody there.” Enrique
said this in front of his brother, René’s father (my grandfather),
knowing his nephew was still at La Cabaña.
My grandfather, René Isaac Brioso, was one of eleven sib-
lings, five of whom became Communists after the revolution.
“There were lots of fights when we got together after the rev-
olution,” my father, César, once told me. “It hit a point that . . .
they didn’t talk to us, complete separation.” Such was the inten-
sity of the political differences that divided families, friends,
and neighbors in postrevolutionary Cuba. Those differences
tore through the fabric of every level of Cuban society, includ-
ing the country’s national sport, baseball.
Baseball in pre-­Castro Cuba was in the midst of a golden age.
The Cuban League, which had been founded in 1878, just two
years after the formation of the National League in the United
States, was thriving under the auspices of Organized Base-
ball. Cuban teams had come to dominate the annual Caribbean
Series tournament. And Havana had joined the highest levels of
Minor League baseball, fielding the Havana Sugar Kings of the
Class Triple-­A International League. Confidence was high that
Havana might one day have a Major League team to call its own.
Away from the baseball diamond, however, events portended
seismic changes for Cuba. In 1952, Fulgencio Batista had over-
thrown the democratically elected but corrupt administration
of president Carlos Prío Socarrás. In the years that followed,
anti-­Batista sentiments rose. Amid growing unrest, a young
radical named Fidel Castro became a leading voice for political
dissent at the University of Havana. He moved from words to
action, leading a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953
that resulted in his imprisonment on the Isle of Pines. But after
a shortened prison sentence and brief exile in Mexico, Castro
returned to Cuba, managing to make his way into the Sierra
Maestra Mountains with a band of rebels. For years, they waged
a successful guerrilla war that eventually overthrew Batista.

xii
 Preface
My father was nineteen during the triumph of the revolu-
tion. He had grown up as a fan of Almendares, one of the four
teams in the Cuban League. His uncle, Raúl, had taken him to
games at El Gran Stadium of Havana during the late 1940s and
early 1950s. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century,
players from the Major Leagues, Minor Leagues, and Negro
leagues had come to Cuba to play in the country’s winter base-
ball league. And my father had watched some of the Cuban
League’s top players: Negro leagues stars such as Monte Irvin
and Ray Dandridge, Cuban stars such as Roberto Ortiz and
Willy Miranda, and American players such as All-­Star pitcher
Max Lanier and future Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda.
In the working-­class neighborhood of Luyanó, my father lived
around the corner from Almendares star third baseman Héc-
tor Rodríguez and played pick-­up baseball games with his sons.
But professional baseball became one of the many victims
of Castro’s Communist revolution. His rise to power forever
altered Cuba’s future and changed the course of a sport that
had become ingrained in the island’s culture for almost a cen-
tury. “I lost interest in the game,” my father once told me. “I
lost the tradition, and I lost a lot of players that I knew when I
followed the game. All these good American players, they were
gone too. Everything changed.”

xiii
 AC K N OW L ED G MEN T S

Multiple cellphone voice messages had gone unreturned when

I decided to contact Pepe Lacayo at Radio Marti in Miami. I had
been trying desperately to reach Orlando Peña, hoping he would
agree to an interview for this book. Lacayo, who hosts a nightly
sports talk show that includes Peña, graciously agreed to help
hook me up with the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher. But
he also warned me: it would depend on the mood of El Guajiro
(a Cuban colloquial term of endearment that means country
bumpkin and Peña’s nickname). I called Lacayo at the appointed
hour. He corralled Peña and brought him to the phone. I made
my pitch, explaining I was writing a book about the final sea-
sons of professional baseball in Cuba. And I made sure to men-
tion my father was an almendarista, a fan of Almendares, the
Cuban League team for which Peña had played six winter league
seasons. Come by the station when you are in town, he told
me. I was in.
On my next visit to Miami, I found the station that trans-
mits in Spanish to Cuba, amid the many blocks of a sprawling
industrial park area near Miami International Airport. Once I
managed to get through security, Lacayo introduced me to Peña,
who was in a room preparing for the night’s radio show. What
ensued was less an interview than Peña holding court and tell-
ing stories for about an hour and a half. It was great. When the
conversation concluded, Peña suddenly invited me to appear
on the show Al duro y sin guantes, which translates roughly as
“playing catch barehanded.” Thus, I made my Spanish-­language
radio debut on Cuban airwaves.

xv
 Acknowledgments
The other almost twenty interviews I conducted for this book
may not have been nearly as eventful but they were no less
enjoyable. And I want to thank all the former players and oth-
ers who agreed to share their memories of Cuba. Most often, I
tracked down my subjects by phone. Sometimes they found me.
That was the case with Jorge Maduro, the son of Cuban base-
ball entrepreneur Bobby Maduro, who built Havana’s El Gran
Stadium and owned the Cienfuegos club of the Cuban League
and the Havana Sugar Kings of the Class Triple-­A International
League. Jorge introduced himself after my appearance on a
panel at the Society for America Baseball Research convention
in Miami. We arranged to talk on the phone. His stories about
his father and his own memories of Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s
were invaluable in writing this story. Maduro introduced me to
another Miami radio personality, Pepe Campos, who put me in
touch with Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Ramos
late in the writing process, for which I will always be grateful.
Another unexpected interview came when a gentleman named
Al López-­Chávez introduced himself to me at a book signing in
Miami. The New Jersey resident winters in South Florida. He
happened to see that I would be presenting my first book on
Cuban baseball history and decided to attend. Al showed me a
photo on his phone of himself as a young child on the field at
El Gran Stadium with Almendares star player Roberto Ortiz
and told me he had served as a batboy for the Sugar Kings after
the team was forced to move from Havana to Jersey City, New
Jersey, in the middle of the 1960 season. Al, who still counts
Cuban Baseball Hall of Famer Cookie Rojas as a friend, shared
his experience with the relocated team and was a joy to talk to.
And another completely out-­of-­the-­blue connection was made
by David Caveda, who reached out to me because he had come
across my blog about Cuban baseball history. Turned out he and
I attended high school together in Hialeah, Florida, (although
we didn’t know each other at the time) and his father was a
childhood friend of Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Luis
Tiant. I had given up hope of talking to Tiant, who played in

xvi
 Acknowledgments
the final season of the Cuban League. I was thrilled to be able
to include his voice in this book.
I am also grateful for the help of my friend and former USA
Today colleague Bob Kimball, who once again offered his services
in back-­reading my chapters. And the book was greatly facili-
tated by online access to the archives of The Sporting News, New
York Times, and Washington Post. The Sporting News covered
the Cuban League of the 1950s in remarkable detail. The New
York Times covered the Castro Revolution on a daily basis with
staff writers based in Havana. I also was able to access crucial
articles from the Cuban newspaper Diario de la Marina thanks
to the University of Florida’s online searchable pdf database.
Thank you to everyone who helped make this book possible.

xvii
 1
The House That Bobby Built

O
pening nights for the Havana Sugar Kings often
were elaborate affairs, replete with celebrities, for-
eign ambassadors, and other dignitaries. One year,
beloved Cuban child actor Rolando Ochoa might serve as mas-
ter of ceremonies. The next International League season might
open with French actor Maurice Chevalier throwing out the cer-
emonial first pitch. But this particular opening night included
something entirely different, unbeknownst to the vast major-
ity of fans packed into El Gran Stadium in Havana.
As fans streamed through the gates, Joaquín Cordero stood
outside the stadium, handing out tickets to fifty to sixty men
who joined the crowd, sitting scattered throughout the highest
row of the grandstand. They paid little attention to the base-
ball game on the field. Instead their eyes remained transfixed
on a building beyond the outfield fence, awaiting a signal from
a rooftop flashlight that would indicate the assassination of
Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista had succeeded. Upon seeing
the signal, they were to leave the stadium, retrieve the cache
of arms stored in a building across the street, and storm the
nearby police armory. If everything went as planned, they could
begin restoring deposed democratically elected president Car-
los Prío Socarrás to power.
The men awaiting their signal at El Gran Stadium were mem-
bers of aaa (Triple A), the Asociación de Amigos Aureliano
(Association of Friends of Aureliano), so named for Aureliano
Sánchez Arango. The former lawyer and university professor
had served as minister of education and then as foreign minister

1
 The House That Bobby Built
under Prío, who was elected president of Cuba in 1948. Batista,
who had served as Cuba’s elected president from 1940 to 1944,
won a seat in the Cuban Senate the same year Prío was elected
president and chose to mount another presidential campaign
in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, Batista staged a blood-
less coup d’etat on March 10, three months before the election.
Batista, former head of the Cuban Army, took over the military
headquarters at Camp Columbia without firing a shot, and Prío
fled Cuba. While in exile in Miami, Florida, Prío started sup-
plying arms through the aaa Movement to anti-­Batista efforts
back home in Cuba.
Among those efforts was a plot to assassinate Batista,
planned to coincide with a season-­opening game of the Sugar
Kings, according to conspirator René Brioso, who was Corde-
ro’s nephew. “The arms were in a building that was [beyond]
right field of the stadium,” René recalled years later. “[Prío]
had rented apartments in a tall building that was eight or nine
floors high. . . . He gave the money to buy tickets for all us who
were organized because it was believed we could kill Batista
that night.”1
René was no stranger to political activism. Born in 1928 in
the sugar mill town at Central Niágara, he became involved with
the Partido Auténtico (Authentic Party) in 1951. As a conduc-
tor and then a bus driver for Omnibus Aliados, René worked to
keep Communists from controlling the bus drivers’ union. His
first anti-­Batista action came the year after Batista’s coup, help-
ing to organize a strike that shut down bus service throughout
Havana. Those involved had to meet clandestinely at night at
Havana’s famed Colón Cemetery out of fear of being arrested.
Once Batista assured there would be no reprisals, the drivers
returned to work and bus service resumed the next day with-
out incident.
The latest action in which René was involved, however, was
far more dangerous. The night of the Sugar Kings’ opening
game, Batista was supposed to attend a party. “We were going
to intercept him on the road,” René said. “There was a conspir-

2
 The House That Bobby Built
acy, and one of the guys who was with us was with the police.
He worked [as a dispatcher] in the radio section in the police
station, where the motorcycles were kept, the motor pool. That
station, the motor pool, was close to the stadium. And when he
received the news by radio that they had killed Batista, he was
supposed to go to the roof of the building and signal us with a
flashlight. There were about sixty of us. They gave us the tick-
ets so we could enter and sit in the last row of the stadium, not
low, but high up because from there you could see the police
station motor pool.”2
Because the conspirators didn’t know when the signal might
come and because of the grave nature of what that signal would
mean, it would have been difficult to focus on the game, let
alone enjoy it. By the end of the game as the vast majority of
fans celebrated victory, the several dozen conspirators were
left to wonder what went wrong. “The time passed and passed
and passed, and we never saw a light [signal],” René said. “The
Sugar Kings game ended, and we left, and then we got the news
that [Batista] didn’t take the route he was expected to take to the
party he was going to, or wherever he was going. We knew he
was going there, but then he took a different route. He didn’t
go by the route we were expecting, where people were holed up
waiting to kill him, to assassinate him. That’s how that ended.”3
Although the plot was abandoned, the seeds of Cuba’s latest
revolution continued to be sown among multiple groups resist-
ing the Batista regime. One was led by a young radical named
Fidel Castro. His failed attack on the Moncada Barracks on
July 26, 1953, had launched the 26th of July Movement. Despite
imprisonment on Cuba’s Isle of Pines, Castro continued to coor-
dinate revolutionary activities via correspondence. One day, he
would transform Cuba, as well as the sport that had become so
ingrained in the country’s culture.

The inaugural game of the Sugar Kings’ existence opened to great

fanfare. Ribbons adorned all the box seats. Cuban, American,
and Canadian flags draped the front of the press box. A highly

3
 The House That Bobby Built
choreographed first pitch included a pair of foreign ambassadors
and the president of a United States–­based Minor League. A new
era dawned for baseball in Cuba on Tuesday, April 20, 1954. El
Gran Stadium would play host to the first game of Cuba’s entry
in the Class Triple-­A International League. Roberto “Bobby”
Maduro had built the stadium in 1946 to be the new, modern
home of the Cuban League, the country’s professional winter
circuit. But Maduro’s stadium was about to become home to
Havana’s fledgling Minor League team, which he owned as well.
In almost every measurable way, El Gran Stadium was a supe-
rior baseball facility to its predecessor, La Tropical, which had
housed the Cuban League from 1930 to 1946. Built in Havana’s
working-­class El Cerro neighborhood, El Gran Stadium was
about half the distance from La Tropical to downtown Havana.
It seated more than thirty-­five thousand fans, fifteen thousand
more than the previous stadium had. Unlike La Tropical, with
its space for a soccer field and Olympic track, as well as beer
gardens and a dance hall, El Gran Stadium was designed spe-
cifically for baseball. Eight light towers allowed for night games.
But upgrading the Cuban League’s accommodations wasn’t
Maduro’s only goal when he and Miguel “Miguelito” Suárez,
his partner in La Compañía Operadora de Stadiums, built El
Gran Stadium with backing from the Bacardi Rum Company.
Maduro’s ultimate goal was to bring a Major League team to
Havana, and the Sugar Kings were the next step in accom-
plishing that aspiration. The team’s motto alluded to just that:
“Un paso más y llegamos” (“One more step and we’re there”).
Maduro would celebrate the Sugar Kings’ first game in keeping
with the significance of such an accomplishment. The Havana
daily newspaper Diario de la Marina proclaimed the prepara-
tion for opening night “gives the impression that what will be
witnessed will be a spectacle superior to the World Series.”4
Indeed, a festive atmosphere permeated the stands before the
scheduled 8:30 p.m. start time. Throughout the stadium, twenty-­
three thousand roaring fans waved white handkerchiefs. The
raucousness subsided only when Monsignor Alfredo Müller, the

4
 The House That Bobby Built
Catholic archbishop of Havana who had presided over the ben-
ediction of El Gran Stadium when it opened in 1946, blessed a
Sugar Kings banner during a ceremony at home plate.
Players from the Toronto Maple Leafs stood along the first
base line. Sugar Kings players flanked the third base line, debut-
ing their home-­white flannels with “Cubanos” in red script
across the chest (“Sugar Kings” would appear only on road
gray uniforms throughout the team’s existence). After the cer-
emony, Rolando Ochoa, a child actor of radio, film, theater, and
television, presented the team with a large sack of sugar with
a crown, which would be the team mascot, symbolizing “los
Reyes de Azúcar”—­the Sugar Kings.
Then came the elaborate opening-­pitch ceremony. U.S.
ambassador Arthur Gardner, wearing a dark suit, would play
the role of umpire, donning a chest protector and mask. Cana-
dian ambassador Harry Scott would throw the first pitch, to
Roberto Fernández Miranda, Cuba’s director of sports, sta-
tioned behind home plate. And International League presi-
dent Frank Shaughnessy would stand in the batter’s box. But
first, Scott made a show of calling Fernández to the mound to
get their signs straight. Gardner then walked out to break up
the mound conference while exaggeratedly gesturing that they
no longer delay the game. The only thing not as easily choreo-
graphed was Scott’s pitch, which was so off the mark it struck
a photographer in the head as he positioned himself near home
plate to capture the proceedings.
The pregame festivities complete, home plate umpire Augie
Guglielmo yelled out, “Play ball!” And when Havana starting
pitcher Emilio Cueche threw the first pitch, the inaugural sea-
son of the Sugar Kings was officially under way. The Maple Leafs
were considered one of the strongest teams in the International
League, boasting former Negro leagues star Sam Jethroe, Cuban
League star Héctor Rodríguez, and future New York Yankees
catcher Elston Howard. But the Sugar Kings were never in dan-
ger of losing their first game in the circuit.
Havana batters hit Toronto starting pitcher Ed Blake early,

5
 The House That Bobby Built
scoring runs in four consecutive innings starting in the sec-
ond frame. Cueche, Havana’s Venezuelan-­born starting pitcher,
was the “undisputed hero of the night,” going three for four
and driving in the first run of the game in the second inning
on a rocket shot to right field. Cueche also scored once.5 After
scoring a run in both the third and fourth innings, the Sugar
Kings broke the game open with three runs in the fifth, one
scoring on a single by Cueche. Havana rapped fifteen total hits
and beat Toronto 7–­2.
Traditionally, Cuban baseball fans had been largely divided
by their allegiance between Habana or Almendares, the “Eternal
Rivals” of the Cuban League. But on that night, fans “witnessed
the birth of a mystical new national baseball,” René Molina wrote
in the next day’s Diario de la Marina. “Before now, the Creole
people were divided into habanismo and almendarismo. . . .
That traditional division has allowed us to experience unforget-
table moments. . . . However, it must be accepted that last night
a new, different horizon was seen in the crowd that packed the
stadium, a unanimous reaction, a collective sense of support
for the team that represents the country.”6

Long before opening night, Bobby Maduro was confident Havana

could support not only a Triple-­A team but also a Major League
team. “In many ways, Havana is a big-­league town,” Maduro said
in 1953 as he was lobbying to have the Cuban capital admitted
into the International League. “Its new stadium seats 35,000.
The players can stop here at first-­class hotels, where Ameri-
can meals are served at all times, and almost everyone speaks
English.”7 And it was with Havana’s potential in mind that Mad-
uro pursued his plan to bring a Major League team to Cuba.
Born in Havana on June 27, 1916, Roberto Maduro de Lima
came from a family of Sephardic Jewish origin, having migrated
from the Netherlands to the Caribbean. Maduro’s paternal
grandfather S.E.L. Maduro founded Curacao’s oldest company
in 1837. Maduro’s father Salomón Mozes Levy Maduro was
born in Curacao in 1890 and moved the family to Cuba in 1914

6
 The House That Bobby Built
as the country’s sugar industry expanded following indepen-
dence from Spain. The Maduro family was not observant and
converted to Catholicism after migrating to Cuba.8
“Momón” Maduro worked as a sugarcane planter for the
American Sugar Refining Company in Cunagua, in Camagüey
Province. In 1926, Momón went into the insurance business,
eventually working his way up to president of the Compañía
Cubana de Fianzas, the Cuban Fidelity Company. As was com-
mon in wealthy Cubans families, Bobby was sent to school in
the United States, attending the Asheville School in North Car-
olina and then studying engineering at Cornell University.9 But
after completing his sophomore year, he left Cornell in 1936 to
help his father operate the family sugar plantation following
the death of an uncle.10
When he wasn’t studying abroad or working in the family
businesses—­which included insurance, cattle, and the Fle-
cha de Oro bus line—­Bobby Maduro played first base for the
Vedado Tennis Club’s amateur baseball team, los Marqueses,
the Marquis(es).11 Maduro’s early baseball experience no doubt
sparked his lifelong passion for the sport. That passion drove
him to build a baseball stadium, buy Cuban League and Minor
League teams, help launch a countrywide youth baseball sys-
tem known as los Cubanitos, and aspire to bring a Major League
team to Havana. “When I was a boy, to be able to share in my
father’s dream, which was that the Sugar Kings could become
a Major League franchise, it’s an extraordinary memory,” Mad-
uro’s son Jorge said. “That’s what consumed him.”12
Jorge Maduro was the fourth of eight children born to Bobby
and his wife, Isolina Olmo Fernández Garrido, who was known
as “Fufila.” They were married on January 28, 1940, and by the
time Jorge was born on July 22, 1947, the Cuban League had com-
pleted its first season at El Gran Stadium. It remains perhaps the
most memorable season in league history thanks to a dramatic
three-­game series to determine the championship. Almendares
had to win thirteen of its final fourteen games, including that
season-­ending series against Habana. Almendares pitcher Max

7
 The House That Bobby Built
Lanier, a two-­time All-­Star with the St. Louis Cardinals, won
the decisive game on one day’s rest, igniting a wild celebration
that spread through the streets of Havana and across Cuba.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Almendares catcher and league mvp
Andrés Fleitas recalled years later, “it was one of the greatest
series, one of the greatest championships Cuba has ever seen.”13
It was a spectacular way to christen the new stadium Bobby
Maduro had built with key help from others, such as Miguelito
Suárez, promoter Emilio de Armas, and the Compañía Ron
Bacardi S.A. “The stadium always looked as if Bobby was the
owner,” recalled Maduro’s longtime friend Rafael “Ralph” Ávila,
who went on to preside over the Los Angeles Dodgers’ successful
Latin American scouting program for more than twenty years
during the 1980s and 1990s. “Bobby was the one with the idea,
. . . but in reality, if you went to the stadium, everything was
advertisements for Bacardi. Since I also worked for Bacardi, I
know that 51 percent of the action in the stadium were Bacar-
di’s. That’s why in the stadium there was only signage for Bac-
ardi and Hatuey [the company’s beer brand].”14
Born on March 25, 1930, in Camagüey, Ávila started working
for Bacardi at age sixteen during the construction of the Cer-
vecería Modelo brewery in the Havana suburb of El Cotorro. He
worked in everything from bottling to sales to public relations.
He also organized internal company baseball tournaments, man-
aged the amateur Bacardi team, and helped organize the Liga
Intermunicipal de Béisbol Amateurs Libre, a winter amateur
league commonly known as the Liga de Quivicán. And Ávila,
whose son Al would go on to become general manager of the
Detroit Tigers in 2015, would play a role in a future revolution
that would forever alter the course of Cuba’s history.

Unlike Almendares and Habana, which had been members of

the Cuban League since it was founded in 1878, the Cienfuegos
Base Ball Club had a shorter, less storied, and more sporadic his-
tory. The franchise first played during the issue-­plagued 1926–­
27 season but withdrew from the league on November 13 as it

8
 The House That Bobby Built
struggled to pay travel costs. Cienfuegos did not participate in
the 1927–­28 season but returned to action for 1928–­29 before
disappearing again after the 1930–­31 season.
During the early half of the twentieth century, it was not
uncommon for teams to join the league for brief periods before
withdrawing, never to return. The league finally stabilized with
four teams—­Almendares, Habana, Cienfuegos, and Marianao—­
beginning with the 1943–­44 season. Cienfuegos had become a
fixture in 1939 under the control of Luis Oliver and Francisco
Curbelo, who immediately sold the team to Florentino Pardo
Galí. Under his ownership, the Elefantes (Elephants) won their
first Cuban League championship in 1945–­46, the league’s final
season at La Tropical.
After Cienfuegos finished third, third, and last in subsequent
seasons, Bobby Maduro chose to enter the realm of team own-
ership following the 1948–­49 season. Together with Emilio de
Armas and Luis Parga, Maduro bought the team in 1949, agree-
ing to pay annual installments of $10,000. Each member of the
Cienfuegos triumvirate brought specific qualities to bear: Mad-
uro was one of the owners of El Gran Stadium; De Armas was
a financial advisor to the Cuban League; and Parga was owner
of the Casa Tarín sporting goods store, which ran concessions
for Wilson baseballs used by the league.
In his seminal work on Cuban baseball history, Roberto
González Echevarría explained the significance of the new Cien-
fuegos ownership group: “With this clout Cienfuegos could
counter that of the ten owners of Almendares, which . . . belonged
to powerful Cuban families such as the Sanguilys, Mendozas,
and Menocals; Marianao’s newly acquired financial and politi-
cal power; and Habana’s financial stability under Miguel Ángel
[González].”15
Almendares enjoyed great success after a group of wealthy
Vedado Tennis Club members bought the club in 1944. The
Alacranes (Scorpions) won six championships in the first eleven
seasons under the direction of engineer Mario Mendoza (team
president) and doctors July Sanguily (treasurer) and Juan Por-

9
 The House That Bobby Built
tela (secretary). In that same time period, Habana won four
times under the ownership of Miguel Ángel González. He had
played or managed (or, some seasons, did both) for the Leones
(Lions) since 1910 and bought controlling interest in the team
from the widow of previous owner, Abel Linares, in the early
1940s. González paid her $30,000 in December 1946 to become
sole owner.16
Marianao had its new ownership group in place starting in
1948, when Alfredo Pequeño and José Rodríguez took control
of the club and changed the mascot from the Monjes Grises
(Gray Monks) to the Tigres (Tigers). Marianao had won the
championship in 1922–­23, its first season in the league, but
had only captured one other title since, in 1936–­37. For much
of their existence, Marianao and Cienfuegos were also-­rans to
Almendares and Habana. With new ownership groups, how-
ever, the Tigers and Elephants would both go on to enjoy success
previously reserved for the league’s Eternal Rivals. But before
Cienfuegos would reach those heights, Maduro set his sights
on the Havana Cubans, a team in the Class B Florida Interna-
tional League, which was run by longtime Washington Sena-
tors scout Joe Cambria.

Carlo Cambria was born in Messina, Italy, on July 5, 1890. His

father, Giovanni, a shoemaker, immigrated to the United States
that same year, settling in Boston. In 1893, Giovanni arranged to
have Carlo and his two older brothers, Pasquale and Giovanni,
brought to the United States, where Carlo’s name was Amer-
icanized to Joseph Carl Cambria after he arrived in New York
on August 2. Young Joseph loved baseball and went on to play
semipro ball in Massachusetts towns such as Boston, Roxbury,
Lowell, and Medford. He joined the professional ranks, signing
with Newport of the independent Rhode Island State League in
1909. The Newport Daily News described Cambria as “a dark,
pleasant-­looking player from Medford way.”17
In 1911, Cambria joined the Berlin (Ontario) Green Sox of the
Class D Canadian League, where he played two seasons before

10
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
mentioned the “Lord Chancellor,” used by Maudslay before 1830. R.
Hoe & Company, of New York, in 1858, had a bench micrometer
reading up to 9 inches. But none of these could ever have influenced
mechanical standards generally as did the strong, compact little
instrument developed by Brown & Sharpe.
The circumstances surrounding its introduction are as follows: In
1867 the Bridgeport Brass Company had a lot of sheet brass
returned to them from the Union Metallic Cartridge Company as “out
of gauge.” Investigation showed that the sheets were to the gauge of
the manufacturer, but that the gauge used by the customer did not
agree, and, further, when both gauges were tested by a third, no two
of them agreed. All three gauges were supposed to be the regular U.
S. Standard, adopted by the wire manufacturers in 1857, of the well-
known round, flat form, with slits for the various sizes cut in the
circumference. Gauges of this form were the best and most accurate
method then known for measuring sheet metal.
S. R. Wilmot, then superintendent of the Bridgeport Brass
Company, seeing that the difficulty was likely to occur again, devised
the micrometer shown at A in Fig. 44, and had six of them made by a
skilled machinist named Hiram Driggs, under the direction of A. D.
Laws, who was then in charge of the mechanical department of the
Brass Company. The reading of the thousandths of an inch was
given by a pointer and a spiral line of the same pitch as the screw,
40 to the inch, running around the cylinder and crossed by a set of
25 lateral, parallel lines. In the early part of 1867, the matter was
taken up with J. R. Brown & Sharpe with a view to having them
manufacture the gauges, and the one shown, A, Fig. 44, with Mr.
Laws’ name stamped on it, is still in their possession. As submitted,
the tool was not considered to be of commercial value, for the
cylinder was completely covered with spiral and straight lines
intersecting each other so closely that it was impossible to put any
figures upon it, thus making it very difficult to read.
In 1848 Jean Laurent Palmer, a skilled mechanic in Paris,
patented a “screw caliper,” shown at B, Fig. 44, and began
manufacturing it under the name of “Systeme Palmer.” In this
micrometer the graduations were divided, one set being on the
cylinder of the frame and the other on the revolving barrel, an
arrangement which permitted all the markings necessary for
clearness. The importance of this tool does not seem to have been
appreciated until August, 1867, when J. R. Brown and Lucian
Sharpe saw one at the Paris Exposition. They at once recognized its
possibilities and brought one home with them. To use Mr. Sharpe’s
own words: “As a gauge was wanted for measuring sheet metal, we
adopted Palmer’s plan of division, and the Bridgeport man’s size of
gauge, adding the clamp for tightening the screw and the adjusting
screw for compensating the wear of end of points where the metal is
measured, and produced our ‘Pocket Sheet Metal Gauge.’... We
should never have made such a gauge as was shown us by the
Bridgeport man in 1867, to sell on our own account, as it would be
too troublesome to read to be salable. If we had not happened to find
the Palmer gauge, and thereby found a practical way to read
thousandths of an inch, no gauges would have been made. If we had
never seen the Bridgeport device we should have found the Palmer
at Paris, and without doubt have made such gauges, but possibly
would have made a larger one first. The immediate reason of making
the ‘Pocket Sheet Metal Gauge’ was the suggestion coming from the
Bridgeport Brass Company of the want of a gauge of the size of the
sample shown us for the use of the brass trade.”[194]
[194] From a letter of Lucian Sharpe, quoted in the American Machinist of
December 15, 1892, p. 10.
 A B

C D

Figure 44. Early Micrometer Calipers

A—Wilmot’s Micrometer, 1867

B—Palmer Micrometer, brought from Paris by J. R. Brown and Lucian Sharpe,
1867
C—“Pocket Sheet Metal Gauge,” Brown & Sharpe, 1868
D—One-inch Micrometer, Brown & Sharpe, 1877

This gauge, shown at C, in Fig. 44, was put on the market in 1868,
and appeared in the catalog of 1869. Comparison of A, B, and C in
Fig. 44 shows clearly their close relationship. The term “micrometer”
caliper was first applied to the one-inch caliper (D, Fig. 44) which
was brought out and illustrated in the catalog of 1877. In Machinery
of June, 1915, Mr. L. D. Burlingame has given an admirable and very
complete account of the various improvements which have been
brought out since that time. In connection with the article, a modern
micrometer is shown and its various features, with the inventors of
each, are clearly indicated.[195]
[195] The origin and development of the present form of micrometer is
further discussed in Machinery, August, 1915, p. 999, and September,
1915, pp. 11, 58.

The cylindrical grinder was first made as a crude grinding lathe in

the early sixties, and used for grinding the needle and foot bars of
the Wilcox & Gibbs sewing machines. In 1864 and 1865 the regular
manufacture of grinding lathes was begun by using parts of 14-inch
Putnam lathes modified to produce the automatic grinding lathes.
These modifications consisted in mounting a grinding wheel on the
carriage, providing an automatic feeding and reversing attachment,
and included the use of a dead center pulley. From 1868 until 1876
various plans were worked out for a complete universal grinder, and
by 1876 one had been built and was exhibited at the Centennial
Exposition. The first one used at the factory was put into service a
few days after Mr. Brown’s death, which occurred July 23, 1876. The
patent granted to Mr. Brown’s heirs for this machine included not
only the ordinary devices of the universal grinder so well known
today, but also provision for form grinding. The designing of surface
machines as well as many other varieties followed, the work being
done under the direction of Charles H. Norton, who later had charge
of the design of their grinding machinery.
The manufacture of automatic gear cutters was commenced by
the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company in 1877, two designs
by Edward H. Parks, a small manufacturing machine for bevel and
spur gears and the larger machine for general use, being brought out
in that year.
In sixty years the Brown & Sharpe Company has grown from an
obscure local shop into a great plant employing thousands, but its
influence and its product represent a greater achievement. Many
mechanics of high ability have gone to other shops, among whom
are Henry M. Leland, president of the Cadillac Motor Car Company;
J. T. Slocomb, Horace Thurston, Elmer A. Beaman and George
Smith, of Providence; Charles H. Norton, of Worcester; John J.
Grant, of Boston; William S. Davenport, of New Bedford; A. J. Shaw,
of the Shaw Electric Crane Company, and H. K. LeBlond, of
Cincinnati. Hundreds of others, however, as managers,
superintendents, chief draftsmen and tool makers, have perhaps
done more to spread throughout the country the methods and
standards of accuracy which have made American machine tools
what they are.
Mr. Henry M. Leland, who was trained in the Providence shop,
says:
The man who is responsible for this and who thoroughly demonstrated his rare
ability and wonderful persistency in bringing out the accurate measuring tools and
instruments, and the advanced types of more efficient and unique machinery, was
the founder, Joseph R. Brown. I have often said that in my judgment Mr. Brown
deserved greater credit than any other man for developing and making possible
the great accuracy and the high efficiency of modern machine practice and in
making it possible to manufacture interchangeable parts, because the Brown &
Sharpe Company were the first people to place on the market and to educate the
mechanics of the country in the use of the vernier caliper. They were also the first
to make the micrometer caliper.
I remember that in those early days people came to Brown & Sharpe from all
over the world to consult with Mr. Brown in reference to obtaining great accuracy
and securing difficult results which had been deemed insurmountable by other
high-grade mechanics. The mechanical engineers are now searching the records
for men who have made themselves eminent in the industrial world as inventors
and manufacturers; for a list of men to have honorable mention and to have their
achievements and ability so recorded that the modern world may bestow upon
them the credit and gratitude which they so richly deserve. Among these names I
know of none who deserves a higher place than, or who has done so much for the
modern high standards of American manufacturers of interchangeable parts as
Joseph R. Brown.
 CHAPTER XVII
CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND
At the close of the chapter on “Early American Mechanics” we referred to
the spread of machinery building northward from Rhode Island to the
Merrimac Valley and central Massachusetts. This by no means implies that
all the northern shops were started by Rhode Island mechanics, but their
influence is so strong as to be clearly seen; and here, as in Rhode Island, the
early shops were closely identified with the textile industry.
One of the first and most influential of these was the Amoskeag
Manufacturing Company. The beginnings of the Amoskeag Company were
made by a Benjamin Pritchard, of New Ipswich, N. H., who built a small
textile mill at Amoskeag Village, then Goffstown, in 1809. In 1822 it was
bought by Olney Robinson, from whom, that same year, Samuel Slater
received a letter asking for a loan of $3000. This was accompanied by a
magnificent salmon as a sample of the products of Amoskeag. Slater, with
the instincts of a good sportsman and a careful business man, went there to
investigate, with the result that he bought the property, which then consisted
of a water power, a two-story wooden mill and two or three small tenements.
Larned Pitcher soon joined him, and in 1825 four other partners were taken
in, Willard Sayles, Lyman Tiffany, Oliver Dean and Ira Gay. Three of the
partners were Pawtucket men—Slater, Pitcher and Gay. Slater and Gay were
very influential in the early history of the company. The business grew rapidly
and in 1841 they formed the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, which has
had a long and successful career. Their charter was broad, and they
extended their operations until they included textile mills, extensive
improvements of the water powers on the Merrimac, the founding of the city
of Manchester, and the operation of a large machine shop.
The last, which interests us most, was started about 1840. At first it was
used only for building and repairing textile machinery, but before very long it
was actively engaged in the manufacture of steam boilers, locomotives,
steam fire engines, turbine wheels and machine tools. It comprised two
three-story shops, each nearly 400 feet long, with foundries and forge shops,
and employed in all 700 men—a large plant for seventy-five years ago.
William A. Burke, its first head, left in 1845 to organize the Lowell Machine
Shop, which built textile and paper machinery and locomotives, and did
general millwright work. One of the workmen who helped install the
machinery in the Amoskeag shop was William B. Bement. He remained there
for two years as foreman and contractor, and in 1845 joined Burke at Lowell.
O. W. Bayley, who succeeded Burke as head of the Amoskeag shop, left in
1855 and founded the Manchester Locomotive Works.
Ira Gay came to New Hampshire from Pawtucket in 1824. Besides the
Nashua Manufacturing Company and the Nashua Iron & Steel Works, he and
his brother, Ziba Gay, founded (about 1830) the Gay & Silver Company, later
the North Chelmsford Machine & Supply Company referred to in a previous
chapter. Frederick W. Howe, who did such important work with Robbins &
Lawrence, the Providence Tool Company, and Brown & Sharpe, learned his
trade in the Gay & Silver shop.
It has been claimed that the shop of Gage, Warner & Whitney, established
by John H. Gage at Nashua in 1837, was the first one devoted exclusively to
the manufacture of machine tools. If this is true, it does not involve as high a
degree of specialization as would seem, for Bishop in 1860 says: “Their
manufactures include iron planers of all sizes, engine lathes, from the
smallest watch maker’s up to a size suitable for turning locomotive driving
wheels six or eight feet in diameter, hand lathes of all sizes, chucking lathes
of all dimensions, with sliding bed, bolt cutting machines for rapidly
transforming any part of a plain bolt into a nice, evenly threaded screw,
upright and swing drills, boring machines for shaping the interior of steam
cylinders, or other bores of large diameter, slabbers of all kinds, gear-cutting
engines of all sizes for shaping and smoothing the teeth of gear wheels with
perfect accuracy, power punching machines of various sizes, etc.”[196] In
1852 they began building steam engines. With all this formidable list, it
seems never to have been a very large shop.
[196] “History of American Manufactures,” Vol. III, p. 451.

In 1825 the improvement of the water power at what is now Lowell was
begun. Almost at the very beginning of this development work, a large
machine shop was built and placed under the charge of Paul Moody, who
was regarded as one of the foremost mechanics of his day and was an
expert in cotton machinery. This shop was retained by the Water Power
Company for nearly twenty years, when it was sold (1845) and reorganized
as the Lowell Machine Shop under Burke’s leadership. It employed at times
one thousand men, and became one of the most important shops in the
whole Merrimac Valley. James B. Francis, the great hydraulic engineer,
began his life work as a draftsman here in 1833; and later Bement became
its chief draftsman, leaving it to go to Philadelphia.
From 1820 to 1840, other shops sprang up in the Merrimac Valley, such as
C. M. Marvel & Company, of Lowell, the Lawrence Machine Shop, and the
Essex Machine Shop, where Amos Whitney, of Pratt & Whitney, learned his
trade, almost all of them building textile machinery, as well as machine tools.
The output of these shops showed little specialization. They built almost
anything which they could sell.
Of the Massachusetts towns, Worcester and Fitchburg seem to have been
the first to develop successful shops producing machine tools only. In
Worcester also the machinery trade had its beginning in the manufacture of
textile machinery; in fact, Worcester antedates even Pawtucket in its attempts
at cotton spinning, but these at first were unsuccessful. Practically all the
early water privileges in and about the town, not used for sawmills, were
used for textile mills. Prior to 1810 there was a small clock shop, some paper
mills, and a few other enterprises, but they could hardly be dignified as
factories. One of these was the old shop where Thomas Blanchard invented
his copying lathe for turning irregular forms.
An Abraham Lincoln operated a mill and a forge with a trip hammer as
early as 1795. Here, in quarters rented from Lincoln, Earle & Williams
started, about 1810, the first machine shop in the city. The town grew slowly
and its interests were largely local. It was not until 1820 that Worcester took
first rank even among the towns in the county. There was quite an excitement
over the discovery of coal in 1823. It was found, however, to be so poor, that,
as someone put it at the time, “there was a —— sight more coal after burning
it than there was before.” The Providence & Worcester canal was opened in
1828, but its usefulness for navigation was greatly limited by the many power
privileges along its route. Its traffic was never large and it went out of
business in 1848. It served, however, to hasten the building of the Boston &
Worcester Railroad, which was built by Boston capital to deflect the trade of
the central Massachusetts towns from Providence to that city. It opened in
1835; and in 1836 there were listed in Worcester “seven machinery works,”
one wire mill and one iron foundry. Most of the earlier tool builders were
trained in the small textile-machinery shops which had sprung up after 1810,
such as Washburn & Goddard’s, Goulding’s, Phelps & Bickford’s, White &
Boyden’s. The rapid development of railroads created a demand for machine
tools which the Worcester mechanics were quick to recognize, as had
Nasmyth and Roberts in England.
Thomas Blanchard, who was born near Worcester, is one of the
picturesque and attractive figures in our mechanical history. He was a shy,
timid boy, who stammered badly, and was considered “backward.” The
ingenious tinkerer, laughed at by all, first secured his standing by devising an
apple-parer which made a hit, social and mechanical. At eighteen he began
building a tack machine and worked six years on it before he considered it
finished. The essentials of its design have been little changed since. It made
over two hundred tacks a minute and its product was more uniform and
better than the hand-made tacks. Blanchard sold the patent for it for $5000, a
large price for those days, but only a fraction of its real value.
A few years later, about 1818, he invented the lathe for turning irregular
forms which is associated with his name. It was first built for turning gun-
stocks at the Springfield Armory, and the original machine (Fig. 29) is still
preserved there in the museum. Blanchard worked at the Armory for several
years as an expert designer and invented or improved about a dozen
machines for the manufacture of firearms, chiefly mortising and turning
machines.
He was a fertile inventor and worked in many lines besides tool building.
His principal income came from royalties on his “copying” lathe. Many stories
are told of his ingenuity and homely wit. In his later life he was a patent
expert. His keen mechanical intuitions, his wide and varied experience and
unswerving honesty, gave weight to his opinions, and his old age was spent
in comfortable circumstances. He died in 1864.
In 1823 William A. Wheeler came to Worcester, and two years later he was
operating a foundry. He did some machine work, and had the first steam
engine and the first boring machine in Worcester, and also an iron planer
“weighing 150 lb., 4 ft. long and 20 in. wide,” the first one, it is said, in the
state. Beginning with three or four hands, this foundry employed at times two
hundred men. Its long career closed in the summer of 1914.
Samuel Flagg moved to Worcester from West Boylston in 1839, to be near
the Wheeler foundry from which he got his castings. “Uncle Sammy Flagg”
was the first man in Worcester to devote himself entirely to tool building, and
is considered the father of the industry there. He made hand and engine
lathes in rented quarters in the old Court Mills, which has been called the
cradle of the Worcester tool building industry. His first lathes were light and
crude, with a wooden bed, wrought-iron strips for ways, chain-operated
carriage, and cast gears, as cut gears were unheard of in the city at that time.
His first competitor, Pierson Cowie, began making chain planers about
1845. After a few years he sold his business to Woodburn, Light & Company,
which in a few years became Wood, Light & Company, one of the best known
of the older firms. About the same time S. C. Coombs began making lathes
and planers. Flagg meantime had organized the firm of Samuel Flagg &
Company, which included two of his former apprentices, L. W. Pond (whose
portrait appears in Fig. 46) and E. H. Bellows. Pond later bought out Flagg
and Bellows and developed the business greatly. It was incorporated as the
Pond Machine Tool Company, in 1875, specialized in heavy engine lathes,
and is now part of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company. Bellows went into the
engine business, and Flagg started another enterprise, the Machinist Tool
Company, which did not last long. It lasted long enough, however, to build
one of the largest lathes made up to that time, 35 feet long with ways 8 feet
wide.
From the old Phelps & Bickford and S. C. Coombs shops came the two
Whitcomb brothers, Carter and Alonzo, who formed the Carter Whitcomb
Company in 1849, which became the Whitcomb Manufacturing Company in
1872. From the Coombs company also came successively Shepard, Lathe &
Company; Lathe, Morse & Company, and the Draper Machine Tool Company.
P. Blaisdell & Company was founded in 1865 by Parritt Blaisdell, who had
been fifteen years with Wood, Light & Company; and S. E. Hildreth, who had
worked for more than twenty years with Flagg and Pond, became a partner in
this firm eight years later. The Whitcomb, Draper and Blaisdell companies
were united in 1905 into the present Whitcomb-Blaisdell Machine Tool
Company. From the old Blaisdell shop came also J. E. Snyder & Son through
Currier & Snyder, who began building drills in 1833 and were both old
workmen at Blaisdell’s. The original Reed & Prentice Company was started
by A. F. Prentice, who sold a half interest to F. E. Reed in 1875. The
Woodward & Powell Planer Company comes from the Powell Planer
Company, incorporated in 1876. This maze of relationships is made clear by
reference to the table given in Fig. 45. The Norton Company comes from F.
B. Norton, who began experimenting on vitrified emery wheels about 1873
and put them on the market in 1879. At his death the business was
incorporated as the Norton Emery Wheel Company, now the Norton
Company. Charles H. Norton’s work in developing precision grinding has
been perhaps the most distinguished contribution to the later generation of
Worcester mechanics. He began work in the shops of the Seth Thomas
Clock Company at Thomaston, Conn., under his uncle, N. A. Norton, who
was master mechanic there for about forty years. At his uncle’s death, Norton
became master mechanic. He was with the Clock Company about twenty
years in all, most of the time in charge of the design and building of all their
tools, machinery and large tower clocks.
 WILLIAM A. WHEELER, ICHABOD WASHBURN
1823 Cards and Textile Machry.
PHELPS &
Foundry—Came from
BICKFORD
Brookfield,
Textile Machinery
Plant closed in 1914
S. C. Coombs
WASHBURN & HOWARD
Cards, Textile Machry. and
J. A. FAY & CO. SAMUEL Wire
Woodworking FLAGG, 1839 1820
Machry First tool-builder
Keene, N. H. in city—came S. C. COOMBS & CO.
J. A. Fay and from West 1845
Edw. Josslyn. Boylston to be R. R. Shepard and Martin WASHBURN & GODDARD
1836 near Wheeler Lathe Textile, Machry. and Wire
foundry A. A. Whitcomb 1822
PIERSON
C. READ &
COWIE
CO.
THOS. E. About 1845—
Worcester
DANIELS Made chain
—Screws
Woodworking planers SHEPARD, LATHE & CO.
Machry. SAMUEL FLAGG & C. WHITCOMB & AMERICAN SCREW
Worcester CO. CO. CO.
L. W Pond, E. H. 1849—Carter and Providence, R. I.
Bellows, S. E. Hildreth Alonzo Whitcomb
E. C. Pond bought out other LATHE, MORSE & CO. LORING & A.
 TAINTER partners. G. COES
GARDNER 1847 1836
CHILDS
Daniels WOODBURN Began making
Planer, etc. , screw
Worcester LIGHT & CO. DRAPER MACH. TOOL wrenches
1846 CO. 1841
RICHARDSON, MERRIAM
& CO. F. B. NORTON
Worcester. Richardson was Began
Josslyn’s experiments
nephew. Name of J. A. Fay on wheels
was sold in 1873.
to Western agents, about WHITCOMB MFG. CO. Began sale in
1862 1872 1879.
Thomson, WOOD, Died 1885 and
Skinner of LIGHT & CO. business
Co. of Parritt incorporated
Chicopee Blaisdell 1886
WASHBURN
Falls,
& MOEN
bought
Wire 1850
out
Flagg’s
original NORTON
business EMERY
P. WHEEL CO.
NEW BLAISDELL & 1886
HAVEN CO.
MFG. 1865 A. F. PRENTICE
CO. P. Blaisdell, Sold half interest to F. E.
New S. E. Hildreth, Reed, 1875
Haven, Enoch
Conn. Earle, Currier,
Snyder
POND CHAS. H.
MACH. NORTON
TOOL CO. CURRIER & Invented
1875 SNYDER REED & PRENTICE Grinding
Both worked Reed bought whole Machines,
for Blaisdell. business in 1877 Came from
1883 Brown &
Sharpe
J. A. FAY & CO. NORTON
Cincinnati, Ohio, Moved to POWELL PLANER CO. Incorporated GRINDING
1862 Plainfield, 1887 later as CO.
N. J., Washburn & Grinding
1888
EGAN CO NILES-
 EGAN CO. NILES
Moen Machines
Cincinnati, BEMENT-POND Mfg. Co. 1900
Ohio, CO.
1873 Hamilton, O.—
Philadelphia—
Plainfield REED-PRENTICE CO. COES
J. E. SNYDER WRENCH CO.
WOODWARD & POWELL PLANER CO.
& SON 1888
J. A. FAY & NORTON
EGAN CO. CO.
WHITCOMB-BLASIDELL MACH.
Cincinnati, Ohio. AM. STEEL & WIRE CO. Emery
TOOL CO.
1893 Worcester Plant—1899 Wheels,
Worcester—1905
etc.
1906

Figure 45. Genealogy of the Worcester Tool Builders

In 1886 Mr. Norton went to the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company
of Providence as assistant to Mr. Parks, their chief engineer. Soon afterward
he became designer and engineer for their work in cylindrical grinding
machinery, remaining in that capacity for four years. In 1890 he went to
Detroit with Henry M. Leland and formed a corporation called the Leland-
Falkner-Norton Company, Falkner being a Michigan lumber man. Associated
with them was Charles H. Strellinger, a well-known dealer in tools and
machinery. Six years later Mr. Norton returned to Brown & Sharpe and was
again their engineer of grinding machinery until he went to Worcester in
1900. The Norton Grinding Company, organized that year and financed by
men connected with the Norton Emery Wheel Company, have built cylindrical
and plain surface grinding machinery designed by Charles H. Norton, and
under his direction have been leaders in refining and extending the process
of precision grinding.
The Norton Company and the Norton Grinding Company should not be
confused. The former make grinding wheels; the latter build grinding
machines. Neither should F. B. Norton, who founded the grinding wheel
industry and who died in 1885, be confused with Charles H. Norton, who did
not come to Worcester until fifteen years later. There is no connection in their
work, and despite the similarity of name, they were in no way related.
The greatest industry in Worcester is the American Steel and Wire
Company, formerly the Washburn & Moen Company. While it is no longer
associated with tool building, it passed through that phase and traces back to
the textile industry as well. It was founded by Ichabod Washburn, who started
in as a boy in a cotton factory in Kingston, R. I., during the War of 1812.
Making up his mind to become a machinist, he served an apprenticeship and
then worked in Asa Waters’ armory and with William Hovey, one of the early
mechanics in Worcester. About 1820 he began the manufacture of woolen
machinery and lead pipe in partnership first with William Howard and later
with Benjamin Goddard. The enterprise prospered. As he was making cards
for cotton and woolen machinery, he determined to manufacture the
necessary wire himself by a new drawing process. His first experiments were
a failure, but by 1830 they were successful enough to justify his undertaking
regular manufacture. He superseded the old methods entirely and built up
the present great business. Goddard retired, and, after various changes in
partnership, Washburn took in his son-in-law, Philip L. Moen, in 1850. By
1868 the firm employed more than nine hundred men, and wire drawing,
which began as an incident in the manufacture of textile machinery, had
become their sole activity. Today the works employ eight thousand men. In
1833 Washburn, in order to make an outlet for his wire products, induced the
Read brothers to move to Worcester from Providence and begin the
manufacture of screws. This business was operated separately under the
name of C. Read & Company. Later it was moved back to Providence, where
it developed into the American Screw Company.
Worcester mechanics have made many things besides machine tools; in
small tools and in gun work they have long been successful. The Coes
Wrench Company was started in 1836 by Loring and A. G. Coes, and began
to make the present form of screw wrench in 1841. Asa Waters, in Millbury
near by, was one of the early American gun makers. After Waters came other
gun makers, Ethan Allen, Forehand & Wadsworth, Harrington & Richardson,
and Iver Johnson, who later moved to Fitchburg.
Much of Worcester’s prominence as a manufacturing center is due to the
unusual facilities it offered to mechanics to begin business in a small way.
Nearly every manufacturing enterprise in the city began in small, rented
quarters. There were a number of large buildings which rented space with
power to these small enterprises; one of them, Merrifield’s, was three stories
high, 1100 feet long, and had fifty tenants, employing two to eight hundred
men. Coes, Flagg, Daniels, Wood, Light & Company, Coombs, Lathe &
Morse, Whitcomb, Pond and J. A. Fay, all began, or at some time operated,
in this way. One is struck, in looking over the old records, with the constant
recurrence of certain names, as the Earles, Goddards, Washburns, and
realizes that he is among a race of mechanics which was certain sooner or
later to build up a successful manufacturing community.
Fitchburg, while not so large or so influential, is almost as old a tool
building community as Worcester. Its history centers about the Putnam
Machine Company which was started by John and Salmon W. Putnam, who
came from a family of mechanics. The latter’s portrait appears in Fig. 47.
They, too, began in cotton manufacturing, John as a contractor making cotton
machine parts, and Salmon as a bobbin boy and later as an overseer at New
Ipswich and Lowell. In 1836 they went to Trenton, N. J., intending to start a
machine shop there, but the panic of 1837 intervened and made it
impossible. They had themselves built most of the machines required; they
stored these and found employment until business conditions improved.
Finally, they started in a hired basement in Ashburnham, Mass., under the
name of J. & S. W. Putnam.
A year later they moved to Fitchburg and began repairing cotton
machinery. At first they did their work entirely themselves, but their business
increased rapidly and they soon hired an apprentice. Their first manufactured
product was a gear cutter. This gave them a start and they soon developed a
full line of standard tools. Though he was the younger brother, S. W. Putnam
was the leading spirit. He first built upright drills with a swinging table so that
the work could be moved about under the drill without unclamping. He
designed the present form of back rest for lathes, and is said to have
invented the universal hanger. The latter invention, however, has been
claimed for several other mechanics in both England and America. In 1849
the brothers were burned out, without insurance. They repaired their
machinery, built a temporary shed over it, and were at work again in two
weeks. The present company was formed in 1858.
The Putnam company has been influential in other lines than machine
tools. Putnam engines were for many years among the best known in the
country, and the company was also intimately concerned with the early
development of the rock drill, through Charles Burleigh, the head of their
planer department and the inventor of the Burleigh drill. In fact, the first
successful drills, those for the Hoosac tunnel, together with the compressors,
were designed and built in the Putnam shops. Sylvester Wright, who founded
the Fitchburg Machine Works, was for ten years foreman of their lathe
department, and most of the old mechanics in and about Fitchburg were
Putnam men.
Scattered here and there are other companies. At Nashua were Gage,
Warner & Whitney, to which we have referred, and the Flather Manufacturing
Company which was founded by Joseph Flather, an Englishman, in 1867.
The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee Falls came from the old
Ames & Fisher shop at North Chelmsford. This was started by Nathan P.
Ames, Senior, in 1791, who operated a trip hammer and other machinery,
making edged tools and millwork. The shop was burned in 1810, and he
moved to Dedham, Mass., for a year or so, but returned and resumed his
former business on the old site. His sons, Nathan P., Jr., and James T.,
learned their trade with their father. The older brother, Nathan, moved to
Chicopee Falls in 1829. James joined him in 1834. The Ames Manufacturing
Company, formed the same year, lived for sixty years and employed at one
time over a thousand men. From the start they had close relations with the
Government and did an extensive business in all kinds of military supplies,
swords, bayonets, guns, cannon, cavalry goods, etc. They cast bronze
statuary, and the famous doors of the Capitol at Washington were made by
them. They rivaled Robbins & Lawrence in gun machinery and shared with
them the order for the Enfield Armory. This contract alone took three years to
complete. Their gun-stock machinery went to nearly every government in
Europe.
Figure 46. Lucius W. Pond
 Figure 47. Salmon W. Putnam

In addition to all this they built the famous Boydon waterwheel, mill
machinery, and a list of standard machine tools quite as catholic as that of
Gage, Warner & Whitney. They did their work well, contributed material
improvements to manufacturing methods and had one of the most influential
shops of their day.
Most of the plants for manufacturing woodworking machinery can be
traced back to a comparatively small area limited approximately by Fitchburg,
Gardner, Keene and Nashua. This section was poor farming land, rough and
heavily wooded, and the ingenuity of its inhabitants was early directed toward
utilizing the timber. Mr. Smith, of the H. B. Smith Company of Smithville, N.
J., came originally from Woodstock, Vt., and Walter Haywood started at
Gardner. J. A. Fay and Edward Josslyn began manufacturing woodworking
machinery as J. A. Fay & Company at Keene, in 1836. In 1853 they felt the
need of better facilities and purchased Tainter & Childs’ shop at Worcester,
which was manufacturing the Daniels wood planer. Mr. Fay died soon after,
and the business passed through the hands of H. A. Richardson, Josslyn’s
nephew, to Richardson, Merriam & Company. They built up a good business
before the Civil War, and had branch offices in New York, Chicago, and
Cincinnati.
In the early sixties the western agents bought the name of J. A. Fay &
Company and started manufacturing at Cincinnati. Later this was united with
the Egan Company, and the present J. A. Fay & Egan Company formed.
When J. A. Fay & Company was started at Cincinnati, machinery,
superintendent and mechanics were brought from Worcester, and, as the
name implies, the present company was a direct descendant from the old
Worcester and Keene enterprise.
Winchendon, in the center of the district referred to, has long been known
for its woodworking machinery. Baxter D. Whitney began there before 1840.
He died in 1915, aged ninety-eight years, the last of the early generation of
mechanics. For many years he was a leader in the development of
woodworking tools, and the business which he founded is still in successful
operation under the management of his son, William M. Whitney.
Springfield, although an important manufacturing city, has had few
prominent tool builders. One company, however, the Baush Machine Tool
Company, has built up a wide reputation for drilling machines, especially
large multiple spindle machines.
 CHAPTER XVIII
THE NAUGATUCK VALLEY
The most casual consideration of New England’s mechanical
development brings one squarely against a most interesting and baffling
phase of American industrial life, the brass industry of the Naugatuck
Valley. Here, in a narrow district scarcely thirty miles long, centering
about Waterbury, is produced approximately 80 per cent of the rolled
brass and copper and finished brass wares used in the United States, an
output amounting to upward of $80,000,000 a year. No concentration on
so large a scale exists elsewhere in the country. For example, in 1900,
Pennsylvania produced but 54 per cent of the iron and steel, and
Massachusetts but 45 per cent of the boots and shoes. Furthermore,
there seems to be no serious tendency to dislodge it. While there is more
competition from outside, its ascendency is nearly as marked today as it
was a generation ago. Why should this small district, a thousand miles or
more from its sources of raw material, far from its market, and without
cheap coal or adequate water power, gain and hold this leadership?[197]
[197] The best study of the brass industry of the Naugatuck Valley has been
made by William G. Lathrop, and has been published by him at Shelton, Conn.,
1909, under the name of “The Brass Industry.” Mr. Lathrop had intimate
knowledge of the subject and, in addition, unusual facilities for investigation. The
personal history of many of the men who have figured in its growth will be found
in Anderson’s “History of the Town and City of Waterbury,” 3 vols. 1895.

It was not the first in the field. The Revere Copper Company, in
Massachusetts, founded by Paul Revere, began rolling copper in 1801,
and the Soho Copper Company, at Belleville, N. J., in 1813. The brass
business in Connecticut had its origin with Henry Grilley, of Waterbury,
who began making pewter buttons there in 1790. In 1802 Abel and Levi
Porter joined him, and they started making brass buttons under the
name of Abel Porter & Company. In 1811 all the original partners retired
and a new firm was formed, Leavenworth, Hayden & Scovill. In 1827
Leavenworth and Hayden sold out to William H. Scovill, and the firm