19th Century Concord-based Pencil Industry
The American pencil industry started in Concord in the 19th century. In 1812, William Munroe, a Concord-based cabinet maker, became the first American to successfully manufacture and sell wood-encased pencils. Munroe's main competitor later became the Thoreau family pencil business in Concord, run by John Thoreau, father of Henry David Thoreau. John Thoreau's brother-in-law, Charles Dunbar, discovered a deposit of graphite in Bristol, New Hampshire, in 1821. In 1823, Dunbar asked John Thoreau to join him in manufacturing pencils from this graphite. Later, Dunbar left the firm, and it acquired the name John Thoreau & Company. Henry David Thoreau worked at his family's factory for most of his adult life.
Read more about this topic: Nashoba Brook Pencil Factory Site
Famous quotes containing the words pencil and/or industry:
“Then my verse I dishonour, my pictures despise,
My person degrade & my temper chastise;
And the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame;
And my talents I bury, and dead is my fame.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“I have never yet spoken from a public platform about women in industry that someone has not said, “But things are far better than they used to be.” I confess to impatience with persons who are satisfied with a dangerously slow tempo of progress for half of society in an age which requires a much faster tempo than in the days that “used to be.” Let us use what might be instead of what has been as our yardstick!”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)