John Samuel Rowell - Career and Accomplishments

Career and Accomplishments

The name John S. Rowell, founder and president of the J. S. Rowell Manufacturing Company, makers of the Tiger Seeders and Grain Drills, hay rakes, and cultivators, should occupy a high place in the list of inventors of practical agricultural implements. Like a number of men of his time, he achieved success in the agricultural implement world with no opportunity other than those produced by his own efforts. In addition to founding the JS Rowell Manufacturing Company, he was also one of the 1881 incorporators and a Director of the Beaver Dam Cotton Mills, as a founding incorporator and director of the Beaver Dam Malleable Iron Works which grew to titanic proportions, Beaver Dam Electric Light Company, and President of the Old National Bank in Beaver Dam from 1896 until his death in 1907.

On the occasion of Rowell’s death, the Mayor or Beaver Dam M.J. Jacobs proclaimed, “For over sixty years has been an upright, enterprising, industrious, patriotic, public spirited and continuous resident of our city, and at all times prominently identified with its industrial development and business life. Furthermore, Mayor Jacobs requested “…that all business places, manufacturing concerns, and official places of business be closed during the afternoon of his funeral on Wednesday, October 23, 1907 from 1 until 4:30 o’clock, and that the city flag during all of said be displayed at half mast, and that all our citizens who can conveniently do so, attend the funeral of one of the most worthy and esteemed citizens who has ever resided in our midst.”