A topic for recording information regarding the jewelry business of Bugbee & Niles Co. of North Attleboro, Massachusetts.
The business was established in 1859 as Smith & Ginnodo, subsequently becoming C. E. Smith & Company, and later still, Bugbee & Niles Co. following Samuel H. Bugbee and Gardner H. Niles entering the business.
If you have any details of the above companies, advertisements, examples of their work, etc., anything that you are willing to share, then here's the place to post it.
The firm of Bugbee & Niles, manufacturing ten-karat jewelry and watch bracelets in ten, fourteen and eighteen-karat, and silver, consists of Alpin Chisholm, George A. Chisholm, C. L. Rhodes and Frank P. Kennedy, and has been in business about a half century. This house was founded as Smith & Ginnodo, afterwards becoming C. E. Smith & Company.
Source: A History of Bristol County, Massachusetts - Edited by Frank Walcott Hutt - 1924
The Bugbee & Niles Co. last week filed its annual financial statement as follows: Machinery, $12,857 ; cash and debts receivable, $54,775 ; manufactures and merchandise, $16,92727 ; capital stock, $50,000; profit and loss, $34,550. The officers of the corporation are; Daniel Chisholm, president; Charles Rhodes, vice-president, and Alpin Chisholm, treasurer.
One of the oldest manufacturing jewelry concerns in North Attleboro is the Bugbee & Niles Company, established in 1859, under the partnership title
of Smith & Ginnodo, subsequently becoming C. E. Smith & Company, and still later Bugbee & Niles Company, when Samuel H. Bugbee and Gardner
H. Niles entered the business, the firm name remaining unchanged to the present. A New York office has been maintained by the company for fifty
years.
For upwards of fifteen years the Bugbee & Niles Company was owned and managed by Alpin Chisholm, under whose direction the concern experienced many successful years in the manufacture of high grade gold jewelry. Toward the close of his management the concern successfully entered into the manufacture of high grade watch accessories, and these lines — gold plate, solid gold, and platinum — constitute a large part product at present.
The business was incorporated as the Bugbee & Niles Company many years ago, and the present management continued Mr. Chisholm’s policies of employee life insurance and a Christmas bonus, and has added the practice of a vacation with full pay to all persons who have been employed
by the concern for a year or more. The plant has run at capacity on full time for several years past.
Under the present management the company’s product has been broadened to include all that is latest and most fashionable in wrist-watch bracelets, originating the fourfold balanced mesh type, the expanded block type, exclusive buckle types with ribbon or leather, on all of which it holds basic patents.
The company enjoys a world wide reputation, its products going to Canada, Cuba, South America, Barbadoes, Europe, and even to far off India. It employs from 80 to 100 hands and is capitalized for $100,000. I. G. Chisholm is president and H. A. Gardner treasurer and secretary.
Source: History of Massachusett Industries-Their Inception, Growth and Success - Orra L. Stone - 1930
