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
Frederick E. Anthony, who for many years was in charge of the automatic screw machine tool designing at the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Co., died October 8, on his fifty-eighth birthday. Mr. Anthony was born in East Providence, and at the age of seventeen entered Brown & Sharpe's employ as an apprentice. He remained with the company until January, 1890, after which he worked with the Eastman Kodak Company and with Bugbee & Niles, of North Attleboro. In October, 1898, he again returned to the employ of the company, where he remained up to the time of his death. He represented the type of a trained mechanic which has made so much for the progress of mechanical lines in this country. He was fertile in devising ways and means of doing work, and his sound mechanical judgment and training kept him from various pitfalls that are so apt to embarrass a mechanical genius. Through his advice and experience, many of the details of the automatic screw machines were brought out.
Plans have been practically completed for the removal of the Bugbee and Niles Company of Providence to North Attleboro. This firm employs about 60 hands and has enjoyed a prosperous business during the past few years and will be a welcome addition to the jewelry industry in North Attleboro. Alpin Chisholm, president of the Bugbee and Niles Co., is a resident of North Attleboro and he has been instrumental in making the change. The board of trade took an active interest in securing a location for the new firm and to them may be given much of the credit for its advent there.
Leavens Mfg. Company Will Merge With Bugbee and Niles Company
Bugbee & Niles Co. of North Attleboro, Mass., will be affiliated in the future with the Leavens Mfg. Co. of Attleboro, Mass.., a new company, it has been announced.
The officers of the Leavens Mfg. Co. will be Theodore Leavens, president and treasurer; Ofin A. Armstrong, vice president, and Paul F. Armstrong, clerk.
A lease has been entered into with automatic Machine Products Co., Attleboro, for the necessary modern and fireproof space with arrangements for the new company to expand. The new company will cover a wide field in the special order type of production, including specialty metal and plastic parts, jewelry, promotional material, decorative trims, screw machine parts, organizational and emblem material of all descriptions.
Leavens has become a director and vice president of Bugbee & Niles Co. which firm will remain under the same ownership and at its present location.
Source: The Jewelers' Circular-Keystone - May 1948
