The Wild Wild umm, East?

My dad's maternal grandfather, William McClurken worked as a delivery driver for a hat manufacturer. While I do not know what exactly he delivered, I know he hitched up his horse-drawn wagon early each day and took it through the streets of Philadelphia in an area known as Kensington, which lies just north of the central historic and market district. Later, he was to drive one of the very first of the "newfangled" gasoline powered trucks.

My Grandfather tells me that the streets "back then" were crowded with horse-drawn wagons and that several times a day, mobs of men would descend on the streets to clean up after the horses and that it was a glorious day when the eye-watering stench was no longer in the air and its cause, no longer underfoot.

Tragically, my great-grandfather was to die in a "newfangled" truck when he stalled one at a railroad crossing and was hit by on-rushing steam locomotive. I have a set of "ghostly" pictures showing the aftermath of the accident. He left behind a young and growing family which included my grandmother, My grandmother's older brother, merely a teenager at the time, out of desperate necessity, went to work as a delivery driver for the same hat manufacturer.

The hat manufacturer? Well, I'm sure you've heard of them. It might come as a surprise to you though...


The hat manufacturer was started by a young American entrepreneur in the mid 1800’s named John Batterson Stetson. John B. Stetson was one of 12 children and was born in 1830 in Orange, New Jersey. John B. hated the cold weather and chilly rain since made his tuberculosis worse. In 1859, on his doctor’s advice, the 24 year-old John B. moved out West.

By the 1860’s, John B. was panning for gold in Colorado but he found the rugged life made him sicker. One day, he was trapped in the mountains and threatened by sudden rainstorms and howling winds, and his clothing didn't keep him warm and dry. He noticed how beavers’ pelts repelled water in streams, so he trapped a few and created a thick fur felt that he used to make a hat.

His father, who taught John B. how to make felt in the first place, also taught him that a big air pocket between the top of the head and the hat's crown created a cushion of warm air that kept the head warm. Outdoor western living taught him that a hat had to have a wide brim to keep out the elements.

It also taught him that hauling water was vital on the frontier, so he made the inside lining of his hat waterproof. This meant it could double as a water bucket if needed. That’s how Stetson Hats got nicknamed the "10 Gallon" Hat even though they never held more than a half-gallon. Marketing hype... You got to love it.

In 1865, John B. returned to Philadelphia to open his first hat factory. With only $100 in capital, he rented a small room in the center of the city and bought tools and $10 worth of fur to make felt cloth. He was the sole employee. However, within a year, he was adding workers and making hats in quantity.

The hats were a huge hit in the growing American West. Stetson's novel idea of using traveling salesmen in 1869 created the need for more space to manufacture more hats. Another novel idea of his, to move his factory to the then quiet and largely rural Kensington area of the City, gave him the space he needed.

By 1886, Stetson owned the world’s largest hat factory and employed nearly 4,000 workers. John B. transformed hat making from a manual to a mechanized industry. The factory was putting out about 2 million hats a year by the time he died in 1906.


Though he set up his shop in Philadelphia, John B. Stetson decided to focus on serving customers in the American west to avoid competing in the cluttered east coast market. However, Stetson Hats manufactured far more than cowboy hats. The Stetson shop turned out high quality derbys, bowlers, top hats, straw boaters and the latest fashions, always packaged in unique Stetson-trademarked hat boxes.

Thus, the famous 10-gallon cowboy hat was made by the tens of millions in a Philadelphia neighborhood that became home to thousands of industrial buildings, breweries, and impoverished Irish immigrants living in rowhouses and now known as the (decayed remains of) the "Workshop of the World." It was there that the Stetson Company employed over 5,000 people and used 16 million animal pelts during its peak production period in the 1920s.

Twenty-five buildings occupied nine acres (totaling 32 acres of factory floor) and stood a few blocks away from my Grandfather's foundry. It was this close proximity that led my Grandfather to spot my very young Grandmother standing on a street corner waiting for a streetcar (trolley) one day in 1927 while driving to work which led to other things.


The Stetson plant in Philadelphia closed in 1971 following decades of slow decline. Today, nothing remains of the once mighty Stetson complex; the imposing eight-story Stetson clock tower at 4th and Montgomery burned down in 1980 and the remainder of the building was then demolished. The hats, however, are still being made today and sold from Garland, Texas.


An invoice for four hats sold to the Moise Bros. Co. in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, dated January, 31 1929. Total bill - $14.00.

http://www.workshopoftheworld.com/