Earlier this week, over at the Mill they posted a note about the Salem Cigar Factory.
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| via FB |
They note the industry was "long forgotten."
Well, there are reasons for that! It was never a large industry, really only the scale of small business and cottage industry, and one of many attempts at "home industry" that never panned out in any enduring or significant way.
Plus, tobacco, and all that implies.
Still, there are a number of interesting threads that connect here and radiate outward. There are still some details to settle, so these are notes only, provisional in some cases.
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| August 8th, 1895 |
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| February 25th, 1905 |
This note from 1905 contains some interesting observations about importing tobacco from distant lands, about the capital tied up in ageing tobacco inventory, and about the factory location, which may have been in one of the Moores buildings, or the Bush-Breyman block. It's hard to say how reliable are these details, however. They could just be hyping inferior tobacco. But if it is true, that is evidence for international trading networks.
Mr. Huckestein is obliged, in the making of 350,000 cigars a year, to keep a big lot of money invested in leaf tobacco. He has stacks of it, for wrappers, running as high as $5 a pound.
He has on hand tobacco grown in Sumatra, Cuba, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and several other states. Some of the tobacco, if not all of it, must have age before being made into cigars. It must ago for two years or more.
The Salem cigar factory occupies a considerable floor space upstairs in tho building next to the Capital National bank. It is up off the street, and very little is known by the general public of its workings.
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| On either side of the Bank Also note bikes! (c. 1913, University of Oregon) |
Here's an early 19-teens image of Commercial Street looking north from State Street. The Pioneer Trust building is up, so it's after that was completed. But there are still horse-drawn carts and lots of bikes in the street. The last bit of the Moores building hasn't been hollowed out for the drive-thru, and the Bush-Breyman building is twice as large. This ad corresponds to a billboard in the photo and is at the right location, so I propose January, 1913 as the date of the image.
The cigar factory could be on the second floor of either of the Moores or Bush-Breyman buildings.
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| May 7th, 1907 |
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| January 1st, 1910 and December 30th, 1911 |
An inventory in 1911 of Salem manufacturing noted the Pickle and Vinegar factory was at least twice the size of the cigar factory. Logging and lumber were more than an order of magnitude larger. Despite all the "boosting" hype in the paper, cigar manufacture was a minor industry.
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| January 2nd, 1911 |
In 1913 August Huckestein secured an appointment at Postmaster, and apparently he resigned or retreated from the cigar factory, and his son took over management of it.
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| May 21st, 1913 |
That receipt the Mill shared from 1918 referred to the son, known as A. E. Huckestein, and was also from another son, Samuel Adolph, Jr. son of Samuel Adolph, Sr. It is a little amusing - and confusing - that both sides of the transaction shared names with their fathers.
The cigar factory moved around, with at least one address on Chemeketa
Street between Liberty and Commercial after the Commercial Street
address.
Though the address for Adolph Bros. on the receipt, 356 State Street, is for what is now Taproot in the J. K. Gill building, the elder Samuel Adolph had erected the Adolph block next door in 1880.
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| Adolph Block of 1880 (via Wikipedia) |
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| At the entry to Wild Pear |
The entry to Wild Pear has a tiled mosaic for Hauser Bros., and they appear to have purchased the building in 1920. (The paper says it was purchased from Thompson and Lafore, so there is a little uncertainty there, however. I would have expected it to have remained with Sam Adolph. Perhaps we can clarify that another day.)
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| November 13th, 1920 |
Because of Paul Hauser's time as an early bike dealer has been of interest, the successor sporting goods business called Hauser Bros. has also been of interest.
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| November 26th, 1938 |
The elder Huckestein died in 1938, and is buried in St. Barbara's. His son appears to have lived to 1980 and may be buried in Warrenton.
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| January 7th, 1887 |
Sam Adolph, Sr. died in 1893 and is buried in City View, and his son, Samuel Adolph, Jr. didn't die until 1981 and is in Mt. Crest Abbey at City View. Because of the elder Adolph's house on State Street, a near copy of the Bush house, his role in brewing history, and the extant Adolph block, he has got more attention than the Huckesteins or the younger Adolph. The younger's house is also still around, on Commercial Street at the foot of Fairmount Hill.
Eva Adolph, sister of the younger Sam Adolph, married Isadore Greenbaum, and the family has an important place in local Jewish history, which deserves more attention.
About Huckestein there has seemed to be less to say. Maybe more will turn up on him another time.
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