Famous Brockwayville (Brockway) Citizen: Wendell McMinn August
Wendell McMinn August was born in the town of Rew, McKean County ten miles from Bradford, in 1885. His mother, Charlotte (McMinn) August of Brockwayville died in childbirth and her infant son came to her hometown at the age of three weeks, taken in by his uncle and aunt, Daniel, and Margaret (McMinn) Groves. His older sister, Myrtle, was taken in by another uncle and aunt.
Daniel Groves was a well-respected merchant in Brockwayville and provided a good home for young August as he made his way through the local school system, except for the one year he spent at a private military school in New York State. He returned to Brockwayville and clerked in the local post office for a couple of years before enrolling at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA with a major in science and engineering. He graduated in 1907 with a Bachelor of Science degree.
He spent the next two years quietly teaching mathematics. Then he experienced a complete change in his way of life, he traveled extensively through the wild country of the northwestern United States working in construction, mining, and railroading - wherever he could find a job. He finally came back to Brockwayville in 1912 at age 27, married Jessie McVean Palmer of Johnsonburg.
By the time of World War I, the couple had two sons and Wendell was a coal broker, along with maintaining an interest in the Groves Store and a number of other area businesses. In the early 1920’s , Wendell August took on the task of building a brick home on the corner of Main Street and Twelfth Avenue. The houst still stands today and is located two doors down from the Maple Shade Mansion!
Being an industrious individual with an engineering background, Mr. August was presented with a challenge while making modifications to his original plans for his home. This change in plans would eventually lead to the creation of the Wendell August Forge Company, As the construction of the house progressed, he added two extra outside doors. that required forged iron door latches. He had already purchased the other forged iron door latches, and wasn't able to find a suitable match for the two additional doors so he asked Ottone (Otto)Tony Pisoni, a blacksmith at the August coal mine, to make a set as nearly like the originals as possible. This wasn't much of a challenge for the experienced blacksmith, and he turned out the two latches in a couple of hours at a cost of about $4.
Another motivation to establish the company that would hold his name was provided by his wife Jessie August after a return from a shopping trip to Buffalo with a bridge lamp, set upon a forged base, that had cost her about $30. Wendell made a bet with his wife that he could make a dozen such stands for the same amount of money, and consequently, put his blacksmith to work on the project. They found that the shop could produce the same item at a cost of $2 each, a substantial return on investment compared to the original cost of $30
This manufacturing opportunity set August to thinking of other business possibilities using this manufacturing process. He had paid about $35 each for the original latches and there was a lamp stand that was being sold for a profit of about $25 - $28. He immediately hired Mr. Pisoni in a new capacity as a maker of hand-wrought iron items. In his later years, Pisoni maintained a blacksmith shop in his backyard.
Whatever stories may have been told, it all led to the establishment of a whole new business in the Brockwayville area. Wendell August began his first forge behind Axel Johnson's Maxwell Automobile Agency at the corner of Main and McCain streets, According to Lew Reddinger's history of the Brockway area, with only a few workers August began turning out to a small but elite market some of the finest wrought iron intricate works of art produced here or abroad. Aiding in designing and forging were Otto Pisoni, his well-known artisan-blacksmith, and Natale Rossi, artist and designer.
After only two years in business, Johnson's Garage burned to the ground, and the Wendell August Forge went with it. August salvaged what he could from the ruins and moved into Sam Keller's empty blacksmith shop just south-east of the corner of Broad Street and Fifth Avenue. A few years later, the operation was moved into a temporary building on the site of the former B & B Shock Absorber Plant at the corner of Wood and Evergreen, now the site of the Brockway's Center for Art and Technology (BCAT.) A new building was built, and the company prospered and continued to gather a large share of the market for this type of artwork.
As his fortunes grew, Mr. August devoted more and more time to his variety of business ventures, and found it necessary to spend more of his time away from home. According to Reddinger's history, a handsome young lawyer by the name of Finch came onto the scene, established a law office and insurance agency in town, and worked his way into a romantic interlude with Mrs. August. Unfortunately, Mr. August arrived home unexpectedly from a business trip and found the couple in what was reported as an amorous embrace. What transpired that night was not divulged, but what happened later brought Brockway (as it was now known after 1925) columns of free publicity in some of the big metropolitan dailies.
It seems that, a few days later, when Finch came out of the post office shuffling through his daily mail, he was pounced upon by four men who took him for an automobile ride in the true gangland style of the mid-twenties. Somewhere out along Game School Road in a dense stand of woods, the men stripped the shaken lawyer to his birthday suit, and with his hands bound behind his back, applied liberal coats of warm roofing tar. Then followed the inevitable shower of white feathers.
Attorney Finch was taken to DuBois Hospital where the tar and feathers mixture was carefully removed. He subsequently decided to sell his business and was soon gone from the community. Charges were filed against Mr. August and his three henchmen, all of whom pleaded guilty, were fined, and placed on probation. The Pittsburgh newspapers played it up for all it was worth. A tar-and-feathers party was real news in those days.
In the fall of 1929, the crash of the stock market wiped out much of the value of listed securities and brought on the Great Depression. August lost everything but his forge. As the world began to pull back together, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) was beginning to research new uses for its products. The company contracted with August to create a new set of elaborate aluminum gates for its Aluminum Research Laboratories near New Kensington, outside of Pittsburgh. This opened a whole new field for the August Forge and led to many other contracts for work in banks, businesses, and industry throughout the country.
Plagued by the tragic death of a son in a plane crash near Uniontown, and the burden of the family scandal, Wendell August gave in to the appeals from business interests in Grove City and moved his business to that area in 1932. Since that time, the Wendell August Forge has continued to create unique hand-forged gifts in aluminum, bronze, pewter, and sterling silver.
Although various pamphlets had described the products of the Wendell August Forge and had included a brief history, no book had ever been written about the company. Bonita J. Campbell, Ph.D., a professor of engineering at California State University at Northridge, has been researching the history of mid-20th Century decorative art aluminum production. During this research, she and her husband assembled an extensive collection of decorative art aluminum, which includes many items created by the Wendell August Forge.
Her book, published in 1998 The Wendell August Forge: Seventy Five Years of Artistry in Metal is enriched with more than 150 full-color and black-and-white photographs and illustrations, including 68 archival images, featuring hundreds of items. The book includes much more of the history of the forge, profiles of selected aluminum artisans, and a detailed appendix of information.
The historic Wendell August Forge factory in Grove City, Pennsylvania, was destroyed in a major fire on Sunday, March 7, 2010. The company has made aluminum, pewter and other metal pieces since 1923. The employees and customers who were in the building when the fire started were all able to get out unharmed.
On October 9th, 2013, Wendell August opened its new flagship store, factory and headquarters at 2074 Leesburg-Grove City Rd, 1/2 mile west of the Grove City Premium Outlets in Springfield Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania. The new 52,000 square foot facility includes a history center and offers tours of the factory
