Levi J. Gunn

Levi J. Gunn, the first treasurer and second president of the Millers Falls Company, was born in Conway, Massachusetts, on June 2, 1830. He was the son of a blacksmith (also named Levi Gunn) and Delia Dickinson. The younger Gunn worked at his father’s trade until the age of eighteen and then hired on at the Conway Tool Company, a manufacturer of wooden planes. When Conway Tool was destroyed by fire in 1851, two of its principals, Alonzo Parker and Daniel Rice II, restarted the operation in the nearby town of Greenfield, renamed it the Greenfield Tool Company and re-hired Levi J. Gunn to work at the new factory. Gunn’s skills were substantial enough that the job was likely his for the asking. He was one of five men at Greenfield Tool assigned the difficult task of making complex wooden plow planes.

The company’s operation included a sawmill. A ledger from the years 1853 and 1854 indicates that most of the timber for planes and packing crates was purchased locally and that the operation generated steam power from the scrap resulting from its manufacturing processes. During these early years, employment ranged between sixty-five and seventy-five men. Those involved in actual production were paid by the piece with the result that the ledger’s detailed records of wages paid are quite informative. It can be determined, for example, that Levi Gunn specialized in the making of match planes as well as plows. One entry, for July 30, 1853, indicates that he produced sixty-five plow planes that month. Most of them were made of boxwood, and Gunn earned $80.90 for his efforts.⁽¹⁾

While at the Greenfield Tool Company, Gunn became acquainted with Charles H. Amidon, a talented planemaker and machinist who hailed from from the nearby village of Monroe. The men got on well, and their abilities were such that they soon became holders of the contract for the manufacture of all of the company’s tools. Innovators by nature and interested in production, the pair developed and installed machinery to minimize the amount of handwork going into the operation’s manufactured goods. In 1861, while still employed by the Tool Company, Gunn and Amidon established a small business in Greenfield for the manufacture of household wash wringers.⁽²⁾

When it became apparent that the wringer enterprise had a chance of success, the men left their jobs at Greenfield Tool to direct their attention to the new endeavor. Although Gunn initially served as sole proprietor, Charles H. Amidon became a partner in December 1863, and the business was renamed Gunn & Amidon. The company’s primary product was a wash wringer Amidon had patented in 1862. It sold well, and an improved version was brought out three years later. The defining moment for the business, however, occurred in 1864, when the partners bought the rights to a bit-brace developed by William H. Barber. Sales of the device were astonishing. The introduction of the brace led to a gradual de-emphasis on the wringer business. Additional bit braces were introduced, and in 1868, new investors were brought in. The business was reorganized as the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company and work on a new factory at the falls of the Millers River was begun.

Levi Gunn became treasurer of the new company; Henry L. Pratt, a well-to-do lumber dealer, became President. Gunn’s former partner, Charles Amidon, did not serve as an officer but was installed as plant superintendent. Pratt left for New York City almost immediately in order to establish a sales office, while Gunn remained on site, serving as general manager of the operation and finding a replacement for Amidon, who left the business two years after it was organized. Owing much of its good fortune to the quality of its boring tools, the Millers Falls Manufacturing Company prospered. In 1873, it merged with the Backus Vise Company, a smaller firm located just next door to its factory. Since Levi Gunn and Henry Pratt held sizeable positions in Backus Vise and served as that company’s president (Pratt) and secretary (Gunn), the merger of the businesses was not entirely unexpected. The enterprise formed by the merger was renamed the Millers Falls Company, and under the leadership of Pratt, Gunn and somewhat later, George E. Rogers, it went on to become one of the leading manufacturers of hand tools in the United States. A textbook example of New England stability, Gunn’s tenure as Millers Falls Company Treasurer lasted twenty-eight years.

With the death of Henry Pratt in 1900, Levi J. Gunn became president of the company he helped to found—a position he held until his retirement in 1910 at the age of eighty. Though he remained active in Millers Falls Company affairs for over four decades, Gunn chose to reside in the city of Greenfield, rather than in the rough-and-tumble village of Millers Falls, and as his financial prospects improved, he became more involved in the community. The former blacksmith’s apprentice lived in a stately home on Main Street, sponsored baseball teams, became active in Republican Party politics, served on the Financial Committee of the local Congregational Church and even sought public office. At one time or another, Levi Gunn served as selectman and assessor in Greenfield, as state senator and as a member of the Republican State Control Committee. In addition to his holdings in the Millers Falls Company, Gunn maintained a financial interest in the Greenfield Savings Bank, was an incorporator of the Greenfield Electric Light and Power Company, and served as president of the Franklin County Public Hospital. Edward P. Stoughton succeeded Gunn as company president.

Levi J. Gunn died in Greenfield, September 9, 1916.

Patents

Illustration credits

• Portrait: Hardware Dealers Magazine, v. 43, no. 253, January 1915.
• Levi Gunn house: Greenfield: One Hundred Fifty Years Old. Greenfield, Mass.: C. Moody, 1903.

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