The Goodell-Pratt Company could trace its lineage back to Goodell Brothers, a small firm founded in 1888 when two Millers Falls Company employees, Albert D. Goodell, the plant superintendent, and his brother Henry, a foreman, left the firm to start a business in nearby Shelburne Falls. Experienced machinists, the men manufactured boring tools, clamps, chucks and automatic screwdrivers at that location until 1892. In that year, Albert Goodell left the company; a third brother, Dexter W., joined the firm; and the business was relocated to Greenfield, where a new shop was built on Wells Street. Dexter Goodell did not stay with the operation for long—he sold his interest when the Goodell Brothers & Company was incorporated in 1895.(1)
The Goodell Brothers operation in Greenfield was neither large, nor particularly successful. The number of employees in the factory is reported as having been between sixteen and twenty-four, and Henry Goodell served as owner, manager, master mechanic, tool sharpener, and machine setup person. Annual sales were in the vicinity of of $30,000. The factory consisted of a single two-story brick building—100 feet by thirty feet, equipped with a boiler that provided heat in the winter and the energy needed to run the twenty-five horsepower engine which drove the belts that powered the shop's machinery.(2) Since there was no foundry, castings were purchased from outside suppliers, brought to the plant from the local freight depot by two-horse wagon and machined locally.
While still involved in Goodell Brothers, Henry Goodell opened a hacksaw manufactory with his son Harry G. Goodell. The operation came to an unfortunate end—the younger Goodell was in poor health and could not continue in the enterprise. The business, Goodell, Son & Company, was sold to Goodell Bros. in 1898. Looking for a less strenuous career, Harry Goodell tried his hand at the grocery business but was soon forced to give that up as well. Harry Gaines Goodell died in 1900, a few days short of his twenty-sixth birthday. The site of the Goodell, Son & Co. operation is not certain, but it may have been the operation reported to have been located in a second floor room of the Goodell Brothers building where metal cutting saws were manufactured under the watchful eye of hacksaw expert Herbert D. Lanfair. A man of many talents, Lanfair had developed a four-faced spoke shave for the Millers Falls Company in 1893. In 1895, he assigned the rights to his hand drill patent no. 544,411 to Goodell Brothers. In 1897, he cooperated with Henry Goodell on a patent for a reversible automatic screwdriver and in 1900 patented a design for a magazine to hold drill points. When his association with the various Goodell companies ended, "he drifted to Springfield and New Haven, always in the hack business."(3)
In 1898, when Henry E. Goodell sold Goodell Brothers to William M. Pratt, the company's treasurer and manager, the business was doing well enough to export some of its production to Europe—an accomplishment that was very likely the result of Pratt's sales ability. William Pratt renamed the business in 1899—calling it the Goodell-Pratt Company; Henry Goodell went on to become involved in the founding of the Greenfield Machine Company.
When Albert D. Goodell sold his share of the Goodell Brothers Company in 1892, he did so to go into business with his son Frederick. The men moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, and there established the Goodell Tool Company. The following year, they returned to Shelburne Falls "renting the space and power of the H. H. Mayhew Company, remaining until 1904, when they purchased the Peg Shop of J.R. Foster, located on the Buckland side of the river." When the Goodell Tool Company became a corporation in 1907, one half of its ownership passed on to William M. Pratt's Goodell-Pratt Company. After the incorporation, Albert Goodell served as president; Francis R. Pratt, the father of William M. Pratt, served as vice-president; and Frederick Goodell was employed as its clerk. In 1918, several years after the death of Albert Goodell, the Goodell Tool Company was taken over in its entirety by Goodell-Pratt. Its factory was abandoned and operations were transferred to the new Goodell-Pratt plant in Shelburne Falls. After the closure, Frederick A. Goodell stayed on in town and set up a modest manufactory on Water Street for the production of small tools. He died in 1929.(4)
After Henry E. Goodell sold Goodell Brothers, he became the first president of the Greenfield Machine Company. Greenfield Machine was sold to Edward F. Smith shortly afterward, and Henry Goodell left to form the Goodell Manufacturing Company with his son-in-law, Perley E. Fay. Goodell Manufacturing became a corporation in 1902 with the Goodell-Pratt Company serving as part owner and sole distributor of its products. Goodell Manufacturing was a relatively modest affair with a factory located in a one-story building on West Main Street in Greenfield. Henry Goodell retired from the operation in 1916, and after his death in 1923, William Pratt, the president of Goodell-Pratt, assumed the presidency of Goodell Manufacturing. In March, 1930, the Goodell-Pratt Company purchased the remainder of the Goodell Manufacturing Company from Perley E. Fay and moved its equipment to the main Goodell-Pratt plant on Wells Street. At the time of the transaction, Goodell Manufacturing's primary business involved the production of miter boxes.(5)
William M. Pratt, the man who acquired Goodell Brothers and renamed it the Goodell-Pratt Company, was a third-generation tool man. His grandfather, Josiah Pratt, worked as a young man in axe manufacturing at Buckland Center, Massachusetts. He patented an axe-making machine in 1832, and shortly thereafter relocated to Charlemont to establish an axe and scythe manufactory. Eleven years later, Josiah Pratt moved the operation to a better site in Shelburne Falls where he conducted his business on Deerfield Street until his retirement in 1865.
Francis R. Pratt, the second son of Josiah Pratt, was the father of William M. Pratt. He grew up working in the family axe-making enterprise but left at age 27 for a position with W.H. Maynard & Company, a Shelburne Falls tool manufacturer. Five years later, Francis Pratt moved to Worcester, Massachusetts, to accept a position in the office of Maynard's wholesale grain dealership. He returned to Shelburne Falls in 1872 and became superintendent of the H.S. Shepardson & Company, a local hardware manufacturer. When Shepardson died in 1876, the firm was sold to H.H. Mayhew. Francis Pratt remained with the operation, adding the title of manger to that of superintendent. He became the firm's assistant treasurer in 1886 and on Mayhew's death in 1894 became treasurer.(6)
William M. Pratt brought substantial experience to the presidency of Goodell-Pratt. After completing his education at Arms Academy, he moved to South Dakota, became a newspaper publisher and worked for a time as cashier of a bank. In 1890, he returned to Shelburne Falls to become secretary of the hardware manufacturer H.H. Mayhew and later worked as a sales representative for Wells Brothers—the firm that was to become Greenfield Tap & Die. An investment in Goodell Brothers in 1895 resulted in his becoming manager and treasurer of the company. After organizing a buyout in 1898 and becoming president, William Pratt changed the name of the business to Goodell-Pratt and wasted little time in expanding the operation.
In 1900, Pratt organized the Massachusetts Tool Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Goodell-Pratt, to manufacture machinist's and precision tools in Greenfield. Massachusetts Tool was run as a union shop, giving it an edge over his competitors—the non-union Starrett and Brown & Sharpe shops—in situations where customers preferred a supplier with a unionized labor force.(7) In 1901, Massachusetts Tool purchased the patents to a precision rule manufactured by Coffin & Leighton, of Syracuse, New York, and to a pair of micrometers built by the Lavigne Micrometer Company of New Haven, Connecticut.(8) Located in Greenfield at No. 1 Wells Street, the Massachusetts Tool Company was absorbed by Goodell-Pratt in 1912.
William Pratt built his company as much by acquisition as by product development. When the Richardson-Oliver Company, an Athol, Massachusetts-based manufacturer of calipers, levels, and scientific equipment, trimmed its line in 1904, Goodell-Pratt acquired the rights to a marking gage and its C.F. Richardson line of spirit levels. As opportunities arose, Pratt invested his company's resources in the enterprises of the Albert and Henry Goodell. The Goodell brothers were first rate mechanics (in the 19th century sense of the word) whose interests and talents in design and production exceeded their ability to raise capital. Their initial partnership, and later, their individual businesses, came under the control of William Pratt when they needed funding to finance construction or expansion. Of course, viewpoint is everything, it may be that the brothers considered themselves successful beyond their wildest dreams. They did very well financially, and between them, they had built three businesses noteworthy enough to merit investment by an individual the caliber of William Pratt.
In 1912, Goodell-Pratt acquired the Stratton Level Company, a well-known manufacturer of carpenter's and machinist's levels. A Greenfield fixture since 1869, the company had been founded as Stratton Brothers by Edwin A. and Charles M. Stratton, onetime building contractors who wanted to exploit their patent for adding brass strips to the edges of wooden levels to protect them from dings and chips. The levels were a success, and one of the operation's best customers would turn out to be the Millers Falls Company. Millers Falls catalogs featured Stratton wooden levels from 1878 until almost 1890. The levels would reappear in the catalog in the mid-1890s after the Millers Falls Company's attempts to manufacture its own levels came to naught. The brothers' partnership lasted until Charles' death in 1893.
Edwin Stratton's son-in-law, the company's production supervisor, Roland O. Stetson, bought the business in 1902 and continued in his former position after the purchase. He renamed the business Stratton Level Company in 1908. Roland Stetson continued the Stratton tradition of high-quality wooden levels but expanded the line to include a number of moderately priced tools as well. The Goodell-Pratt Company moved the Stratton operation to its main factory shortly after the 1912 purchase, and Roland O. Stetson became a Goodell-Pratt employee. The acquisition of the Stratton Level Company brought a well-respected line of wooden levels to Goodell-Pratt—an addition that proved a nice complement to the metallic levels that it had been marketing since the acquisition of the C. F. Richardson line.(9)
Ducharmes & Company, a manufacturer of such small tools as screwdrivers, awls and punches located in Shelburne Falls, fell to Goodell-Pratt's voracious appetite in 1915. Via its acquisition and affiliates, the Goodell-Pratt Company was able to market a diverse product line fairly early in its history. In addition to awls, bit braces, levels, mitre boxes, breast drills, hand drills, push drills and screwdrivers, the company maintained a line that ranged from automotive tools to washer cutters. The main plant saw major expansions in 1913 and 1917, and during World War I, the Goodell-Pratt workforce reached an all time high—740 employees. In 1925, the company added power tools to its offerings when it acquired the electric drill operation of the A.F. Way Company, of Hartford, Connecticut.
Although the company continued to expand throughout the 1920s, it was not well-positioned for a catastrophic economic downturn. At the time of the 1929 stock market crash, Goodell-Pratt was operating three factories—two in Greenfield (the main plant and the former Goodell Manufacturing Company) and one in Shelburne Falls (the former Goodell Tool Company)—and maintaining a line of 1500 tools. When the stock market crashed in 1929, these measures of success translated into excess production capacity and a bloated product line. Profitability plummeted, and in 1930, Goodell-Pratt stock reached a low of fifty cents a share. John W. Smead, a Millers Fall Company's vice-president and an executive at Goodell-Pratt's bank, understood the financials and considered Goodell's stock to be undervalued. Smead acquired enough of the outstanding shares to seek a merger, and in 1931 Goodell-Pratt became a part of the Millers Falls Company.(10)
Illustrations:
Henry G. Goodell portrait: Biographical Review: Sketches of the Leading Citizens of Franklin County,
Massachusetts. Boston: Biographical Review Publishing Company, 1895.
Lanfair shave: Catalogue no. 35. Millers Falls, Mass. : Millers Falls Co., 1915.
Edwin A. Stratton portrait: Biographical Review.
Goodell-Pratt factories: Complete catalog number 17.
Greenfield, Mass. : Goodell-Pratt Company, 1930.
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