Salt Brine and Stinkers: The Eddy Family in the Forest Products Industries of Nineteenth-Century Michigan and Quebec

In the first half of the nineteenth centurythe United Stateseconomy was breakingout of its colonial restraints. In the lumber industry this changewas most visibly geographic: by 1850 the success of lumber operations in Maine had peaked and mills were springing up in Michigan's Saginaw Valley as the industry moved west. Family-run firms following the supplyof raw materials tended to migrate, financing the movewith wealth accumulated from businesses that operated betweenthe time of the American Revolution and 1850. Two branches of the Eddyfamily followed the lumber industry's migration to Michigan,where they established sawmills and salt manufacturing in Bay City and Saginaw. Another branch of the family moved north to Hull, a small town in Quebec,where they established a factory for producing matches. The story of thesecompaniesis part business history-the technological and market development of salt manufacturingand match production-and part family history-the role playedby Eddy businessmen in developing the industries.