An engraved view labeled Wilcox Silver Plate Co. in 1865. The accompanying history says the firm began as Wilcox Britannia in December 1865 and adopted the Silver Plate name in 1867.
Evidence, credit & reuse: Public Domain Mark 1.0. 1865, as labeled in the 1906 publication; retrospective company name. Selected crop; complete page is available at the original source. Historical book scan; minor source clipping, uneven margins and halftone texture retained. Full page preserved separately. Selected image visually inspected; objects and principal reading text upright. No generated, colorized, or reconstructed content.
Source: Charles Bancroft Gillespie and George Munson Curtis; Journal Publishing Co., Meriden; A Century of Meriden: The Silver City, part III; New York Public Library; digitized by Google; Internet Archive
Searchable text & research notes
Included OCR or searchable notes appear below and in the download. Use your browser’s Find command to search this page. OCR errors and historical language are retained.
Read the included text
M ANL'l ACTURIKS. 45 lifjht of its humble beginnings in 1852, intluced several gentlemen in the year 1865 to establish another company to cng^age in manufacturing the same general class of goods. The war was over, a period of great expansion and prosperity had developed during those critical years and there seemed no reason to believe that the period tannia Co. was organized in Decem- ber, 1865, with a capital of $150,000, and the officers elected were Jedediah Wilcox, president ; and C. H. Collins, secretary and treasurer. The board of directors included such additional names as Aaron L. Collins, Charles Parker. Levi E. Coe, George W. Lyon and H. H. Miller. The factory Wn.COX SILVKR n.ATK CO. IN iSO;. of growth was at an end. Must prfMninently identified with the new company called the Wilcox Britannia Co.. was Jedediah Wilcox who had l;cen very successful in the wool- en business and whose resourceful energy led him to believe that the new company wouhl be as profitable as its older rival. The Wilcox I'ri- of J. Wilcox & Co.. w(M)leii manufac- turers, had been <leslroyed l)y fire (hiring the year and the brick build- ing now occupied by the Meriden Woolen Co. on the north side of Pratt street had been recently erected. The Wilcox P.ritannia Co. immediately af- ter its organization, proceeded to erect a wooden building on the site of the
Cite this item
Silent Grounds Collective, Meriden Silver, SGC-MS-008, MS-003, “Wilcox factory view labeled 1865.” Source: Charles Bancroft Gillespie and George Munson Curtis; Journal Publishing Co., Meriden; A Century of Meriden: The Silver City, part III; New York Public Library; digitized by Google; Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_-zQWAAAAYAAJ/page/n1103/mode/1up. Research edition, accessed 2026-09-08.