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Black Clawson-Kennedy |
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After the death of its founder, William Kennedy Senior, in 1885, the sons of the Wm. Kennedy & Sons firm established a new foundry location on Stephens Street (11th Street West and 1st Avenue West). This foundry became well-known for its propeller production, but the company also did a lot of water power equipment work. In the 1960s, this foundry was known as Black Clawson-Kennedy and it still had a lot of old patterns retained. Unfortunately, a fire in the 1950s destroyed many of them. Kennedy's also had an eastside plant in town. The last owner said that when the Kennedy's building on the East Bayshore Road was to be torn down, people were invited to take what they wanted and he acquired five or six propeller patterns. Kennedy's had been out of the propeller business by then. The company had a hockey team (see a photograph at the Grey County Archives). The following is a transcript from an article in "Industrial Canada", May, 1967, p. 163: BLACK CLAWSON-KENNEDY LTD. The founder of the enterprise known today as Black Clawson-Kennedy Ltd. Of Owen Sound, Ontario, was William Kennedy, a millwright's apprentice of Glasgow, Scotland, who sailed for Canada in 1831 and settled in the Smiths Falls area of what was then Upper Canada. In 1856 he arrived in the village of Sydenham, now Owen Sound, to install machinery in the Harrison woollen and grist mill. When he completed the installation, he remained in the village and established, in 1857, his own planing and matching mill. In 1863, Kennedy was able to build a two-storey (and, for the time and place, quite a pretentious) building, one floor of which was used for the manufacture of sash and door units and the other for a machine shop. Owen Sound had in these years become one of the busiest of Great Lakes ports, and Kennedy, with his Clydeside background and training, quickly realized the opportunities offered for the manufacture of equipment for fishing, passenger, freight and pleasure boats. Additionally, he made machinery for saw, grist and flour mills, and in later years for cement mills, as well as waterwheel hydraulic turbines to power the machinery. William Kennedy died in 1885 and was succeeded as President by his son Matthew, who put a steel foundry into operation in 1899. By 1911, William Kennedy & Sons Ltd. Employed 150 persons, and manufactured turbines, mill gearings, steel castings and solid and sectional propellers. In 1916 the company took over the Owen Sound Iron Works, and in 1919, the Canadian Malleable Iron Works, which it operated until 1927. The 1920s were years of expansion, and the 1930s of great hardship, for the company as for the nation, but with the second World War, Kennedy's shared in the upsurge of prosperity. Its foundry supplied the propellers for all ships built in Canada during the wartime shipbuilding program-fighting craft as well as Canadian and allied merchant vessels. The manufacture of propellers for the Canadian merchant marine, and for those of France, China, Brazil and other countries, has continued to this day [1967]. The company was purchased in 1951 by Had-Mil (Canada) Ltd., one of the Millspaugh group of Sheffield, England. Just over ten years later, in October 1961, Millspaugh sold William Kennedy & Sons Ltd. to the Black-Clawson Company of Hamilton, Ohio. As Black Clawson-Kennedy, the company became the eighth member of Black Clawson's world-wide family of manufacturing firms. Its products today [1967] embrace steel, iron, bronze and stainless steel castings, and mining, hydraulic, industrial and pulp and paper machinery." |
