This month’s puzzler concerns a glass factory owner:

Who Am I?

In 1888, when I was just twenty years old, I founded a glass company and was its first president. Among the glassware I made were mason jars with my name on them. When the natural gas boom began to fade in 1900, I started up a branch operation in Cincinnati. This time I put my name in the company’s name. About this time, I bought a license from Michael Owens to use his new glass machines to make all sorts of bottles, and I made metal bottle caps and paper labels, too. I was so successful, that I was able to build a new plant in Cincinnati in 1911 and shut down my original factory.

In 1926 the Owens Bottle Company of Toledo bought me out. As part of the deal, I was put on Owens’ board of directors. In the spring of 1929 I worked on that merger of Owens with the Illinois Glass Company. That made me a director of Owens-Illinois. I was at the Hotel Plaza in New York City later that same year, working on another merger, this time with the Continental Can Company, when I died suddenly on October 2. 1929. Who am I?

Answer

Written by Richard H. Cole, Jr.

© 2002 Minnetrista Cultural Center

This article first appeared in the October 2002 issue of the Glass Chatter.