“If a piece of wood fell into the burning pot and started to smoke it was removed at once to keep from blackening or staining the pipes.
“After the pipes cooled they were brought into the house and Mr. Price said that when the pipes were poured out of the pot in which they were baked, to the floor, they would ring or chime when they hit against each other.
“The pipes were then waxed with bee’s wax and mutton tallow and then polished with a woolen cloth, and the children helped.”
In all of this, Bob Davis of Pamplin, age 91, in talking to John W. Walker in 1962, had concurred. He said, “The pipes were molded, trimmed, put on a board and dried in the sun, baked in iron pots, waxed, and rubbed. The pipes were made all through the country, the local stores bought and shipped them, and the Factory would buy these ‘country pipes’.” Here was more direct evidence that the Factory, on occasion at least, bought and shipped pipes made by the Home Industry (Walker, personal communication).
There were, however, two men who made pipes.
Dr. O’Brien’s father Thomas O’Brien, was born in 1843. When he came back after the War, about 1865, he made his own mold of white-oak with lead lining and made pipes for his own use.
According to Miss Wilsie Thornton, a Mr. Rodgers was making molds and pipes until about 1938 as a hobby. One of them was in the form of an Indian head ([Plate 23] AL). The “peach seed” pipe ([Plate 23] AM) is also thought to be one of his manufacture.
THE PAMPLIN SMOKING PIPE AND MANUFACTURING COMPANY
In the middle 1850’s that part of Ohio that surrounds Akron was the pipemaking capital of the United States, with at least six clay products companies producing them (Blair, 1965:26-30). The leading producer of clay smoking pipes in the Akron vicinity was the E. H. Merrill Co., which had been producing pottery objects since its founding in 1831. In 1843 or 1844 Calvin, brother of E. H. Merrill, invented a machine for making pipes which greatly increased the output of the company and gave quite an advantage over its competitors (Blair, 1965:3).
The Pamplin Smoking Pipe and Manufacturing Company, Inc., was established by the Akron Smoking Pipe Company of Akron, Ohio, when they built the plant at Pamplin.