Summary Information
Milwaukee Cement Company Records
1875-1948
Milwaukee Mss AR; PH 257 (3)
0.8 c.f. (2 archives boxes) and 25 photographs (1 flat box)
UW-Milwaukee Libraries, Archives / Milwaukee Area Research Ctr. (Map)Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)
Miscellaneous business papers, including minutes of stockholders' and board of directors' meetings of the Milwaukee Cement Company and the Milwaukee Cement Railway Company, 1875-1948; correspondence relating to management problems; stock certificates; lists of stockholders; and several maps of company property. Also included are a brief historical sketch of the company and photostatic copies of testimonial letters. Photographs, 1876-1909, show quarry workmen, a quarry locomotive, processing machinery, the cooperage shop, kilns, plant exteriors and interiors, and officials at directors' meetings and on inspection excursions.
English
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mil000ar ↑ Bookmark this ↑
Biography/History
The Milwaukee Cement Company was organized in November, 1875 as a result of the discovery of limestone rock suitable for cement manufacture in the Milwaukee River (about the site of the present Esterbrook Park) by Joseph R. Berthelet a year or two previously. The Company produced cement successfully, although during their early period of financial struggle for existence, aid was received from Alexander Mitchell and the Milwaukee Marine and Fire Insurance Bank. By about 1880 the factory was producing approximately 150,000 barrels of cement a year, valued at about 125,000 dollars. From 75 to 100 men were full-time employees. Because there is in the manuscript collection an historical account of the Company, written by William T. Berthelet in 1942, the story of the building of the mills, competition with a rival company, establishment of a branch railroad line of the Milwaukee (operated by a subsidiary of the Cement Company, the Milwaukee Cement Railway Company), needs not be repeated. The Company manufactured natural cement until 1912, when the discovery of methods of making Portland cement made it impossible for Milwaukee natural cement to continue in competition with the better product. For a time the Company became distributors of Portland cement and other building materials. Ceasing this, the firm began to dispose of its real estate holdings, a process which by 1948 was almost completed.
Among the founders and officers of the Milwaukee Cement Company, members of the Berthelet family have been most important, and warrant brief biographical notice. Joseph R. Berthelet was born in Detroit, son of Joseph Reuben Berthelet. In the spring of 1832, young Joseph went to the Choctaw Nation as clerk to a sutler near Doakesville. Three years later he went to Sandwich, Canada to marry Eliza Parent, and then returned to the Choctaw Nation in 1836, where he was in partnership with a half-breed Indian by name of Jones. About 1850 he moved to St. Louis, and in 1861 to Milwaukee, where he later discovered the cement quarry. In 1869 he was joined in his business of making sewer pipe of imported Louisville cement by his brother, Henry Berthelet (1823-1908), who later became the first president of the Milwaukee Cement Company. He sold his interest in the Company in 1901, and returned to his birthplace, Detroit, to live. (A third brother, Louis Benjamin Berthelet (1804-1850) was mentioned in the Wisconsin Historical Collections as a resident of Green Bay in 1825. He married Lucy Peltier (born about 1810) in Detroit in 1827, and moved to Indiana where he died near Peru.) Joseph R. Berthelet, Jr. served as superintendent of manufacture and also as president of the Company at times. William T. Berthelet, grandson of Joseph R., Sr. and donor of the records to the Society, joined the firm in 1886, and since 1909 has been secretary and manager of the organization. Among other prominent Milwaukee citizens connected with the management of the Company at one time or another were Samuel Marshall, George H. Paul, William W. Plankinton, Howard Greene, and Horace A. J. Upham.
Scope and Content Note
The most important records of the Milwaukee Cement Company are the four volumes in which the proceedings of the meetings of stockholders and meetings of the board of directors were recorded from the inception of the organization in November, 1875 to 1948. Supplementing and amplifying the material in these volumes is a small group of correspondence and miscellaneous business papers, such as special committee reports, lists of stockholders, samples of stock certificates, and so on. These are scattered throughout a period of years from 1876 to 1935.
In addition there is one volume of minutes of the meetings of the board of directors of the Milwaukee Cement Railway Company, the subsidiary corporation directing the operation of the short line connecting the cement works with the main lines. These records cover a period from January 9, 1908 to June 23, 1914. A complete book of stock certificates from 1908 to 1915 shows the distribution and ownership of capital stock in the Company, and there is a small group of correspondence and papers of scattered dates from 1878 to 1918. Photographs, 1876-1909, are located in the Visual Materials Archive in Madison.
These records almost exclusively pertain to the management of the Milwaukee Cement Company. Virtually no records about the employees, sales, and production of the cement works remain. The only clues to the use of the cement are found in a group of “testimonial” letters photostated from reproductions in a pamphlet published about 1900, a copy of which Mr. William T. Berthelet loaned to the Wisconsin Historical Society. These give some indication of the uses to which building concerns and municipalities made of the cement.
With these manuscripts are filed thirteen maps and one blueprint showing the original property of the Company, later acquisitions of land, the buildings and railroad.
Contents List
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Milwaukee Mss AR
Box
1
Folder
3
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Business Correspondence, 1978, 1901, 1913, 1916, 1918, undated
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Box
1
Folder
1
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Correspondence, Miscellaneous Business Papers, 1875-1942, undated
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Box
1
Folder
2
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History, undated
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Box
1
Folder
4, 6-7
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Maps, undated
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Minutes, Annual Board Meetings
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Box
2
Volume
1
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1875-1892
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Box
2
Volume
2
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1892-1919
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Box
2
Volume
3
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1919-1948
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Box
2
Volume
4
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Stock Certificates, 1908-1915
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Box
1
Folder
5
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Testimonial Letters, 1890-1898
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PH 257 (3)
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Photographs, 1876-1909
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