The Wistarburg Glass Works (sometimes spelled Wistarburgh Glass Works; also known as the United Glass Company) was the first successful glass factory and

joint-venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acces ...

enterprise in the

Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies were the British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America which broke away from the British Crown in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and joined to form the United States of America. The Thirteen C ...

. Caspar Wistar founded the glass works company in 1739. He began by recruiting experienced glass artisans from Europe, and built homes for the workers along with a mansion for the factory's foreman. Wistar also had a

company store A company store is a retail store selling a limited range of food, clothing and daily necessities to employees of a company. It is typical of a company town in a remote area where virtually everyone is employed by one firm, such as a coal mine. In ...

built near the factory. The village that developed around the factory adopted Wistar's name, and became known as Wistarburg. The village was in

Salem County, New Jersey Salem County is the westernmost county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Its western boundary is formed by the Delaware River, and it has the eastern terminus of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, which connects the county with New Castle, Delaw ...

, in the township of

Alloway Alloway (, ) is a suburb of Ayr, and former village, in South Ayrshire, Scotland, located on the River Doon. It is best known as the birthplace of Robert Burns and the setting for his poem Tam o' Shanter (Burns poem), "Tam o' Shanter". Tobias Ba ...

. Wistar's factory produced thousands of glass bottles per year, as well as window glass. Wistar was a friend of

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...

, and made glass globes for Franklin's electricity-producing machines used for scientific research. Wistar's son inherited the business and his son, Wistar's grandson, eventually gained control of the company, but owing to his mismanagement it closed.

Company foundation

Caspar Wistar (1696–1752) emigrated from the Palatinate region of Germany to Philadelphia in 1717. There he began making brass buttons, which he would take with him on sales visits to

. On one such trip he noticed that the township of

had an abundant supply of the necessary materials for glass manufacture – white sand, clay, wood, and accessible waterways of the nearby Deep Run and

Alloway Creek Alloway Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Delaware River in Salem County, New Jersey in the United States. The name is a derivat ...

rivers for transporting raw materials in and finished products out. He was thus encouraged to establish a glass factory there. Wistar's was not the first to be built in colonial America. Earlier establishments had been set up at

Jamestown, Virginia The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent British colonization of the Americas, English settlement in the Americas. It was located on the northeast bank of the James River, about southwest of present-day Willia ...

, in 1607 and 1621. They were founded to export glass items to England, but ultimately failed, having produced little, if any, glass. Wistar's button-making business proved to be a success, and together with his gains from speculating in land allowed him to accumulate sufficient capital to fund a new enterprise. He began his glass-making venture in 1737 by buying of land about from

Salem, New Jersey Salem is a city in and the county seat of Salem County,New Jersey County Map

, and commenced construction of his factory – which became the first commercially successful glass factory in America. He arranged in January 1738 to lease of land containing of wood from John Ladd, a local landowner. Wistar then recruited four experienced glass makers from the Palatinate region of Germany – C. Halter, S. Griessmeyer, J. Wentzel, and J. Halter – to make the factory operational. He organized a joint venture with them, dividing profits in exchange for the art of glass making. The four artisans were to teach this art to the Wistars and nobody else in the colonies. Wistar had arranged for their journey to America, and they arrived in Philadelphia from

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on the ship ''Two Sisters'' in September 1738. Wistar had houses built near the factory to rent for the key artisans and other workers that were usually indentured immigrants. He also had a mansion constructed for the factory's foreman, which also served as a lodging and office for Wistar while on his visits to the factory from his home in Philadelphia. A

was constructed for the workers' needs. Products could be purchased on credit against the glass a worker would make in the future; a bookkeeper was employed to keep track of the store accounts and housing rents. The store also served the people of the village of Alloway, and was the center of community life.

Joint venture

Wistar entered into a

profit-sharing Profit sharing refers to various incentive plans introduced by businesses which provide direct or indirect payments to employees, often depending on the company's profitability, employees' regular salaries, and bonuses. In publicly traded compan ...

arrangement with the four German artisans who had helped to make his new factory operational. To ensure their continuing support, he set up a

joint venture A joint venture (JV) is a business entity created by two or more parties, generally characterized by shared ownership, shared returns and risks, and shared governance. Companies typically pursue joint ventures for one of four reasons: to acce ...

among five members, the first cooperative manufacturing joint-venture business in America and the first long-term successful glasshouse. The 1739 company began trading as the United Glass Company, which consisted of three individual joint ventures. Wistar was the general manager and primary share holder, with a two-thirds majority ownership in each of the joint ventures. The four Germans held one-third ownership and shared the expenses, assets, and profits of the three individual joint ventures. The first entity under the umbrella enterprise was held between Wistar and Wentzel, the second between Wistar and C. Halter, and the third between Wistar, Griesmeyer and J. Halter. The joint venture arrangement remained in effect until Wistar's death in 1752.

History

Wistar's factory produced about 15,000 glass bottles per year made in the Waldglas style, which had been a way of making glass in Europe since the Middle Ages. It was an inexpensive traditional method whereby the main materials of wood ash and sand produced a greenish-yellow glass. The factory produced window glass and was the first American supplier for the thirteen colonies. The Glass House (as it was often called) also produced rum flasks and tableware. Wistar had unlimited access to white

silica sand Sand casting, also known as sand molded casting, is a metal casting process characterized by using sand—known as ''casting sand''—as the mold (manufacturing), mold material. The term "sand casting" can also refer to an object produced via th ...

, as well as other necessary materials, and the company's success was further aided by New Jersey's low taxation; Wistar was easily able to obtain more assets for the business. Wistar lived in Philadelphia, and was aware that the British did not allow the manufacture of certain items that were in competition with those imported from Britain. He therefore downplayed the profits from his glass business, so as to avoid arousing the suspicions of the British. Wistar ran his business affairs from Philadelphia, spending little time in Alloway. He sold the manufactured glass products through his store in Philadelphia, the Wistarburg company store, and his son Richard's store in New York City. Wistar was friends with

of Philadelphia and made glass globes for Franklin's electricity producing machines, used for scientific research into electricity. Franklin built several of his machines, using the Wistarburg glass globes, for

Cadwallader Colden Cadwallader Colden (7 February 1688 – 28 September 1776) was an Irish-born physician, scientist and colonial administrator who served as the governor of New York from 1760 to 1762 and again from 1763 to 1765. Early life Colden was born on 7 F ...

and Lewis Evans, for which they paid him between ten and twelve pounds each. The Wistarburg Glass Works also made glass tubes for

David Rittenhouse David Rittenhouse (April 8, 1732 – June 26, 1796) was an American astronomer, inventor, clockmaker, mathematician, surveyor, scientific instrument craftsman, and public official. Rittenhouse was a member of the American Philosophical Society an ...

to use in his experiments on electricity. Wistar died of

dropsy Edema (American English), also spelled oedema (British English), and also known as fluid retention, swelling, dropsy and hydropsy, is the build-up of fluid in the body's tissue. Most commonly, the legs or arms are affected. Symptoms may inclu ...

in Philadelphia on March 21, 1752, and his son Richard took over the glass works. Richard also mostly ran the business from Philadelphia, but worked on increasing sales and expanding the company's product range. Just like his father, he relied on hired artisans to run the glass works factory in Alloway. The glass enterprise continued into the 1770s, but struggled owing to deforestation around Wistarburg. Wood from the trees was needed as fuel to run the glass furnaces, and when supplies began to run short some of the company's key artisans resigned and went to start their own glass company in

Glassboro, New Jersey Glassboro is a Borough (New Jersey), borough within Gloucester County, New Jersey, Gloucester County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, within the Philadelphia metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 2 ...

, where there were new uncut forests and plenty of wood. Richard also had personal problems that occupied much of his time, and financial difficulties caused by the Revolutionary War; in an attempt to make ends meet, he sold a major portion of his father's New Jersey real estate. Richard died in 1781, and his son John took over the business. John failed to devote the effort necessary to run the glass works, allowing it to go into serious decline and ultimately it went out of business. The final year of the enterprise is disputed by scholars, but it is known that in 1793 the property that the factory was on was divided up among Richard's heirs and sold in parcels.

Company foundation

Joint venture

History

See also

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

Further reading