From April 30 2000 Fostoria Focus Archive 

 

When one reads old 1890s glass and china journals, you begin to wonder how all the glass production from the various glass companies that were located here at that time got on the open market.
The glass production from the Fostoria glass factories was mind boggling. The Seneca Glass Co. was running 1,500 dozen blown tumblers daily! That is 18,000 tumblers every day.
The Fostoria Shade and Lamp Co. was making over 60 percent of all the lamps made in the United States. They were shipping over 5,000 decorated lamps every day!
In 1892, The Mosaic Glass Co. of Fostoria shipped 10 carloads of glass tile to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Ill.!
The Fostoria Incandescent Lamp Co. was one of the largest producers of light bulbs in the nation!
There was also glass to be shipped from the Buttler Glass Co., The Nickel Plate Glass Co., The Calcine, Momburg, Crocker, Loudon, The Glass Specialty and the Novelty Glass Co.
As I said, a mind-boggling situation.
Back in the 1890s, there was no bubble pack, no cardboard boxes, no semi-trucks to pull up at the shipping docks to have a fork lift load up the trailers.
So how did all that glass get packed and shipped out of Fostoria? Two easy answers.
There were five major railroads running through Fostoria and all 13 glass factories were located on one of those railroads.
The shipment of all that glass on railroad trains took very careful packing. One company, The Fostoria Barrel and Stave Co., which was located on Vine Street next to the Fostoria Shade and Lamp Co., provided all the containers for the shipment of the glass.
The packing material was the sawdust left from making all the barrels, probably much better packing than the bubble wrap and Styrofoam that manufacturers use today.
You might be thinking Where did they get all that wood to make those thousands of barrels and kegs? 
Not a problem, as the area around Fostoria at that time was mostly forestland. All they needed to do was cut the timber and haul it a few miles to the factory by horse and wagon.
I remember as a child going upstairs in my grandmother s home on East Fremont Street and opening a small door into the attic where there were several wooden barrels filled with several lamps and packed nice and secure with sawdust.

One of those lamps is now proudly displayed in my living room.
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I remember when they were paving Perry Street with brick. It was a sight to watch the men on their knees picking up and laying the bricks.
At one time in a, Ripley's "Believe It Or Not" column, a native Fostorian (Charles "Gene" Wilson) was featured as the fastest man in the world in laying bricks. The way that man worked, I can believe it!