The Ladoga Canning Company

Aerial view of the Ladoga Canning Factory

Canning factory when the Midland RR was running 1916-17
(Picture from Chet Vice collection)

Ground view of the canning factory in the 30's

Canning factory truck

Canning factory  fleet of trucks

Carroll Faulkinbury, Supt,. and Bob Vice, chemist (Picture from Chet Vice collection)

5,000 ton of pumpkins in 1940 (Picture from Chet Vice Collection)

Washing tomatoes

Canning factory girls--L-R front, Edith Proctor, Phoebie VanCleave, Grace Carter, Carolyn Buck, Woodard, Starks, 2nd row R-L-Gertrude Cory, Mary Stark Wilson, Mildred Thompson, Kathryn Strickler Owens, Ms. Carnine, Ethel Grantham, and Ethel Kincaid. (Picture from Chet Vice collection)

Canning factory guys--L-R front, Hap Yeagley, Art Dinsmore, Owen Gott, Mart Miller, Jimmie Powers, Ora Branson, And Tubby Brewer.  Middle row L-R Unk, Winifred Culp, Love ?,Walter Oliver, Jess Dicks, Pete Parker, Bill Oliver, and Halbert Cline.  Back row L-R Bymaster ?, Unk, Unk, Unk, Unk, Ralph Strickler, and Ed Ashby.

Inside the canning factory in 1935 (Picture from Chet Vice collection)

Tomato setting crew in 1950--L-R Bill Boone, Bill Strickler. Richard Stark, David French, and Ernie French, Jr.

Canning factory in 1940

Ernie works on the setter, while I take a break

Ladoga Canning Company

            The Ladoga Canning Company opened its doors it 1903 and closed in 1950.  It was a part of a group of canning factories owned by the Bachelder brothers, Harold and Clay.  Edgar Ashby was one of the original stockholders, along with M. M. Bachelder, Foster M. Scott, George W. Havens, Henry Daugherty and Eugene Ashby.  Edgar Ashby was elected secretary and treasurer of the company.  Under Ashby and the Bachelders' direction, the company bought canning factories in Brownsburg and Clay City.  The one at Clay City was called the Clay City Packing Company. 

          Chet Vice remembers that his grandmother told him that the first canning factory was at the corner of Cherry and College.  It was the building that became Claude Harshbarger’s cement vault and block factory.  It must have been built in 1903 and used until 1915 when the new building was built in the northeast part of town on the Midland Railroad.  In 1909, the Documentary Journal of Indiana recorded this about the Ladoga Canning Factory.  “This company packs corn and tomatoes discarding the pulp.  The building is of frame and is in good condition with fairly good wood floors and fair outside toilets.  No washrooms are provided.  The sewage is disposed of through an open sewer which is partly closed.  The factory is apparently successfully operated.”

In the Annual Report of the Indiana State Board of Health in 1915, this note was entered. “This is one of three plants operated by the company of which Edgar Ashby is the head.  The building at this place has been in use for many years and is in such condition that it cannot be well repaired.  It should be abandoned at the earliest possible time.  Considering the state of the old building, it can only be rated "Fair" in the way of sanitation.

Later in that same year, 1915, the Board of Health had this report. “Ladoga Canning Company—this is a new plant, erected this year, and is a mighty good one.  The main buildings and warerooms are of brick and concrete, well-equipped throughout with light and ventilation, sewers, toilets, steam hose, drinking fountains, etc.  A general line of foods, including corn and peas will be packed.  Score, Good, Plus.”

The Crawfordsville Daily Journal of 15 April 1915 quoted the Lebanon Reporter:

“About 40 men were started on the work of putting in the foundation for the new building of the Ladoga Canning Company Monday morning.  All of these men but two are Lebanon men.  The officials of the company are keeping their word as they said in the beginning that they would employ as many Lebanon people as they possibly could.  The 1600 feet of switch which belongs to the company has been laid and the water line was put in today and this morning the workmen began running concrete into the excavation for the foundations.  James Kersey has the contract and began the work today of drilling an 8 inch well.  Five carloads of material arrived on Monday including a car of gravel, a car of building brick and a car of lumber.  In all, there will be over 30 car loads of building brick.  One cannot gain an adequate idea of the size of the buildings without visiting the grounds and seeing the immensity of the foundations.  The engine room will be on the NE corner of the building and will be 50 feet square.  The main factory building will be 220 feet long by 50 feet wide.  From the front end of the building back 123 feet, the building will be three stories high and built entirely of brick.  Just back of the building will be the peeling sheds which will be of frame.  The floors of all the buildings will be of concrete and reinforced concrete.  Just off the main factory building will be up-to-date toilet and dressing rooms for the employees.  In the front of the building will be the cooking room, which contains 20 process plants, which is a greater number than any other factory in this part of the state.  Just back of the cooking room will be the sealing room, and still farther back will be the peeling rooms.  Back of the peeling room will be the sheds where the unloading will be done.”

The 1930’s were great days for Ladoga and the Ladoga Canning Company.  From its modest beginning in 1903 to its close in 1950, the Ladoga Canning Company provided employment for many Ladoga residents and shipped its canned goods all over the world.  In 1930, the company canned 3, 842, 327 cans of pulp in addition to 232,170 cans of pumpkins.  It contracted for 1993 acres of corn and 391 acres for tomatoes.  In 1931, the canning company reached its peak by contracting for 2,052 acres and in 1933 used 1,118 tons of coal or 29 car loads.  The report in 1934 showed that they canned 5,708 tons of pumpkins, 2,710 tons of tomatoes in 3,997,292 cans. The company had a payroll of $52,440 and employed 307 people, including the boys who rode the setters and set the tomatoes.  An article in the Ladoga Leader on September 29, 1936 reported that, “The Ladoga Canning Company was running 24 hours a day to keep up with the demand for tomato juice due to the record crop.  The factory was even open on Sunday and the company brought in 300 meals for the employees.”

During the late 30’s and early 40’s, the Ladoga Canning Company had a fleet of 20 straight truck and 8-10 semis.  The beds were built in the brick building that would later house the Hillis and Oliver Machine Shop just south of the Rapp Buggy Factory.  The men who built the beds were Burt Strickler, Oat Roberts, and Frank Harris.  Ted Lawrence painted the trucks and beds and did the lettering on the sides.  Fesler Canine and Jim Butler drove the semis and several Ladoga men drove the straight trucks.  Chet Vice remembers driving one of the straight trucks to Mound City, IL in Pulaski County at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.  Chet remembers it being an 8 hour drive from Ladoga to Mound City.  He would drive to Mound City where the tomato plants where grown and then leave about 10:00 in the evening to return to Ladoga.  He always wanted to drive in the cool of the night so the plants wouldn’t wilt.  He remembers watching the tugboats on those two mighty rivers.  In addition to growing the tomato plants to be planted in other counties, the Mound City plant canned asparagus grown in nearby Godfrey, IL. 

Moyer’s Brief History of Pulaski County from 1843-1943 has this note, “Now occupied by the Ladoga Canning Company, this building  one of the largest in Pulaski County was used during the Civil War as a military hospital, being occupied by 2,200 sick and wounded after the Battle of Shiloh.  Since the war, it has been used variously as a hotel, a courthouse, a stave mill, furniture factory and now as a canning factory.”

Although there was storage facilities at the canning factory itself, there were many times that the produce overflowed the building and the owners had to seek storage elsewhere.  The history of the Old Normal observed that, “The Old Normal was sold to the Ladoga Canning Company for use as a storage site upon completion of the new high school on east Taylor Street in 1917.   They also used the Golden Rule Garage on south Washington and two buildings on Main Street.  That would have been the building on the corner of Main and Washington which housed the Bernie Bouse Pharmacy in the 50’s and the building just east of that building which was called the old Houston Building where the dry goods store was.  Bob Stull remembers that his Dad, Bruce Stull and Pete Parker had to keep the fires going in the stoves to keep the canned goods from freezing.

Chet Vice who worked for the Canning Company for ten years from 1940 to 1950 has been a valuable source of information, not only about the Ladoga Canning Company, but the Ladoga community as well.  He recalled that in 1943, they set 851 acres of tomatoes andstarted receiving on August 12^th and stopped on October 22^nd.  The pumpkin pack ran from October 112^th to November 4^th.  

  Chet recalled that in February of 1943, they even made maple syrup. Chet, along with Bruce Stull and Joe Ratcliff tapped sugar maples at the farms of Oat Starks, Ben Kessler, and Warner C. Kessler.  They collected enough sugar water to make 200 gallons of syrup.  That was enough for two hundred and sixty, 14 quart buckets.

Chet pulled a wagon with a three hundred gallon tank on it out to Ott Starks where he met Bruce Stull and Joe Ratcliff who would have a team of horses waiting.  They hitched the horses to the wagon and began to gather the water.  Chet said the three of them put in some pretty long days gathering the sugar water.  After they had emptied all the buckets into the tank, they hooked the wagon back up to the truck and drove back to the Canning Factory where they boiled the sugar water down into syrup.  They transferred the water into a three hundred gallon copper kettle which had a jacket full of steam around it.  That boiled the water down into syrup pretty quickly.  The maple syrup venture lasted only one year, 1943.

 A.W. Bowen’s History of Montgomery County provides this note:

            “The output of this plant is enormous and its goods are sent all over the United States from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and from New York to Montana having big markets in Terre Haute, St. Louis and Milwaukee.  Owing to the superior quality of their goods, they are in great demand.  Their plan is equipped with every modern device for high grade and rapid work.   During the regular canning season, scores of people are employed.”

There were other factories in Lebanon, and Brookston, Indiana and Circleville and Chillicothe, Ohio, and one in Mound City, Illinois.  The Bachelder brothers owned 600 acres south of town where Ernie French lived in the 50's and rented many more acres from local farmers who planted tomatoes for canning.    There was also a large plot of ground in Scott Township owned by the canning factory which was called the Western Front. There were 320 acres in the Western Front.   It became a part of the Lincoln Priebe farm.  They also owned about 100 acres around the building. 

 For many boys in and around Ladoga, setting tomatoes was one of the first summer jobs.  The canning factory provided the tomato setter and the farmer was responsible for providing the tractor or in some cases a team of horses to pull it.  Jim Davis remembers setting tomatoes behind a team of horses.  The setter was an ingenious device.  It had water tanks and fertilizer boxes mounted on it.  The boys sat on a low seat with the tomatoes on a platform in front of them.  As the tomato setter moved down the field, it created a shallow row in which the fertilizer was deposited.  Periodically, a squirt of water came out of the tank.  That’s when the setter had to be ready with the tomato plant.  He put the plant in the furrow when the water hit the roots, then he guided the plant back through the shovels that covered it.  It was an ingenious, if boring procedure.  As I recall, the process went smoothly if the tomato plants were fresh and solid. But when they delivered older ones that were limp and a little old, it was a challenge to get them to stand up.  Most of them grew regardless of their condition.  The tomatoes were planted early in the summer.  Migrant workers came along in the fall to pick the tomato crop.  Many of the migrant families liked Indiana so much that they stayed on.  Some lived in Lebanon and ended up graduating from Lebanon High School.

Some of the brands canned at the Ladoga Canning Factory were named “Ladoga,” “Lovers,” “Monon,” and “Boone County.”  They were also responsible for Country Gentleman Corn, Golden Bantam Corn, Evergreen Sugar Corn, Tomatoes, Tomato Juice, Tomato Puree, Asparagus, Peas, Pumpkin, Pork and Beans, Red Kidney Beans, Red Beans, Lima Beans, Vegetable Soup, Tomato Soup, Spaghetti, and Lye Hominy.   The Ladoga Canning Factory canned tomatoes, pumpkins, sweet corn and hominy.  The other vegetables were canned at other places.  In an advertisement in the Sesquicentennial book in 1936, the canning factory stated,

“Our Canned Foods are not only sold under our own brands, but also under the private labels of some of the finest wholesale Grocers and stores in the United States.”

  The government made good use of the Ladoga Canning Company as they used many of the products for the boys overseas.  A note in the Waveland Independent on April 12, 1945 reported that Mrs. Owen (Beulah) Zimmerman had received word that her husband PFC Owen (Heinie) Zimmerman, somewhere in Germany, reported that they had received tomato juice canned by the Ladoga Canning Company.   He thought that it was a small world after all.

At the peak of the pack, they employed 400 people which would have been a big financial boost to the community.  I remember my mother, Bertha Boone, walking up the Midland RR tracks to go to work at the Canning Factory.  I would escort her to work, then walk back home.  In 1936, Ralph Strickler was superintendent followed by Carroll Faulkinbury who left after the fall pack in 1949.  Tom Crews became superintendent after Faulkinbury returned to teaching in 1949.  Tom Gerald recalls that his grandfather (Grover Gerald) helped with the grading of the tomatoes. Purdue University sent professional graders down from Lafayette. The rotten ones ended up as ammunition for tomato fights.  The wormy ones became tomato puree, worms and all.  Houston Gerald ran one of the big steam kettles during the canning season.

Chet Vice recalls being foreman over the pulp room at the canning factory.  There were six big cypress wood tubs about seven or eight feet around.  In the center of each tub were copper coils; on the outer edge were coils five feet in diameter, then there were 1 ½ inch copper coils in the middle about four feet in diameter.  These steam coils carried about 150 pounds of pressure and cooked the pulp down.

Some of the men who worked in the pulp room were John McCrery, bob Jeffries, Donald (Slick) Thompson, Henry Osborn, and Joe Lewellyn.  Every time a batch of pulp was cooked, they had to go in and clean the coils.  In the busy season, they would run as many as 15 to 18 tubs during the day and evening.  The crew that ran the closing machine or steamer which closed the cans was composed of Tuney Strickler, Eddie Gardner, and Lyle (Yok) McClellan.

After the pulp was canned, it was cooked again in Retorts which were on the first floor.  Jess Ashley was the foreman over this area.  Some of his helpers were Harold (Ike) Vice, Leroy Miller, and Big Leonard Hart.  It was then sent to the warehouse where it was labeled and boxed, ready to be sent to different companies.  Some of the crew in the warehouse were Bob Carnine, Russell Mount, Oakie Hymer, Leonard Morphew, Dale Hedge and Paul Peffley.  

Ralph Strickler left the Ladoga Canning Company  when it underwent reorganization to start the Home Canning Company which was home-owned, home-operated, and home made.  He operated it with his wife Esther until well up into the 50’s.   They employed 12 to 15 people during the canning season.  During WW II, any food taken to be canned for servicemen was canned without charge.

Here is a note from Lawrence Brewer about his memories of the Canning factory. 

Bill,

            I enjoyed the articles on the Ladoga Canning Factory and the Brunst Store.

            A little side note concerning the canning factory. My family raised tomatoes for                   the canning factory for three years on the Overcoat Road northeast of Crawfordsville.

            1947: We had 8 acres of tomatoes. Dad laid the field off in both directions with a horse-drawn corn planter and when it rained we set a plant where the planter tracks crossed by   hand with a wooden peg. (Called in-season planting) Now we could cultivate both ways as the rows were checked.

1948: We had 12 acres and prepared the field the same except the planting was done with an old-fashioned hand setter, one plant at a time. All this work including the picking was done by our family only, both of these years 1949: We had 40 acres. No checked fields this time and used a 2-row setter manned by 4 of us (boys). We had 3 families of migrant workers to help with the picking. Carroll Faulkinbury was the factory superintendent. Earl Freeman and Aurie Lawton were field representatives.

            We moved to Brown Township in 1950 and Dad worked for the Montgomery County Highway driving a truck.

 Lawrence Brewer

                

     After the Canning Factory closed down, the building was used as a Wheelchair Factory; it was owned by a family named Dukes out of Chicago.  That lasted for about three years.  Then it was converted into a window factory owned by Crestline Windows.  The window company lasted for about ten years.   

     

The old canning factory building still stands as a lonely sentinel in the northeast corner of Ladoga across the old Midland Railroad, also now abandoned.  Both are silent reminders of a bygone era when over 300 people were employed canning produce for a large fleet of trucks to transport to every state in the Union and even overseas.  The Ladoga Canning Company provided the first job for many boys and the last job for many men and women in the Ladoga community.  It also provided the unique nickname of Ladoga athletic teams from the 1939 basketball team of Ladoga High School to the present Ladoga Elementary.  No athletic team in the United States bears the nickname Of the CANNERS.