Emerson Edge Tool Company

     After Stephen and Daniel Taft had settled in the area near Woodstock that would come to be known as Taftsville, Vermont, around 1795, they built a dam on the Ottauquechee River and began harvesting the power of the water for a sawmill. Though Taft Industries would close in 1855, other makers would settle into the mills and factories along the old dam and begin manufacturing products, including axes. One such maker was Albro V. Emerson.   Albro had been born not too far east of Taftsville in NH to Jonathan and Polly (Collins) Emerson in 1827, and had taken an apprenticeship in the art of Scythe making in Newport, NH, during his youth. By 1850 he was noted as an independent scythe maker on the U.S. census, and that same year he would marry Josephine E. Kempton. In 1856, Albro would move to the Lebanon area with his wife and 2 year old son, Frank,  where he bought the scythe factory of Leonard Stearns at “Scytheville” and began manufacturing scythes under the name Albro V. Emerson and Company.    Over the next 16 years, the company there in Scytheville would change names 6 times as Albro took on partners, saw partners leave, and even sold the company entirely while becoming foreman, then buying the company back. After these changes, Joseph Cummings and M.V. Purmort would purchase the business and run the company as the newly formed Mascoma Edge Tool Company. Albro would shuffle around for a bit, but would settle in Taftsville in 1872 and started the “Emerson Edge Tool Company” along with financial partners A.G. Dewey and Enos Dole.   The new company would thrive in Taftsville, and in 1881 would open a second facility back in Lebanon at the site of an old slate factory. By 1883, the company would note its head office in Lebanon, with production facilities in both cities, and an export office in Montreal.

At its height, the Emerson Edge Tool Company was noted as employing 28 men and manufacturing 400 dozen scythes, 500 dozen axes, and 100 dozen corn knives annually.  Some of its Axe lines were noted as the “Colgate”, the “Emerson”, the “Forest King”, the “Choppers Pride” and the “Diamond” or “Diamond Cut”. Some scythe lines made by the company were the “Standard”, the “Solid Steel”, and the “Corrugated”. It’s shipping crates were made by Nathaniel B. Marston there in Lebanon.

Albro would manage the operation until his death in 1893, after which Frank and his younger brother Elmer would run the family business. A short time after the turn of the century, the two brothers exited the business for other opportunities, leaving the company controlled by Mary E. Pike (oldest daughter of A. V. Emerson, Wife of John B. Pike), Isabel Emerson (Second daughter of A.V. Emerson), and Stoddard B. Emerson (Frank’s son). The company was noted as “selling out to the Scythe Trust” in 1907.