Mysteries of Vermont Bicycle History, Vol. 33…

My friend and historic bicycle collector Glenn Eames recently bestowed on me this fine item of turn-of-the-century bicycle-iana…

Edwardians sure knew how to oil their bicycle chains with elegance and style! Like many lubricants at the time, it was probably also made from rendered whale blubber. Notably, this particular label doesn’t announce itself as Sperm whale oil, which some similar bottles do. That oil was a waxy substance taken from the crania of Sperm whales and known as an especially high quality lubricant, and more expensive than this particular one. Great stuff…though obviously not so for the whales, whose populations suffered mightily to industrialization’s push.

Bottles of Sewing Machine and Bicycle Oil like this one come and go on online auction sites, which is where a friend of Glenn’s picked this up. So far I’ve had no luck giving it a precise age, but it’s fair to say that it generally dates to the period of the “Bicycle Craze,” that fifteen-or-so year period during the 1890s and early-1900s when bicycles were very much on the minds of Vermonters excited by the broader progressive social changes in which bicycles played a protagonistic role (see here for more on that).

What caught the eye of the friend who acquired and gave it to Glenn is the branded reference to C.H. Stearns, 35 Loomis St., Burlington, Vt. Glenn, who is arguably the Dean of Burlington Bicycle History, was unfamiliar with Mr. Stearns, but he knew I would appreciate the gift and the opportunity to see what stories it might reveal. We both enjoy throwing ourselves into rabbit holes, sundry unknowns, and obscurantism to learn about the people, events, and objects related to Vermont’s bicycle history—hence the title above referring, facetiously, to mysteries Vol. 33…

With its dried oil and aged label, this bottle is a mundane token of other times, but hints at just the kind of mystery I’m talking about here. Why would a man who lived on Loomis Street have his name printed on an oil bottle? Who was C.H. Stearns, anyway? Was he a purveyor of bicycle goods and products? Is it possible that maybe he even had a bicycle shop?

M.C. Grandy’s bicycle shop was just down the street from where Stearns lived.

Intriguingly, C.H. Stearns did live on a street that had a couple of bicycle shops. Burlington’s bicycle shops (ten during the 1890s!) tended to cluster together. Most were on or around Church Street downtown, but Loomis St. also had a modest cluster of bike businesses. In fact, the longest-running and most prominent bike shop during the Bicycle Craze, Lane’s Bicycle Livery, was on lower Loomis for twenty years or so. Also, M.C. Grandy, a man who once served as Treasurer of the Vermont chapter of the League of American Wheelmen and would eventually become Burlington’s city clerk, had a shop on Loomis during the 1890s where he sold Columbia bicycles.

Turning to my usual sources—digitized historic newspapers, city directories, genealogy sites, etc.—I learned that Charles H. Stearns, 1845-1930, was born in Swanton, Vt and moved to Burlington as a young man to ply his trade as…well, it’s not exactly clear…shop clerk? tailor? It turns out that throughout his working life he was associated, not so much with bicycles, but with sewing. In the 1880s he worked for Geo. A. Hall, a manufacturer and dealer in furniture and draperies; during 1890s for R.G. Page on Church St. which sold sewing machine supplies and equipment; and after 1905 at Warren G. Reynolds on Church St. which sold carpets, draperies, and sewing supplies.

I do not even know if Stearns owned a bicycle (one of the few newspaper articles I found about him mentions his enjoyment of golf…). But there is still a bicycle story here. A couple of stories, in fact. The first is that R.G. Page’s shop also sold—wait for it—Stearns bicycles. Alas, there’s no known connection between our Stearns and this bicycle brand, which was manufactured by E.C. Stearns & Co. of Syracuse, New York during the 1890s, and by the American Bicycle Company of Chicago, beginning in 1900. Quite likely it’s just a fun historical coincidence, and maybe raised a few chuckles back then. But during his years at R.G. Page, our Stearns worked with bicycles in his midst, at the very least, and perhaps even directly with bicycles in some shape or form if he worked in sales or service.

Nevertheless, the common denominator in his employment history was fabrics and sewing, and so the question is how and why did he have this oil bottle branded with his name? My guess is that he was not unlike many Burlingtonians who sold liniments and health-related potions and cures among friends and neighbors informally, using his professional connections to order a national name brand oil and have his details printed on it, probably by the distributor itself, to earn some extra cash. A side hustle, in other words. The demand would certainly have been there. Many Burlington households would have at least had a sewing machine, and possibly a bicycle or two.

“Howard’s Superior” products were a brand owned by C.B. Parker & Co., a New York City-based importer and manufacturer of pocket cutlery, scissors, and razors. During the 1870s, it purchased the factory of Messrs. Charles Howard & Co., of Brockton, MA, a pioneering firm in the manufacture of needles. Sewing machine technology had been refined during the 1840’s-50’s, and by the 1860’s sewing machines were becoming common in middle class households, producing demand for household lubricants. Given the proximity to America’s whaling industry in New England, it’s not especially surprising that a firm with a factory in Brockton, MA. producing sewing machine parts and accessories would eventually find its way into bottling sewing machine lubricants.

An ad for Howard's’ products from Sewing Machine Times (1905). Note the slightly different label.

And here is another layer of the bicycle story. There was a close association between the two industries, bicycles and sewing machines. When he started manufacturing the first bicycles in the U.S. in 1877-8, Col. Albert Pope contracted the work out to a Hartford, CT sewing machine factory (and eventually bought that factory) because it had the precision manufacturing tools, machines, and labor force required to produce his Columbia high-wheel bicycles. Sewing machine oil, it turns out, made a very fine oil to lubricate a bicycle’s moving parts. Further, it makes sense that vendors of sewing machines and accessories would have not only had ties to that dynamic industry producing innovative consumer technologies and goods, but also sophistication in catering to the emergent middle class aspiring to purchase those goods. Hence, you have a shop like R.G. Page, selling both sewing machines and bicycles.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I am intrigued by the juxtaposition in the ads below, found in the Burlington Free Press in 1882, bringing together Burlington’s very first bicycle shop right next to an ad for sewing machines sold by one of R.G.’s predecessors in the Page family. Perhaps figuring out if there is some intentional connection there is Mystery No. 34…