Peter E. Shantz

From Pennsylvania to Waterloo - A Biographical History of Waterloo Township

Item Name	Account Book	Image1 Image2 Image3 Image4 Image5
Other Owner(s)	Nil
Category	Documents
Year	Early: 1877 - Late: 1884
Description	An account book, most of whose entries fall between 1877 and 1879, with names of customers (?), purchases and payments. It's hard to say whether this part of the book is associated with P.E. Shantz, since any itemized entries are either very generalized ("merchandise", "goods") or have nothing to do with agricultural implements (e.g., soap, caustic, tallow, vermillion, borax, m'dse, goods). The first 50 pages are missing. Pages 178-187 are headed: P.E. Shantz. These are dated 1884.
Provenance	Peter Erb Shantz (1849-1928) was born on his father Samuel Y. Shantz's farm east of Breslau, Ontario. He was the eldest son of Samuel Y. Shantz and Esther Erb. (He was the nephew of Jacob Y. Shantz, Berlin button manufacturer.) When the Grand Trunk Railway was built through the Shantz farm in the 1850s, the farm was sold, and Samuel Y. purchased a farm on the road leading west out of Galt, Ontario toward Roseville. The north boundary of the farm lay on Whistlebare Road. Peter attended the Dickie Settlement school on the Roseville Road. In 1871, Peter entered into the farm implement manufacturing business, coming to Preston, Ontario in 1875. Along with Abram Z. Detweiler, he purchased the manufacturing concern on Fountain Street formerly operated by Valentine Wahn and Francis Newton, with the assistance of a $5,000 bonus from Preston council. The company was named the Preston Agricultural Works. In 1883, the frame buildings of the Preston Agricultural Works were destroyed by fire. P.E. Shantz bought out Abram Detweiler and continued to operate as P.E. Shantz Preston Agricultural Works. New stone buildings were built to house the business. Some of the firm's earliest business records were presumably destroyed in this fire; the ledgers and other business records in the P.E. Shantz fonds date from 1880. The name Preston Agricultural Works was discontinued, probably by the mid-1890s, and the business carried on under the name P.E. Shantz Manufacturer (with various trailers: ...Manufacturer of Farm Implements and Harvesting Machinery, 1898; ...Manufacturers of Mowers, Rakes, Harrows, Steel Rollers, Gang and Single Plows, Potato Diggers, 1909). The company's Stock Book (969.148.001.008) notes a wide variety of suppliers and manufacturers from whom the company purchased materials (hardware, wood, wheels, iron and steel, blades, paint, plow parts). P.E. Shantz was the Canadian manufacturer of (at least) two American firms' products. The first was the Buckeye Binder (made by P.E. Shantz from 1885 until shortly after 1900), whose parent was Aultman-Miller & Co., headquartered in Akron, Ohio. The second was a line of haying machinery developed by the Dain Manufacturing Company of Ottumwa, Iowa. Because of intense competition in North America among many relatively small and largely unprofitable manufacturers of agricultural implements and machinery, a giant merger spearheaded by the McCormick and Deering companies took place in the early 1900s, forming the International Harvester Company. International Harvester purchased Aultman-Miller in 1904, and because of favourable tariff rates at that time, probably discontinued the Canadian manufacture of the Buckeye binder, eventually discontinuing Buckeye products altogether. Dain haying machinery (and an unrelated product, lawn swings) was manufactured in Canada by P.E. Shantz until about 1908, by which time Dain had been bought out by the John Deere company. In 1908, a plant to manufacture Dain products was built in Welland, taking another agricultural implement/machinery line away from the P.E. Shantz concern. By 1909, P.E. Shantz letterhead claimed "Our Specialty is Trucks". P.E. Shantz catalogues featured a variety of trucks (heavy duty warehouse wagons) manufactured for the factory and other commercial trade. Around 1913, P.E. Shantz further diversified into the manufacture of the Howard warm air furnace, company letterhead now stating "Our Specialty is Trucks [and] Warm Air Furnaces. The Howard furnace was another American product for which P.E. Shantz had Canadian manufacturing rights. The company continued to manufacture warm air furnaces for many years. According to another donor of Shantz Foundry equipment (Dr. W. Reive: 970.044), the Shantz Foundry produced shells and other munitions during World War One. The last dated piece in the P.E. Shantz fonds regarding the Howard furnace is 1941. In addition to trucks and furnaces, P.E. Shantz also made children's hand sleighs, garden benches, garden vases and lawn swings in the years after 1900. These were probably made from waste by-products of agricultural machinery construction. A price list issued by the Shantz Foundry in 1966 gave prices for its line of industrial and commercial trucks, by which time the only product line left. Peter E. Shantz died in 1928, leaving two of his sons, Frederick R. Shantz and Cyrus B. Shantz to carry on the business. In the twentieth century, the company name evolved to P.E. Shantz Foundry and finally to Shantz Foundry Ltd. In 1969 Shantz Foundry Ltd. went out of business. The property was purchased by a developer, with plans to build a large apartment unit on the site. The stone buildings were demolished, but the developer's plans did not materialize and in 2002 the site is an overgrown empty lot.
Collection	Doon Heritage Crossroads Contact : 10 Huron Rd. Kitchener 519-748-1914 www.region.waterloo.on.ca/doon
Accession No.	1969.148.001.012

Region of Waterloo

Fraktur design based on Family Register by Jacob Shoemacher in Joseph Schneider Bible, 1821.