William Maxwell Wyeth

The first Wyeth in America was Nicholas, who came from England to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1645. His grandson, Ebenezer Wyeth, was a farmer and minuteman at the Battle of Bunker Hill. One of Ebenezer's sons was a participant in the Boston Tea Party, and Jacob, Ebenezer's son, was the father of Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, who made two trips overland from Massachusetts to Oregon in 1832 and 1834. Nathaniel established Fort Hall (near the present site of Pocatello, Idaho), an important point on the Oregon and California Trails of the 1840s and 1850s. Another of Ebenezer's sons, John Wyeth, born in Cambridge, became a printer and purchased a newspaper in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1792. He was appointed the first postmaster of Harrisburg by George Washington in 1793. William Maxwell Wyeth, a great grandson of Ebenezer, was born at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on February 17, 1832. He attended the local schools and Harrisburg Military Academy. At the age of sixteen, in 1848, he set out on his own. He went by canal to Pittsburgh, by river steamer to Portsmouth, Ohio, and by stage to Chillicothe, Ohio. There he found employment in a dry goods store for four years. The business was destroyed by fire so in 1852 he became a clerk in a hardware business and in 1856 was made a partner in the firm of Lewis & Wyeth. In 1858 Mr. Wyeth married Miss Eliza Renick of Ross County, Ohio. With these new responsibilities he began to seek larger opportunities. In 1859 he sold his interest in the business to his partner and embarked on an extensive trip through Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Missouri, seeking a promising location. He considered Memphis, Tennessee, but finally settled upon St. Joseph, Missouri, as the place to establish his business. The population of the town was then about nine thousand, and it was larger than Kansas City (4400), Omaha (1800), and Council Bluffs (2000) combined. The steamboat traffic on the Missouri River was active; St. Joseph was called 'Queen of the River Towns'; and the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad had just been completed in February 1859, linking the two great rivers, and making St. Joseph the western railhead of the entire country. The wagon trains were still outfitting in St. Joseph for their trips across the plains.

Mr. Wyeth rented a store room and cellar in the Corby Block on the southeast corner of Market Square and put in a $5,000 stock of hardware. Many years later C. F. Steinacker described the beginnings in these words:

Mr. Wyeth did the buying and kept the books. Rufus H. Jordan and I did all else there was to do. There were only the three of us. One-fourth of the stock was saddlery hardware. We sold wholesale and retail. Transportation was by steamboat and wagon. Business was good from the start as St. Joe was a frontier town and outfitting point for crossing the Plains, as Kansas and Nebraska were called in the early days. Winters were long and dreary for there was not much doing. We sat around the stove in bad weather and told yarns. Business continued to grow and after the discovery of gold in Colorado the craze was so great that some people attempted to go from here to Denver with push carts. Later on the Civil War commenced and business became stagnant. Union men were organized into a home guard and all had to drill every afternoon from four to six o'clock. Mr. Wyeth and Mr. Jordan were privates, but I was a Corporal. The Government began issuing greenbacks and buying supplies as business prospered again.'

In 1863 Mr. Wyeth's son, Huston, was born and in 1864. Mr. Wyeth purchased the house at 408 North Eleventh Street where the family lived until 1870. In 1866 a fire destroyed the entire Corby Block on Market Square, including the Wyeth store. While using temporary quarters on Second Street, William M. Wyeth & Company erected its own building on the east side of Third Street, between Felix and Edmond, moving in in 1867. The business continued to grow and additional buildings were necessary. A factory was built to manufacture saddles and harness, and a tin shop made utensils. In 1881 the business was incorporated as the Wyeth Hardware & Manufacturing Company. In 1883 George M. Johnson was employed at the age of twenty-two, and in 1885 James A. Warner joined the business to remain for fifty-eight years. Both men were to make contributions to the success of the enterprise.

In 1888 Huston Wyeth became vice-president of the Company and in 1889 W. M. Wyeth purchased a controlling interest in the Morning Herald newspaper, which was merged with the Gazette in 1900. Mr. W. M. Wyeth in 1879 built the castle-like home at Eleventh and Charles Streets and lived there until 1888 when he sold it to Mrs. Kate Tootle. He then built the Wyeth Flats' at Eleventh and Faraon Streets and the large brick home on South Twelfth Street.

William Maxwell Wyeth died at his home, 417 South Twelfth Street, on March 8, 1901, at the age of sixty-nine. He was survived by his widow, a granddaughter, and his only son, Huston Wyeth, who was elected president of the Wyeth Hardware & Manufacturing Company.