Frank Mack, William A Mack, Mack Brothers, and the start of the Standard Sewing Machine Company
The Mack Brothers (Frank and Miles) were agents for Domestic sewing machines. They were
based in Akron from 1872-1875
and Cleveland from
1875-1879. In 1878, they also became agents for
New Home, which had just been introduced. They covered and enormous
territory with eight branch offices and in 1878 it was reported that they sold
12,000 machines a year. They had wooden cabinets manufactured for them in Cleveland and bought
the ironwork from the DSMCo.
In
1879, Frank and Miles sold Mack Brothers to the DSMCo. Mack Brothers/Domestic
wanted to continue as New Home agents along with Domestic, but New Home did not believe Domestic would properly
represent their product and assigned their territory to another agent. This caused some
acrimony.
After selling Mack Brothers, Frank Mack became the general manager and vice president of DSMCo for 5 years.
Although he continued to reside in Norwalk, W A Mack
traveled frequently to the factory in Newark.
Standard Sewing Machine Company
In 1884, William and Frank
left Domestic to form the
Standard Sewing Machine Company. I wondered how they quickly and very successfully launched a rotary sewing machine
when all of their experience was with the Domestic fiddlebase. The answer is they bought an existing rotary sewing machine company
and changed the name.
The Leslie Sewing Machine Company
Arthur M Leslie patented a rotary shuttle sewing machine in 1881
(US 241553)
. In 1882, the
Teller Manufacturing Company changed its
name to
Leslie Sewing Machine Company. The Leslie Sewing Machine Company manufactured the Leslie Revolving Shuttle Sewing Machine
in Cleveland, OH starting in 1882. The Leslie was a lockstitch machine featuring a revolving shutttle, larger capacity bobbin than
competitors, and other advantages explained in
this article.
They advertised 2500 stitches per minute, surely an astounding number at
that time.
In March of 1884, Frank and William Mack and others
purchased the Leslie Sewing Machine Company.
In October of 1884, they began
construction of a 4 story factory
in Cleveland. That same month, they petitioned to
change the company
name to Standard Sewing Machine Company due to
"embarrassments"
caused the their company name. The
name change was granted
the following March. This is not to be confused with the
Standard Manufacturing Company
incorporated in Cleveland, OH in March of 1885.
The Standard Sewing Machine Company
Frank Mack was President of Standard from 1884 until 1893.
William Mack continued to patent improvements to the Standard Rotary designs for at least another 20 years.
The Standard SMCo grew quickly, doubling their factory and facilities the second year and increasing to three times the
original size the third year. By 1888, the factory employed 300 men and turned out over 150 machines daily. W. A. Mack was
quoted as saying that he made more Standards in the first year than he did Domestics in the first 9 years.
The Standard SMCo was linked to Domestic SMCo again in the 1910s, when I believe they manufactured the Domestic and King
Rotary sewing machines. Please refer to the model identification pages on this website
for more information.
I defer to others to complete further research into the Standard Sewing Machine Company.
