This stove, marked as a
Round Oak Chief, has on it patent dates of October 17, 1899 and April 18, 1905. It was made by the Round Oak Stove Company was of Dowagiac, Michigan. The company was originated in 1871 by Philo D. Beckwith, exclusively as a maker of heating stoves, expanding into the manufacture of cooking stoves not long after Beckwith's death in 1889. Round Oak stoves were considered "the finest heating stove money could buy" and prompted many imitators. They were highly valued for their robust construction and its attendant durability.
While the chapel in which it stands was built in 1866, this stove would have been manufactured sometime after the turn of the twentieth century, possibly (though unlikely) as late as the 1930s. With six cooking surfaces, a full sized oven, a side mounted water heater and a bread proofing oven above, this would have been quite a desirable model to have. Above the firebox door is a plaque indicating that the stove could burn either coal or wood.
Following is a bit of the history of the Round Oak Stove Company.
Round Oak History
Born in 1825 in New York, Philo D. Beckwith settled in Dowagiac in 1854 and opened a foundry. His experiments with heating stoves in the 1860s led to the reshaping of his foundry business from the roller grain drill to the heating stove. Beckwith cast his first stove around 1867 to heat his struggling foundry and shortly after, the Michigan Central Railroad ordered the heaters for its depots between Detroit and Chicago. By 1871, Beckwith had made heating stoves his primary product and the Round Oak Stove Company was born.
Round Oak reshaped the industry because of the quality of its durable heating stove, its affordability and by the late 1890s there were many ‘oak’ imitators on the market. None could compare to Beckwith’s Round Oak. The company expanded and Beckwith became a very popular man in town. He served as mayor for much of the 1880s and he invested a great deal of money and energy into various philanthropic activities. Beckwith died in January 1889, leaving the management of the firm to his son-in-law, Fred E. Lee.
Round Oak (the official company name became the estate of P.D. Beckwith after Beckwith’s death) continued expanding into the early 1900s. The company added new products, such as furnaces and cooking stoves, and Round Oak produced a wide array of advertising materials. The success of the firm can be attributed to solid products and quality advertising.
Poor management and deaths led to the start of Round Oak’s decline in 1914. Ormal Beach, the company’s first salesman, died that year; Arthur Beckwith, Philo’s adopted son and major innovator of Round Oak products over the years, died of tuberculosis; and lastly, veteran employee Arthur Rudolphi left to start his own furnace company after being denied a promotion. In 1915, the Rudy Furnace Company became the first of three Round Oak competitors to open in Dowagiac, followed by Premier in 1920 and Dowagiac Steel Furnace in 1929.
Round Oak stayed strong into the 1920s and survived the Great Depression, though greatly damaged. World War II government contracts helped the company stave off elimination, but once the war ended, Round Oak was a troubled company. In 1947, the company sold its buildings to Kaizer-Frazer for the production of automobile engine parts and the Round Oak name was sold to Peerless Furnace, which continued to make repair parts for furnaces and stoves. A Round Oak comeback in Dowagiac in the early 1950s was short lived and Round Oak was left to history.
From the Dowagiac Museum
The story of St. Mary's Mission begins in 1823, when twelve Iroquois, employed as trappers by the Hudson's Bay Company, remained with the Salish through the winter of 1823-24. Exposed to Christianity 200 years previous, they told the Salish stories of Christianity and of the "Black Robes", the missionaries who taught them. The Salish proved to be an interested audience and, between 1831 and 1839 they sent four delegations to St. Louis in an attempt to obtain a Black Robe of their own.
On September 24, 1841, Father Pierre Jean DeSmet, together with his fellow Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Gregory Mengarini and Nicolas Point, and three Lay Brothers arrived in the Bitterroot valley with their belongings and supplies in three carts and a wagon, the first vehicles to enter the area. They established the first white settlement in what was to become Montana, on the east bank of the Bitterroot river, immediately west of the present town of Stevensville.
The fathers built two chapels, residences and outbuildings, and began farming, planting wheat, oats, potatoes and garden crops. From Fort Vancouver they brought into Montana the first cattle, swine and poultry. A third chapel was under construction by 1846 but soon trouble with the Blackfeet forced the closure of the mission, the entirety being sold in November 1850 to John Owen, a former army sutler, for $250.00.
It was sixteen years later (1866) when Father Joseph Giorda, Superior for the Rocky Mountain area, called back Father Ravalli and Brother William Claessens and re-established St. Mary's Mission about a mile south of Fort Owen. Brother Claessens built a little chapel, the fourth he had built for St. Mary's, to which he attached a study, dining room, kitchen and a story and a half barn. Father Giorda made the "new" St. Mary's the Jesuit mission headquarters for the Rocky Mountain province. In 1879 an addition to the front of the building doubled the size of the chapel. (The entire Mission complex has been restored to that date - the peak of its beauty.)
The mission served the Salish people until their forced removal in 1891, during that time teaching them methods of farming and gardening to aid in their survival following the demise of the buffalo.
Today the original (contributing) components of the mission consist of the restored chapel/residence (Logs from the first mission were utilized to build the present church.), Father Ravalli's log house/pharmacy, Chief Victor's cabin, the cemetery, including Father Ravalli's grave, the Indian Burial Plot, the Smokehouse, now known as the root cellar, and two trees, Father Ravalli's Crabapple Tree and Wolf River Apple Tree, as well as a stone survey marker. Father Ravalli's Crab apple Tree, doubtless the oldest in Montana, was planted about 1869.
In order to preserve the original chapel a new church was built on the site in 1954. Beside it is the church's bell, hung in a stand alone bell tower. Both contribute to the historic district.
A Visitor's Center with gift shop, research library, art gallery and museum was built on the site in 1996.
Italicized sections above are from
St. Mary's Mission, Inc.