I’m happy you started this thread Miller! I have a Rixford mystery and an axe to go with it.
The axe is a beautiful 3 ½ pound wedge pattern (with chips in the bit, but I don’t care too much about that). The two stamps are “Rixford Mfg...<fade>” and the weight, “3 ½”. What’s most remarkable to me about the weight stamp is that it’s on the poll. I’ve never seen another like it. In fact, I wondered if it was a fake for a while. Then one day I was flipping through the 1887 Rixford catalog, and surprise! The illustrations of the axes in the catalog have a weight draw on the poll. My first clue.
It got me wondering about the date of the axe. Here are the parts to the puzzle (and some very puzzling parts) I have so far.
- While the company started in 1812, for this purpose, I’m really only interested in its life as an axe manufacturer, which started in 1880 in VT. At that time it was the O. S. Rixford Manufacturing Co. run by Oscar S. Rixford.
- In Tom Lamond’s book ‘Axe Manufacturers & Purveyors of Northern New England’, he states that in 1896 the name changed to Rixford Manufacturing Co.
- Then in 1900 the company was incorporated under the name Rixford Manufacturing Co, and Oscar H. Rixford became president.
- Finishing this thread, Oscar A. Rixford became president in 1926. Anything after this is irrelevant to this mystery.
I’ll also stick in here that the Thomas Register of American Manufacturers from 1905 gives the name Rixford Mfg co and the Hendricks' Commercial Register of the United States from 1916 gives the name Rixford Mfg co.
So based on the above, I would be dating this axe from 1896 to whenever they stopped stamping the poll with the weight. The 1923 Rixford catalog has illustrations of axes without weights on the poll, so I’ll put a pin on that date. So somewhere between 1896 and 1923. But there’s more.
A few years ago I spent some time digging through the Rixford Archives at the University of Vermont and took some pictures of documents I thought were interesting. Here is where things get puzzling.
- A document dated ‘187_’ has the heading O.S. Rixford- makes sense
- Documents dated ‘1881’ has the heading O.S. Rixford- makes sense
- A document dated ‘1890’ has the heading O.S. Rixford- makes sense (also a pic having the weight poll stamp)
- A document dated ‘Nov 1900’ has the heading O.S. Rixford- this is 4 years after the changed to Rixford mfg co
- A document dated ‘May 1902’ has the heading O.S. Rixford- this is 6 years after the changed to Rixford Mfg co and two years after being incorporated!
- A document dated ‘Oct 30 1902’ has the heading Rixford Mfg co- OK, making sense again
- A document dated ‘Nov 1902’ has the heading Rixford Mfg co, but it’s crossed out to read O.S. Rixford, really messed up, right?!
- Documents dated up until ‘1907’ have the heading Rixford Mfg co, but it’s crossed out to read O.S. Rixford, 5 years after they started printing Rixford Mfg co, they are still crossing it out to read O.S. Rixford?!
So they were using O.S. Rixford stationary 6 years after the suggested change of names, finally printed Rixford Mfg co stationary in 1902, but crossed the name out to write O.S. Rixford for at least another 5 years. I don’t know what, if anything, the means regarding what they would have been stamping their axes with, but it’s hurting, not helping, me date my axe.
Does anyone have any information, specifically around this time period, that might help (OK, even if it hurts)?
