Bartlett / New Hampshire / United States
Kearsarge Peg Co., Inc is a business located in Bartlett, NH that has been in continuous operation in this location for 121 years. The company has prospered through the years on its reputation for quality products and timely delivery. The original product ( hardwood shoe pegs and hardwood tumbling media ) is still manufactured in the facility, and in fact, Kearsarge is the only manufacturer of this product in North America. In the 1980s the company started a research and development effort to diversify its product line. This effort produced the PEGCO Process Laboratories Division, a subsidiary with a number of activities related to abrasive tumbling and metal finishing. This PEGCO division currently manufactures a wide variety of abrasive materials that are used in conjunction with hardwood tumbling media. The division also maintains a process laboratory that solicits metal finishing problems from customers, and then develops processes using aerials made by PEGCO, along with others, and machinery that PEGCO offers for sale.The company was established in 1865 in Andover, NH by Gerry and Augustus Morgan and the Baker, Carr & Sons Co Sometime later Baker, Carr & Sons interest appears to have been purchased by Jacob R. foster and he along with the Morgan brothers moved the Kearsarge Peg Co operations to Bartlett, NH in 1878. ( A Portland Locomotive and Marine Engine Works steam engine, [ with an 1878 manufacturers nameplate ] was the primary energy source for the factory operations up until its retirement in the 1980s. The steam engine is now currently housed and operational at the Maine State Museum in Augusta, ME. ) The two Morgan brothers purchased Mr. Fosters interest in the business, and ran the business until a fire destroyed the plant in 1905.( Pictured Above: View of Kearsarge Peg Co in 1920, the white birch seen here was favored for making specialty hardwood shoe pegs. The primary market for the companys product at this time was the shoe industry. )In 1966, the firm was incorporated in the State of New Hampshire with Stanley E. Davidson Sr., as President and Stanley E. Davidson Jr. as Vice President. This arrangement continued until 1979 when Mr. Davidson Sr. retired and the corporation redeemed his stock, Leaving Mr. Davidson Jr. as the sole stockholder of the corporation.The use of pegs in shoe manufacturing came to an abrupt halt with the advent of the Second World War. ( Exception: custom made climbing, skiing and cowboy boots ). Not only did the company find that its export markets were now closed, but new developments in shoe manufacturing technology obviated the need for pegs to tie or lock the last and sole of shoes together.Lupoline, under the director of its founder Joseph Lupo of pioneered dry barrel finish or tumbling techniques in the early part of the twentieth century, with some patents dating as early as the 1920s and 1930s. He found that shoe pegs made an ideal mass finishing media for smoothing and polishing plastic parts in rotary barrel finish equipment. This technology was quickly adapted by major manufacturers such as Bausch & Lomb, Foster-Grant and the American Optical Co. and others to replace tedious manual finishing methods that involved buffing. These large manufacturers of eyeglass frame and sunglass frame components were soon utilizing hardwood pegs in bulk, by the truck load and even car load for abrasive finishing and polishing operations. This continues to be the primary use for hardwood pegs and other hardwood preform shapes that the company manufactures to this day.In the early 1980s the company management decided that there was a need to become more involved on a technical level with the finishing industry. As a result the PEGCO Division was instituted as a marketing and technical arm to more aggressively market hardwood media for other applications. It soon became apparent that there was a need to make PEGCO a technical resource for the finishing industry. Its foc
