Distant cousin John McMahon Westcott (1834-1907) was a feed and grain salesman (and good one at that) who had a vision of modernizing agriculture and he had the energy and organizational skills to make his dream come. He was able to identify market needs and inspired others with his drive, as he created companies such as the Westcott Carriage Company, which his son Burton transformed into the Westcott Motor Car Company and energized others, including Hoosier Drill, which became a cornerstone of International Harvester. John’s entrepreneurial spirit and enlightened corporate governance inspired great-great-grandson Faizal Westcott as he applied for the 2016 Westcott Society Scholarship. Read Faizal’s essay on John McMahon Westcott.
John was born on August 24, 1834 in Union County, Indiana, to Henry and Sarah Westcott. He was not in the line of Stukely and Juliana Westcott, but rather was a seventh generation descendant of original settler Richard Westcott: John McMahon7 Westcott, Henry6, Sheppard5, Ebenezer4, Ebenezer3, Daniel2, Richard1. (See Marissa Millen Clark’s Family Tree on Ancestry.)
Hoosier Drill
John Westcott began his business careers as a dry goods merchant and then became a feed and grain salesmen, starting his own company in his early twenties. He purchased a minority interest in a company that made the Hoosier Drill, an agricultural implement that plowed and automatically seeded six rows of a crop in one pass.
A Hoosier Drill on display in the Wayne County Historical Museum in Richmond, Indiana
As described in his obituary in the Richmond, Indiana Palladian-Item (August 26, 1907), Hoosier Drill was the basis of John’s wealth, and Richmond’s prosperity.
He came to Richmond in 1862 and continued in the feed and grain business until 1872 when he became a stockholder in the Hoosier Drill works, then located at Milton. He then devoted his entire attention to the construction of agricultural machinery and progressed to a point where he was justified in moving the institution to Richmond in 1878. For a long time, the Hoosier plant was the largest of its kind in America, and it was through it, principally, that Mr. Westcott acquired his stupendous wealth, which is estimated at close to $2,000,000.
The Hoosier Drill factory that John Westcott built in Richmond, Indiana (left), was expanded to a full city block when it became part of The American Seeding Company, an amalgamation of four implement companies that was managed by Westcott’s sons and sons-in-law and later became a principal component of International Harvester.
According to the same obituary, John Westcott not only did well, he did good:
The men in Mr. Westcott’s employ always had the greatest respect for him as he was kindly in his treatment and made nearly all of his employees his personal friends. He always remembered them handsomely at Christmas time and other holidays. He helped maintain a fund for sick and Injured employees.
Westcott Hotel
In 1894 a group of Richmond businessmen led by John Westcott formed The Commercial Club and spearheaded a project to build a world-class hotel on the northeast corner of Tenth and Main Streets, in part because they wanted a decent place to meet. The hotel was intended to be the “premier hotel of Indiana” in its heyday. The grand opening was September 10, 1895. It was named the Westcott Hotel after John, the president of the Commercial Club and the largest shareholder in the building. Members of the Commercial Club owned it until 1899, when the club fell on hard times. John Westcott then assumed full ownership of the hotel. The interior of the hotel boasted some of the finest features available at the time, including a marble staircase, electric elevator, and sunlit lobby. By the 1970s, the hotel was no longer a premier lodging, and with the interstate highway system, tourists were no longer driving on U.S. Route 40 through Richmond. The Westcott closed in 1976 and was razed in 1977.
Westcott Hotel post card mailed from Indianapolis to “The Garden Gate, Nashville, 3 Tenn.” on February 2, 1947. Promotion on the mailing side: “WESTCOTT HOTEL, Richmond, Indiana. / $1.50 and Up Without Bath / $2.00 and Up With Bath / Coffee Shop – Barber Shop / 150 Rooms – On U.S. 40 / American Hotel Association / ‘Stop at recognized hotels.’”
Read one guest review of the Premier Hotel of Indiana.
Westcott Carriage Company
John Westcott, with his sons Burton and Harry, organized the Westcott Carriage Company in 1896 in Richmond, Indiana. The elder Westcott had a disdain for motor cars and eventually did not want the carriage company to have to compete with the motorized cars. His son Burton had moved to Springfield, Ohio as treasurer of the American Seeding Machine Co. in 1903. In the spring of 1916, Burton moved the car company to Springfield.
This early 20th century ad for the Westcott Carriage Company’s Golf Stanhope anticipated the value proposition of quality and reliability that the Westcott Motor Car Company promoted for its line of “the only automobile you will ever need.”
Sources:
Betty Acker, The Westcott Motor Car (Nashport, Ohio: Society of Stukely Westcott Descendants of America, 1996)
Ancestry.com: Marissa Millen Clark’s Family Tree
Juneanne Wescoat Glick, Westcote (Clayton, New Jersey: Bregler Associates, 1991)
Susan E. King, Richmond, Postcard History Series (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2005)
Newpapers.com: Richmond, Indiana, Palladiun-Item and The Richmond Item
The Westcott House