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INTERVIEW with ART WIEDEMAN
October 16, 1983
By Anna Zellick
This is Anna Zellick interviewing Art Wiedeman at the Central Montana Nursing Home. Room
No. 130. Today is October 16, 1983. Wiedeman is an old historic family. Fortunately for us (here
in Lewistown) Art has shared lot of information about the family either through an interview
held in 1978 and/or written family history. So we are in possession of much information on the
Wiedeman family.
But we do not have hardly any information on the Lewistown Tile and Brick Plant which,
according to the Fergus County Argus, for December 15, 1911, was established that year. So Art
would you be good enough to tell us anything about the background of that brick plant and the
role your father, George J. Wiedeman, pioneer merchant, played in its establishment?
WIEDEMAN: So, Anna I sure can. I sure appreciate your coming to this hospital to interview me
about my dad's operation of that brickyard. Now let's go back to the beginning and be realistic.
We had to have some building material. Stone was fine, but it was hard to get. It was useable
only in certain instances. Mr. (John) Gretencourt and dad were great friends before 1911. They
were sitting there having coffee one day, and Mr. Gretencourt said to dad, "Why don't you get
some clay together, and we'll send it to Blue Island, Illinois. I know that fellow down there, that
brick maker, and we'll ask his opinion about the clay that we have out here, and what he thinks
about it. Well, in time they got together several hundred pounds of that red clay. The brick
maker in Blue Island, Illinois said, "Where in the world did you get this stuff?" "We can make
the darn doggonest brick, clay product and brick out of that clay than we ever did. It's better
than anything we ever had." Well, that was one way of looking at a potential future income of
the area.
The fact that an opinion was expressed by another brickyard that the clay that we were sending
in was usable for brick and for tile and whatever. They were both elated about it. So, they
began to sell a little stock and to get enough money to build a brickyard. The Lewistown Brick
and Tile Company was started in 1911. John Gretencourt was manager. Dad was president. So
they went along. We have made brick in this area with dark color brick. Now we didn't have clay
to make light color brick or fancy stuff, but most of the buildings we see around here are dark
color brick model and very satisfactory and very usable, durable type of material. That was the
type of thing that they wanted and that's what they got.
ZELLlCK: Was Mr. John Gretencourt a bricklayer? He seemed to be a person who was
knowledgeable in that trade.
WIEDEMAN: John was a brick manufacturer in another town, in Illinois. That's why he knew of
the fellow in Blue Island. I guess they were great friends. Anyway, they barreled up some clay
and send it down to them and that's what they came up with in a report.
ZELLlCK: So, Mr. Gretencourt also played a very important role.
Object Description
| Title | Wiedeman, Art. Interview |
| Creator | Anna R. Zellick |
| Description | The Wiedeman family was one of the early families in Lewistown, Montana and were very involved in the building of the town. They owned the Lewistown Brick and Tile Co. |
| Date created | Oct 16, 1981 |
| Physical format | |
| Publisher | Anna R. Zellick |
| Subject | Lewistown Brick and Tile Co. Montana Hardware Co. Gretencourt, John. |
| Contributed by | Lewistown Public Library, Lewistown, MT. |
| Coverage-date | 1900-1920 |
| Coverage-geography | Fergus County, Montana; Lewistown, Montana |
| Rights information | No copyright restrictions. |
| Full text of this item | INTERVIEW with ART WIEDEMAN October 16, 1983 By Anna Zellick This is Anna Zellick interviewing Art Wiedeman at the Central Montana Nursing Home. Room No. 130. Today is October 16, 1983. Wiedeman is an old historic family. Fortunately for us (here in Lewistown) Art has shared lot of information about the family either through an interview held in 1978 and/or written family history. So we are in possession of much information on the Wiedeman family. But we do not have hardly any information on the Lewistown Tile and Brick Plant which, according to the Fergus County Argus, for December 15, 1911, was established that year. So Art would you be good enough to tell us anything about the background of that brick plant and the role your father, George J. Wiedeman, pioneer merchant, played in its establishment? WIEDEMAN: So, Anna I sure can. I sure appreciate your coming to this hospital to interview me about my dad's operation of that brickyard. Now let's go back to the beginning and be realistic. We had to have some building material. Stone was fine, but it was hard to get. It was useable only in certain instances. Mr. (John) Gretencourt and dad were great friends before 1911. They were sitting there having coffee one day, and Mr. Gretencourt said to dad, "Why don't you get some clay together, and we'll send it to Blue Island, Illinois. I know that fellow down there, that brick maker, and we'll ask his opinion about the clay that we have out here, and what he thinks about it. Well, in time they got together several hundred pounds of that red clay. The brick maker in Blue Island, Illinois said, "Where in the world did you get this stuff?" "We can make the darn doggonest brick, clay product and brick out of that clay than we ever did. It's better than anything we ever had.” Well, that was one way of looking at a potential future income of the area. The fact that an opinion was expressed by another brickyard that the clay that we were sending in was usable for brick and for tile and whatever. They were both elated about it. So, they began to sell a little stock and to get enough money to build a brickyard. The Lewistown Brick and Tile Company was started in 1911. John Gretencourt was manager. Dad was president. So they went along. We have made brick in this area with dark color brick. Now we didn't have clay to make light color brick or fancy stuff, but most of the buildings we see around here are dark color brick model and very satisfactory and very usable, durable type of material. That was the type of thing that they wanted and that's what they got. ZELLICK: Was Mr. John Gretencourt a bricklayer? He seemed to be a person who was knowledgeable in that trade. WIEDEMAN: John was a brick manufacturer in another town, in Illinois. That's why he knew of the fellow in Blue Island. I guess they were great friends. Anyway, they barreled up some clay and send it down to them and that's what they came up with in a report. ZELLICK: So, Mr. Gretencourt also played a very important role. WIDEMAN: WELL, Mr. Gretencourt was the manager of this thing. Sure, he helped build it, and helped with the drying and with the burning and get the right color and all that. He, you betcha your life, he was the spark plug that made the thing run. Dad was only the manager and helped finance it. ZELLICK: Were there other town merchants who helped as your dad did? WIEDEMAN: Oh, yah, I don't remember all of them. Jimmy Little John was one of the fellows whose father was in this thing. Others were W. D. Symmes, Sam Phillips, and some more of those guys who were up and down Main Street at the time, who were interested in helping to develop Lewistown for a place in which the people could bring up their families and raise their children and be free and be happy about it. Well, anyway, all of a sudden we built this brickyard. We built what we called beehives. They were round shaped kilns, and the greatest amount of labor was taking it from the cutter on to the dry car to the beehives, stacked up, so that the heat could go up through there. And then the heat to dry off with, circulated back through the underground into the fresh laid kiln. Otherwise, they were dried with that heat. Anyway, the darkest colored brick was right around close to the burner. Now, we had a bunch of burners around on the outside. I guess there were ten or twelve of them in a circle. We just couldn't make enough of them. About 1915, my mother decided that we were long enough in operation to cover that house down there with brick. ZELLICK: Her house on Boulevard St? WIEDEMAN: If we could knock the brick from the outside of the house off, we would get a yellow dropped sided wooden building. They used a Dutch Flemish Bond in the brick, and if you stand back, the dark and the red would make huge diamonds. Oh, you got to use your imagination a little bit, but really it was quite an outstanding job of bricklaying. And it is standing down there right now. ZELLICK: Who did that bricklaying, Mr. Gretencourt? WIEDEMAN: I don't know who the bricklayers were. Well, Mr. Gretencourt directed it, but I don't know who the bricklayers themselves were. So John Gretencourt looked after the construction of the building. When you veneer the building, when he was in charge of that bunch of workmen to make certain that they did just right and the design would be noticeable. Anyway, that was in 1915. It ap¬parently was a very good year because mother did a lot of work inside the house as well as outside the house. ZELLICK: Where was the Lewistown brick sold? WIEDEMAN: Mostly outside the city. Now, I got quite a kick out of John Jr. (Gretencourt) who was the manager after his father. We were going to Great Falls one day to a letting. And he said to me, "You see that big pile of brick over there?" I said, "Yes, What about it?" He said, "The architect got more than we did." Isn't that something? "Well, I said, "let's go about our business. We went down town". But we shipped brick to Wyoming and all over Montana. The bricks in the Butte school, there are nine designs in that doorway. We made them all. Three of them were shipped in straw in a box. There were only two bricks that would fit just so. Almost all of the brick that you see around here that is rugged is Lewistown brick. ZELLICK: Here in Lewistown, besides the veneer on your old family home, would you say that the brick used in the St. Leo's Catholic Church, Crowley Building, Lewistown Hide and Fur Co., Eagle's, Heartland Chevrolet, Junior High, Lincoln School Administration Building, Nash Finch, Gamble Robinson, the old St. Joseph's Nursing School, and Ayers home were built out of the Lewistown brick? WIEDEMAN: All the larger buildings are at least were made out of Lewistown brick. Now, the courthouse was Hebron brick. That was built before we were ever in operation. We began to handle Hebron light brick, and they began to handle our brick. We sold their brick and they sold our brick. ZELLICK: If this enterprise was so good with the product being of such high quality then why didn't the brick plant is continue in operation? WIEDEMAN: In the first place, dad died in 1935. Then I became president. By that time, the brick yard at Medicine Hat, Alberta came down and was under selling us all the time. They undersold us. They had sales. We never had any sales. We didn't even know what they were talking about. They dumped a bunch of brick here and they said that "We will sell to the highest bidder." Well, there was a lot of brick sold that way. ZELLICK: Was that Canadian brick used in some of our buildings? WIEDEMAN: No, it was sold then hauled away elsewhere. This helped to slow us down. With permission of all the stockholders, I sold the yard to a fellow by the name of Gordon. He, in turn, sold to this Wyoming outfit. ZELLICK: When did you sell to Gordon? WIEDEMAN: I sold it about three or four years ago, 1980. It was closed for quite a while before that because economically there just wasn't any building being done. Up in this area, anyway. We sold the whole outfit, and then the outfit in Wyoming, when they bought it from Gordon, turned right around or and built a $10,000 drying outfit, a $100,000 drying outfit inside of that great big tin shed down there. It wasn't any of my business, but I told them that it would never work because it wasn't long enough. It didn't, there wasn’t enough time to dry that kind of clay. He said, "You don't know what you are talking about?" So I shut up and went back to my business. Well, pretty quick I noticed a great big pile of broken and cracked brick down in front there. I stopped in one day and said asked to whoever it was, I don't remember the name of the fellow who was manager of the new Lewistown Brick (they changed the name) he said that is the brick that wouldn't dry." I said, "Well, why don't you run it through twice, then?" "Take them out at one end and put them through at the other end, and run them through slow heat." Well, then they began to burn them and it worked fine. In other words, you can't do the job in seven days, it takes fourteen days, to dry them sufficiently to burn. ZELLICK: Drying is a slow process. WIEDEMAN: A very slow process. But very important. If you dry too fast, you get curls in them and it's not straight and it's cracked. ZELLICK: You mean to say that it was outside competition and loss of the technique were two contributing factors that meant the downfall of this industry? WIEDEMAN: I would say so. ZELLICK: Does it have a future? WIEDEMAN: They sold it to the Wyoming who in turn gave it back to Gordon. It sits down there now. As far as I know, I haven't been down that direction lately, it's not operating. ZELLICK: Is brick still considered a medium to build with? WIEDEMAN: I think so. It's getting to be the architect's choice of colors. ZELLICK: What do you mean by that statement? WIEDEMAN: He'll say we’ll build this new building over there all pink." We haven't got any pink ones, but we'll get them to use red, up to pink, you know." Well, you can sit on that kind of a bid, if you want to, but they find someplace, some brick yard that has that pink brick. Now over in Bozeman you have several buildings made out of different color of brick than we got. ZELLICK: Made out of their clay, you mean, or they color it? WIEDEMAN: Yes, they make it out of their own native clay. ZELLICK: Is or was the Bank Electric Building made out of Lewistown brick? WIEDEMAN: No. ZELLICK: Where did that brick come from? WIEDEMAN: I don't know. ZELLICK: What about the Central Montana Hospital? WIEDEMAN: Yes, it was probably the last big job we had. ZELLICK: What other buildings were made from your brick? What about the De Kalb house? WIEDEMAN: Yes, I believe it was made out of our brick. ZELLICK: What about the St. Leo's elementary school? WIEDEMAN: Yes, that's all Lewistown brick. Several buildings around there are made out of Lewistown brick. It is a matter of variegated colors, to begin with. If you want all one color, then that means that there is a man who picks that particular color out of each color that comes out of the burner. ZELLICK: Where did the brick and the marble for the old Fergus County Bank Come in from? WIEDEMAN: That was Washington clay. ZELLICK: What about the marble in that building? Some of it must have been imported. WIEDEMAN: Some of it was. But I don't know where from. ZELLICK: What about the brick that was used in your apartment building, the Wiedeman Building? WIEDEMAN: That was Lewistown Brick. (History of Wiedeman Apts. given over the phone, not on the tape). In 1915, the building was built out of brick and stone that was formerly in the Montana Hardware Building that stood where the Montana Building now stands. It was made into the Kane Apartments. Ed Kane was a tin smith. He had a tin shop down stairs using one-half of the space. Fred Briggs the plumber used the other half of the space. Art Wiedeman believes that John Haugen did the carpentry. But the Weidman’s owned the building: Kane only rented it. Then in 1943 it was gutted by a fire. The Weidman’s had young Haugen and his father build the apartments, downstairs and upstairs. There were eight apartments altogether. Back to the tape, “Fergus County High School was built out of our brick." ZELLICK: What about the Safeway Building? WIEDEMAN: That’s our brick. ZELLICK: What about the post office? WIEDEMAN: The post office is our brick. ZELLICK: But it is a lighter color than the other buildings built out of your brick. WIEDEMAN: We mixed it up. We shipped in some and we sold some. ZELLICK: Then the Lewistown Brick and Tile Plant was in operation from 1911 to 197? when you sold it to Gordon. WIEDEMAN: With the exception of the courthouse and the Bank Electric Building all of the major buildings were built out of the Lewistown brick. ZELLICK: We are deviating a bit. Let's talk about your home, the Wiedeman House on Boulevard St. Constructed as a frame house in 1904 by the Tubb Brothers, who was the architect? WIEDEMAN: I don't know. In 1915, when the house was veneered and remodeled, my mother, as far as I know, was the architect (Anna Weydert Wiedeman). However, she may have had help from a Chicago firm to firm up the plans for construction and designing a structure that big. The actual design and construction of each board was her doing. She was very much, by golly, on the job. ZELLICK: What Chicago firm was involved or contacted? WIEDEMAN: The firm I have reference to is the outfit she did business with to help with the interior of the building. ZELLICK: Was it the Chicago firm that did or helped with the plans of the interior? WIEDEMAN: She went back to Chicago to attend a convention of some kind, and ran into this outfit. They did a lot of talking. Maybe they helped her to build from an idea standpoint. But at any rate, she had a lot to do with it. ZELLICK: Is it too far-fetched to say that she designed the remodeling or that with the help of the Chicago firm that she re-designed the house? WIEDEMAN: That would be the proper i.e. (with the help of the Chicago firm she ____. ZELLICK: You have no way of knowing the name of the Chicago firm? WIEDEMAN: No, I don't remember. ZELLICK: Was the Lewistown Brick Plant a money making proposition during its years of operation? WIEDEMAN: Yes, indeed. Even after my father passed away, I gave out Stockholders a dividend every year. We saw to it that it operated in such a way that we could. Many firms just bank the stuff and let it sit. We shared it with our employees. ZELLICK: How many employees were employed in its peak operation? WIEDEMAN: WELL, I would say sixteen or seventeen. ZELLICK: They came back every year? I understand that the plant was idle during the winter months. Why couldn't you make the brick during the winter? WIEDEMAN: In the first place, the clay is frozen. In the second place, the construction with brick came to a halt in the winter time. In the third place, these fellows wanted a little time off anyway. And so I don't know where they disappeared to, but they took their own vacations. ZELLICK: One time when I interviewed you about your school experiences, in 1978, you said that your father thought he would be employing the Croatian stonemasons who had built many stone buildings. But they chose not to work at the brick plant. Why was that? WIEDEMAN: I suppose they wanted to keep their industry within the Croatians, that they didn't allow anybody else into it. And they themselves took care of the requirements or whatever was made out of stone. ZELLICK: Didn't you also say that being European craftsmen, perhaps they didn't take too kindly to a medium that was considered "manufactured". WIEDEMAN: In a sense, that was true. But in another, it was competitive. It was a lot quicker to get a bunch of brick made, to fill a job, than to go up the Creek and hewn out the stone to fill the job. So, it was a competitive proposition. A lot of these old fellows didn't know anything but to square off and to lay, and to hand cut the stone. They were good craftsmen, but not brick layers. ZELLICK: WELL, Mr. Wiedeman I know that they wanted you for the dining room. Thank you very much. If we need additional information, we will come back. WIEDEMAN: Oh, I will be glad to. Today is November 7, 1983. We are continuing with our interview with Art Wiedeman. One of the questions that Ellen Cornwall, director of the ongoing Lewistown Historic Survey wanted asked is about your theatre which is now the Cloyd Funeral Home. Can you give us a background? When was it built? WIEDEMAN: Well, Anna to make a long story short. The theatre was built in 1953. Prior to the time that it was built, Ed Kane lived in a lone house back of the property. With him were his two sons and a daughter. Dad paid the light bill and the heating bill and the taxes through the years because Ed had given him the house and asked dad if he would take care of his wife as long as she lived. Dad agreed to it. The opportunity came along for him to build a nice theatre on that lot. So he told these kids (I say kids, but they were adults) to find something else to do besides hanging on their mother's skirts and he would transfer the mother to somewhere else. Which he did. The house was torn down and the stone fence around the house was also torn down. In its place was built the GeorgeAnna Theatre. ZELLICK: Who was the contractor? WIEDEMAN: Hobart Miner. ZELLICK: He was the contractor. WIEDEMAN: He and I graduated from school together. I said, "Hobart, don't you think that we ought to have an architect's drawing for this thing?" "Well" he said" "If what I'm going to do will suit you, why do we need an architect for?" And I agreed with him. We didn't have an architect. So we did some things in that building that usually isn't done. For example, all of the pipelines went into a trench, and they could be repaired by taking up the rugs and the timbers. Whatever it was, it could be fixed. That isn't being done today and I guess it never has been done. Hobart thought that was a good idea. ZELLICK: To have all the pips in one trench. WIEDEMAN: Yes, water, steam, sewer lines are all in this big trench around the theatre. You know the theatre was circular, the seating was. Rather than putting the trench down through the seating, it came out around the building. ZELLICK: You mean around the corners in the building. WIEDEMAN: Inside the building, but around the corners-of the amphitheater. I can't remember the man's name that was put in there to operate the theatre to begin with, but he wasn't very successful. We brought in Lou Boucher from Wyoming in 1955 to take over and operate it. Upstairs there was a nice apart¬ment and he lived up there for quite a while. Finally an apartment in the apart¬ment house was available, and he moved into it. The building was, as far as the theatre was concerned, was about finished when we fixed up the front end of the building into a store like the dentist, Dean Anderson and the optometrist, Herbert Johnson and so on were up at the front. That's how one can operate the cost of the building. Then we discovered that this fellow, I can't remember his name, who operated the theatre as such. We had an awful lot of trouble getting pictures from whomever had them to offer. Anyway, Lou had connections that we didn't have. He got pictures without any trouble. And, as you well know, the theatre was named after my mother and my father. ZELLICK: Yes, it was called the GeorgeAnna. WIEDEMAN: And we got along that way for several years. Then we sold the whole cheese to Cloyd’s Mortuary, from Missoula. They took the seats out, the theatre part, and raised the level of it so when you walked in the doorway in the back there wasn't so much of a dip. They had a lot of seats in there. I didn't where we knew what the seating capacity was. I do know that the back end of it where we had one door and a garage for our car and whatnot, and he put a door on the other side and a thoroughfare for his funeral equipment, which was fine. He since then has been very successful as a mortician. ZELLICK: What year did you sell the theatre to Cloyd's? Maybe, we can get that later. Also, tell us where did the brick come from? WIDJEMAN: The brick came from the Lewistown Brick and Tile Co. One of the things that amused me was that Peter Martin Nelson was the bricklayer, and he asked his brother to come out from Minneapolis to come out and help him. He was aw¬fully careful about his brother falling off the scaffold on the outside. I asked "How old is he anyway?" He said, "He's seventy-seven." ZELLICK: Who was "Brother" Nelson? WIEDEMAN: Arnold Nelson's father. What's the Dickens is his name? ZELLICK: It will come to you. We want to make one correction. Instead of Ed Kane living on that lot, it was Jim Kane. Jim Kane had the reputation of being a very fine carpenter, did he not? WIEDEMAN: Yes. He was a dandy carpenter. His kids weren't worth a damn. ZELLICK: As a finale to this interview, we thought it would be appropriate for Art Wiedeman in a succinct fashion the specific contributions that his father, George J. Wiedeman made to the development of Lewistown. Particularly his contribution to the development of some of the downtown buildings that are included in the current historic survey. So would you be good enough to list what those buildings were? WIEDEMAN: Anna, I don't know what buildings are listed in your investigation, but he did build what is now the Fergus Cafe. That in the beginning was the Bank of Fergus County. ZELLICK: What was his position at the time that that bank was built? WIEDEMAN: He was president. Then they built the Montana Building in 1915, and the Bank of Fergus County moved over there where now is the First Bank and went along with its business. Then along in 1935 he died, and then Mr. A. W. Johnson came from Dakota someplace and took over the presidency of the bank. But in the meantime, he, my father was very helpful to the community and the farmers. He knew them all real well. He helped them build their homes and get Livestock and so on. As a matter of fact, he did an awful lot to help this community grow. Now, you want to know all of the buildings that he built? The Montana Hardware and Lumber was one. It's on First Avenue. The Montana Building was one. The Apartment House on Broadway was one. These were some of the larger buildings. ZELLICK: And he was a friend of John Gretencourt. WIEDEMAN: Yes, and he was the president of the Lewistown Brick and Tile Plant Co. You already have the story of how John Gretencourt and he sent a local sample of clay to find out its value etc. ZELLICK: Yes, we have it. WIEDEMAN: Now, without further study you pretty much have what happened in the early days of Lewistown. Whoever takes these recordings and analyzes them will find that G. J. Wiedeman had quite a lot to do with the building of Lewistown. But his name doesn't appear anywhere. ZELLICK: How do we find out who the architect and contractor was for the Bank of Fergus County? Wiedeman; No, but Link and Haire were the architects of the Montana Bldg. ZELLICK: Concerning the interior of the Bank of Fergus Co., when it was in the present Fergus Cafe, can you enumerate some of the difficulties that were encountered? WIEDEMAN: Ceilings and the wainscoting were made of cherry wood. Where they got it from, I don't know, but they were quite a while in getting what they wanted. It was difficult and high priced. To see how it has been painted a cream color, is just terrible. ZELLICK: I thought once you told me that the cherry wood came from the south. I even believe that you mentioned Alabama. This, of course, was several years ago that you told me this. Thank you very much for this interview. |
Description
| Title | Wiedeman, Art. Interview 1 |
| Full text of this item | INTERVIEW with ART WIEDEMAN October 16, 1983 By Anna Zellick This is Anna Zellick interviewing Art Wiedeman at the Central Montana Nursing Home. Room No. 130. Today is October 16, 1983. Wiedeman is an old historic family. Fortunately for us (here in Lewistown) Art has shared lot of information about the family either through an interview held in 1978 and/or written family history. So we are in possession of much information on the Wiedeman family. But we do not have hardly any information on the Lewistown Tile and Brick Plant which, according to the Fergus County Argus, for December 15, 1911, was established that year. So Art would you be good enough to tell us anything about the background of that brick plant and the role your father, George J. Wiedeman, pioneer merchant, played in its establishment? WIEDEMAN: So, Anna I sure can. I sure appreciate your coming to this hospital to interview me about my dad's operation of that brickyard. Now let's go back to the beginning and be realistic. We had to have some building material. Stone was fine, but it was hard to get. It was useable only in certain instances. Mr. (John) Gretencourt and dad were great friends before 1911. They were sitting there having coffee one day, and Mr. Gretencourt said to dad, "Why don't you get some clay together, and we'll send it to Blue Island, Illinois. I know that fellow down there, that brick maker, and we'll ask his opinion about the clay that we have out here, and what he thinks about it. Well, in time they got together several hundred pounds of that red clay. The brick maker in Blue Island, Illinois said, "Where in the world did you get this stuff?" "We can make the darn doggonest brick, clay product and brick out of that clay than we ever did. It's better than anything we ever had." Well, that was one way of looking at a potential future income of the area. The fact that an opinion was expressed by another brickyard that the clay that we were sending in was usable for brick and for tile and whatever. They were both elated about it. So, they began to sell a little stock and to get enough money to build a brickyard. The Lewistown Brick and Tile Company was started in 1911. John Gretencourt was manager. Dad was president. So they went along. We have made brick in this area with dark color brick. Now we didn't have clay to make light color brick or fancy stuff, but most of the buildings we see around here are dark color brick model and very satisfactory and very usable, durable type of material. That was the type of thing that they wanted and that's what they got. ZELLlCK: Was Mr. John Gretencourt a bricklayer? He seemed to be a person who was knowledgeable in that trade. WIEDEMAN: John was a brick manufacturer in another town, in Illinois. That's why he knew of the fellow in Blue Island. I guess they were great friends. Anyway, they barreled up some clay and send it down to them and that's what they came up with in a report. ZELLlCK: So, Mr. Gretencourt also played a very important role. |
