Hemingray Glass Company
Cincinnati, Ohio (1848-1852)Covington, Kentucky (1852-c.1890)
Muncie, Indiana (1888-1933)
Muncie, Indiana (1933-1972) [Owens Illinois Glass Co.]
Hemingray is the best known and was the most prolific glass insulator manufacturer in the world. Although best known for insulators, Hemingray also produced many other glass items, including bottles, fruit jars, pressed glass dishes, tumblers, battery jars, fishbowls, lantern globes, oil lamps, general tableware and much, much more. Hemingray operated under several slightly different company names during it's long history, first as Gray & Hemingray (1848-1856), then Gray, Hemingray & Bros. (1857-1860), Gray, Hemingray & Brother (1861-1863), Hemingray Bros. & Company (1864-1867), R. Hemingray & Company (1868-1869), and finally incorporating as the Hemingray Glass Company, Inc. in 1870.
Hemingray began as a small operation in Cincinnati in 1848. In 1852 the glasshouse operation itself was moved across the Ohio River to Covington, Kentucky, but the business office/showroom remained in Cincinnati until 1881, and finally it too was moved to a new building in Covington that year. With the explosion of manufacturing concerns in the 1880s in the "natural gas belt" in central Indiana & northwestern Ohio, a new factory was built in Muncie, Indiana and production commenced there in 1888. The exact year when actual insulator production ended at the Covington site is still undetermined, but probably occurred in the 1890-1894 period. The Covington factory also re-opened for a short time in the 1900-1902 period. The business office remained at Covington until 1919, at which time all operation was moved to Muncie. In 1933 the Muncie factory officially became the "Hemingray Division", a subsidiary of the Owens Illinois Glass Company (factory #26) and insulators made after that year continued to carry the "HEMINGRAY" name. Date codes were embossed on the majority of insulators after 1934 and the majority (but certainly not all) of post-1934 production was made in clear(colorless) or off-clear glass. Glass building blocks, a major item made for many years, was discontinued in March of 1966 and production of insulators was discontinued in 1967 although the factory continued to produce television face-plates until it closed permanently in 1972. (The very last insulators made were produced at the Indiana Glass Co. facility in Dunkirk, Indiana, using molds that had been moved from Muncie to that location).
Embossings on Hemingray insulators include "PATENT MAY 2 1893", "PAT DEC 19 1871", "H.G.CO.", "HEMINGRAY", "KIMBLE", and others. The earliest insulators made by Hemingray have not been identified but are almost certain to be circa 1850s threadless or possibly Wade types. Lightning rod insulators, and various sizes of spool insulators were also made. Hemingray is well-known among fruit jar collectors for several types of jars they manufactured in the mid-late 1800s, up into the early 1900s. The most famous of those would be the "GLOBE" fruit jar which is found in a range of colors, from aqua to many shades of amber, including honey amber, dark amber,etc; also olive green, blackglass, clear and cornflower blue.
Tremendous numbers of insulators embossed with the lettering "PATENT / MAY 2 1893" were made from (presumably) 1893 through at least 1910, (the period of 17 years during which the patent for Hemingray's "drip points" ['teeth' along the base of the insulator] was in effect), and probably even for several years afterward on some insulator styles.
For more info on Hemingray and Hemingray products, check out these sites:
Hemingray.com ; Hemingray.net ; Hemingray.info.
(Pictured: Hemingray-16 [CD 122] toll line insulator in a bright "Seven-up" green). [Sources: Bob Stahr; David Dale; Clarice Gordon; Glenn Drummond; Alice Creswick(The Fruit Jar Works); articles in Crown Jewels of the Wire magazine].
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