Mount Union borough

R. P. M. Davis and the Mount Union Refractories Company

Days before the Mount Union Refractories Company had its state charter, the Democratic Watchman of Bellefonte named the principal parties in the new silica brick plant: Wilson Kistler, P. P. Griffin, R. P. M. Davis of Lock Haven, and Rembrandt Peale of New York. F. D. Halstead, formerly with a Lock Haven fire brick company, and C. V. Hackman of Mount Union were also interested, the paper said, and Hackman would be the superintendent.

The charter came that September, with capital stock of $300,000. The trade journal Brick and Clay Record reported it in October and listed the directors: Davis, president and general manager; Halstead, secretary and treasurer; Hackman, superintendent; and Kistler and Griffin. Davis and Hackman had both been with Harbison-Walker, the journal said, Davis as works manager and Hackman as superintendent of its Mount Union plant.

The Harrisburg Telegraph named Davis president in 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918, and named Hackman superintendent in 1916, 1918 and 1919. In October 1916 it wrote that Davis and his associates were building an entire new model village for their workmen at Kistler. In November 1917 it called him president of the Central National Bank as well, and reported that he had offered his services to his country and been called to Washington. In October 1918, during the influenza, it reported that he opened a hospital in the Kistler school building in twenty-four hours after the decision was made. In August 1919 it said he had until recently been a resident of Harrisburg, and that at Mount Union he was prominently identified with banking and other business interests.

The 1991 county inventory calls him the company's president in 1924, when he objected to a ready-made school for Kistler.

Davis was also an inventor. Google Patents lists 25 patents under the name Roy P. M. Davis. This story counts the 22 dated 1912 to 1932. The other three, from 1941 to 1952, are left out because we have not shown they are his.

The 1912 patent, for a rock measuring apparatus, gives his home as Lock Haven, and F. D. Halstead signed it as a witness. His application for an automatic brick machine, filed from Mount Union in July 1922, was granted as Patent No. 1,498,614 in June 1924. In May 1926 a mold plate and replacer, patented by William H. McClelland of Huntingdon and assigned to Davis, cited that brick machine by its number.

Checked against the record. We read the Democratic Watchman of 8 September 1911, the Fulton County News of 21 September 1911, the Brick and Clay Record of 15 October 1911, the Harrisburg Telegraph items named here, the 1991 county inventory and the patents named here. Davis's titles come from newspaper and trade journal reports. We have not seen the state's charter record, the Mount Union Times or a bank directory, so we cannot say how long he headed the Central National Bank. The last newspaper report we found that calls him company president is from 1918; the 1924 title comes from the county inventory. Two later works, the 1993 history Brickyard Towns and the 1994 Mount Union Historic District nomination, call Hackman the company's president. We found no newspaper report from those years that does. The patent count comes from Google Patents, whose index can miss older patents. We opened all 25 it lists, but could not reach the Patent Office's own search. The 1912 patent gives Lock Haven, and the 1922 application gives Mount Union.

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