Not a pretty sight today, but the Port Huron Engine & Thresher Company was Port Huron’s top employer in 1916 (and very likely, many other years as well).

By Vicki Priest (c)

Perhaps the majority of people don’t get excited about some of the things I do . . . but Department of Labor Reports!?  I love hardware stores and let out little exclamations over finely designed metal objects.  So there’s that tomboy side of me (or engineer nerd?).  But the historian side of me, the Sherlockian part of me, was very excited indeed to find a Michigan Department of Labor Report from 1916 that listed businesses inspected in Port Huron.  Although the data is from “factory inspections,” those entities inspected were not only factories, but included businesses that simply provided a service (no doubt not ALL Port Huron businesses were inspected).  A really useful bit of information provided is the founding years of these companies (most of them, anyway).  Here are some culled facts from this 1916 report (hopefully, more years to come later).

Continue reading →