The Dating Game: The Kearns Glass Companies

Virtually all the typical secondary sources we use for glass factories that began in the mid-19th century are confused about the series of companies connected with George Washington Kearns. This is clearly an indication of the complicated history of the Zanesville factories. Zanesville glass was the focus of pioneering work by Knittle (1924; 1927; 1932), but her chronological assessments of the Kearns factories are incomplete and evidently led to further misinterpretations by McKearin and McKearin (1948) and Toulouse (1971). Many of these errors were corrected by subsequent detailed research in Zanesville newspapers and county records by Schneider and Greer (1956a-h). Schneider was a diligent and prolific local historian, while Greer was a retired executive at the local glass factory. Their work is an impressive compilation of historical information on Zanesville glass factories. Nonetheless, their history, being segregated into numerous individual newspaper articles, it is often difficult to follow, and it suffers from some conflicting statements as well as from gaps in the historical record. These articles are the basis for the account of the Kearns factories in McKearin and Wilson (1978:165-168), who nonetheless manage to confuse some aspects of the history. Fortunately, Barrett (1997), another member of the local glass industry, after 20 years investigating its history, locating many previously unknown newspaper references and other archival sources, produced an impressively comprehensive book on Zanesville glass. It is the basis of most of our understanding of the Zanesville industry, supplemented with some additional research of our own.