| First
known as Unionville, the town of Collinsville got
its name from three Collins brothers who had come
to Madison county and bought John Cook's claim in
1818. They were later joined by their
father, mother, and sisters and established a
distillery store, an ox-grist mill, saw mill, as
well as blacksmith, carpentry and wagon shops. Over the years,
Collinsville developed a number of coal mines, a
zinc work, a lead work, a knitting mill, a
canning plant, and a cow bell factory. This
factory was established by blacksmiths Joseph Moore and his brother James Moore who were born in Pennsylvania and
had moved to Harrison County, Ohio. They were the
sons of Eli Moore of Ireland, and his wife
Deborah Updegraph.
Joseph had come
out to Collinsville first in about 1843 and took
up a farm four miles northeast of Collinsville on
the National Trail and built a blacksmith shop.
After moving to Collinsville and taking charge of
the blacksmithing department at the saw mills
owned by Clark and Bickford, he leased their
shops and began making cowbells. He'd written to
his brother James in Ohio and told him there was
a great demand for them because the territory was
wide open and the cattle grazed freely. In 1847
James, answered his calling and came with his
wife Rebecca (Cook) and their children, Thomas,
Isaac, and daughter Cynthia who was only about
two years of age at the time. Their youngest son,
Joseph, was not born until 1853 at which time
they were living in Collinsville.
The original stock
bell factory that Joseph began, appears to have
been situated on Main and Aurora in 1849. When
Joseph died on the 17th of July in 1852, his son Isaac Cook Moore took over the business. It
was later managed by Oscar B. Wilson and then
sold in 1876 to Christian Gottlieb "C G
" Blum, a German immigrant who installed tin
roofs and operated a hardware store on Main
Street.
Blum had a
hardware store and had put up the shop in 1878 or
1879 on Goethe Street. He improved the cow bells
by copper plating them and began to ship them all
over the world. Christian's son John Henry Blum,
took over the factory and it was then operated by
John Henry Jr. until it closed in 1955.
The building was
later torn down and the cow bells are now a
collectable item. About twenty of them remain on
display at the Collinsville Historical
Museum.
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