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MANUFACTURING PERIOD
Circa 1946-1974
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RETAILOR
Western Auto Associate Stores
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Ernest W. Hussey made baseball bats
since the 1930s. His early connection
with the business was when he started
buying stock for Billy Mains, the
well-known major league pitcher who
came up with the Chicago White
Stockings in 1888.
Mains operated his business at Sandy
Creek Bridgton. After Mains' death in
1923, Hussey
manufactured bats at the Sandy Creek shop for
a short time, then set up shop at his Parsonsfield farm.
The workshop which was set up in his home near Kezar Falls, Hussey turned
out many hundreds of bats and many
dollars worth of orders. He took as
much pride in his 160 acre farm and
native woodlands as in his progressive
business of making bats. Willard the
oldest son and a veteran of World II was
in partnership with his father who also
manufactures peavey handles, axe
handles, ladder rounds and wedges using
maple and white oak.
He and his son Willard Hussey provided bat for schools, and camps
throughout Maine and other New England
States. Some sporting goods stores in
the area also carried their bats. They
produced three distinct types of bats.
The "Hussey's Home Run" - "Hussey's
Pine Tree," with an oval branding, and
bat with the diamond branding pictured
above, bearing the "Made By E.W.
Hussey, Kezar Falls, Maine." The
diamond shape branding he continued to
use for years later. The barrel of some
bats are stamped "Mountain Ash"
Hussey used white ash to produce the bats from trees located on his farm
woodlands, or trees on woodlots of
friends and acquaintances. After
finding enough trees for a year's
supply of baseball bats, men were hired
to cut down the trees, saw them into
the lengths required by Mr. Hussey, and
to pile the logs beside rough woods'
roads to await removal from the woods
by horsedrawn wagons, or tractors and
motor trucks. The trees were cut during
the months of August and September,
while the sap is "out."
During the early 1950s, Hussey made thousands of mini bats, most of them
10 or 12 inches in length, which were
sold at boys' camps as souvenirs. These
were sold to the camp owners in gross
lots, and each bat ws stamped with the
camp's name.
In
1962 the 78 year old Hussey, was
running his one-man shop, filling about 1,200
hand turned baseball bats orders
annually — three times the production
of his early days in business. In 1974
at the age of 90, working by himself,
Hussey produced baseball bats on a
lathe and sanding machine he made
himself in the 1950s, out of an old
sewing machine, and a mowing machine.
Mr. Hussey past away in 1978.
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E.W. Hussey Kezar Falls
Maine Baseball Bats |
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"Hussey's Home Run" and
"Hussey's Pine Tree,"
Models Oval branding |
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| Alternative Diamond Branding |
Mountain Ash Barrel Branding |
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KEYMAN COLLECTIBLES
RELATED RESOURCES |
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