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Russell & Company (manufacturer)

russell & Company of Massillon, Ohio

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History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ107418626 ↗
Source-derived summary

Russell & Company of Massillon, Ohio, are best known for manufacturing farm and railroad machinery in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They built 18,000 steam tractors and stationary engines and 22,000 threshing machines.

History

In 1838 Nahum and Clement Russell started a general carpentry business in Massillon, Ohio. They used a two-story frame building, and drove the machinery by horse-power. They made ploughs (plows) and agricultural implements, plus building houses, furniture, coffins, and more. The carpentry shop burned down in 1840.

Charles M, Nahum and Clement – formed C.M. Russell & Co. on Jan. 1, 1842, based in an old whitewashed building called the "White Shop". On seeing Hiram and John Pitts' Buffalo Pitts Separator (thresher) they understood its shortcomings such that their improved version took the honours at the Ohio State Fair at Columbus in 1845.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Russell & Company (manufacturer)” is russell & Company of Massillon, Ohio. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Russell, Company and manufacturer, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1838, 1840, 1842, 1845—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Russell, Company and manufacturer is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “russell & Company of Massillon, Ohio” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q107418626. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1838, 1840, 1842 and 1845.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Russell & Company (manufacturer)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Russell & Company (manufacturer) primary sources, Russell & Company (manufacturer) archive and Russell research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Russell & Company (manufacturer)”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Russell & Company (manufacturer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.