This company was a notable producer of woodworking machinery in Maine. Daniel B. Hinckley founded the original company in Bucksport Maine in 1825, before moving up the Penobscot river to Bangor and joining forces with Thomas Egery. The company made a wide variety of mill machinery, including sawmills, lath, shingle, and clapboard machines, and travelling-bed planers.

     In 1898 the company merged with Bangor Foundry & Machine Co., another local maker of mill machinery. The merged firm was called Union Iron Works.

      Hinckley & Egery Iron Co., located on Oak street, was incorporated in 1868, with a capital of $150,000. The buildings occupied are, a two story stone building, 40 x 200 feet, with an ell 40 x 40 feet, used as a machine shop, a foundry building, built of wood, one story high, 60 x 85 feet, a two-story wooden building, 40 x 60 feet, used as a boiler shop, and a storehouse, two stories high, with a number of out-houses containing storehouses, offices, &c. They employ from 75 to 100 hands in the manufacture of steam engines, mill work and all kinds of machinery. They use about 600 tons of pig iron and 100 tons of wrought iron per year. The business was established in 1831 by Hinckley & Egery.

Information Sources

• According to a mention in the 1857-10-24 issue of Scientific American Scientific American, Hinckley & Egery was exhibiting their steam engine at that year's Fair of the American Institute.
• The 1861-06-15 issue of Scientific American noted that Hinckley & Egery was in the process of rifling 20 brass cannon for the state of Maine.
• The City of Bangor work mentions that a firm, Sargent & Sterns, had purchased a "Roberts steam saw mill" from "A. M. Roberts and Hinckley & Egery in 1863".
• The 1868-07-01 Scientific American issue has a short illustrated article on Herring's center vent water wheel, with Thomas Egery given as a contact person.
• Listed in the 1874 work, Wiley's American Iron Trade Manual of the Leading Iron Industries of the United States: "Hinckley & Egery Iron Co. - Steam engines, saw-mill machinery, and boilers. Established 1831. 50 hands employed."
• Thus far we have only found one patent assigned to this firm: an 1879 patent for a shingle-sawing machine. But Thomas N. Egery of Bangor received several patents spanning 1863-1879, and Marshal J. Egery also received a couple of patents during the same time.
• An advertisement from the 1880 Bangor Directory offers steam engines and boilers of their manufacture.
• Greenough & Co.'s Bangor Directory of 1882 lists "Hinckley & Egery Iron Co., iron foundry, Oak, corner Washington".
• Maine State Year-book, and Legislative Manual, for the Year 1883-84: "Water Wheels and Mill Machinery. Hinckley & Egery Iron Co., corner Oak and Washington."
• An ad in an 1885 business directory states that they manufacture automatic boxboard machines, gang lath mills, clapboard machines, shingle machines, and gang edgers.
• From The City of Bangor, The Industries, Resources, Attractions and Business Life of Bangor and Its Environs, by Edward Mitchell Blanding, 1899.

  By The consolidation of two important industries of this city, the Hinckley & Egery Iron Company and the Bangor Foundry & Machine Company, early in 1898, there was formed a concern of even greater importance in the city's welfare. This corporation is the Union Iron Works.

  Both the Hinckley & Egery Iron Company and the Bangor Foundry & Machine Company were long and firmly established industrial enterprises, both of them well equipped and doing a good business, but each naturally cutting to a more or less extent into the field of the other. By the consolidation of interests this competition was eliminated. Of course, heavier capital was available, and with the best of each establishment joined in one, together with the extensive improvements which the plant of the one-time Hinckley & Egery Iron Company underwent, gave the new concern a thoroughly modern and up-to-date equipment.

  Many extensive improvements and enlargements have been made in all departments of this immense plant, making it one of the finest in equipment in New England. The most northerly building in the plant of the concern is the store, which is entirely devoted to a complete line of mill supplies. In this line the company are the largest dealers in Eastern Maine, as well as being the leading manufacturers of general mill machinery. In all departments of the works perfect system is evident, and it is plain that in this day of progressive business enterprise, the company recognizes the fact that system is imperative wherever complete unison is desired in the successful operation of a large plant.

  The officers of the Union Iron Works are: President and Treasurer, Charles V. Lord; Manager, Charles A. Watters; Directors, Charles V. Lord, W. S. Whitman, H. P. Oliver, C. A. Gibson, E. M. Hersey, C. S. Lunt and L. C. Tyler.

• From Sprague's Journal of Maine History, February 1915.

  Honorable Rodney C. Penney, who has been a subscriber to the Journal from its beginning, died at his home in Bangor, Maine, April 28, 1914. Mr. Penney was born in East Eddington, Maine, Nov. 11, 1853. For many years he was manager of the slate quarries, owned and operated by the Monson, Maine Slate Company. In 1896 he moved to Bangor and was for several years manager of the Hinckley and Egery Company, now the Union Iron Works, and was also one of the promoters of the Penobscot Machinery Company.

• Webb's New England Statistical Gazetteer, 1869, pg. 37