This company made steam engines, gas vehicle engines and saw sharpening machinery, though their main product line was clay-working machinery, as are used by brick and tile makers. Frey, Sheckler & Co. was in business by 1866. By 1883 it was known as Frey, Sheckler & Hoover. In 1889 they became the Frey-Sheckler Co., and then in 1896 it was part of a merger that created the American Clay Working Machinery Co. We do not know when, in this succession of companies, that they ceased manufacturing steam engines and saw sharpening machines.

Frey's gumming and sharpening machine for straight saws, from the 1882 edition of Grimshaw's "Saws"

      Daniel J. Sheckler, a cabinet maker by trade went to work in a machine-shop operated by James Kelley. He worked as a hand about eight years In about 1860, he and P. E. Frey bought the stock of Kelley & Widgeon,which had failed. They paid for the stock the first year, and the assignee offered the property for sale about 1862, when they purchased it for $3,500, and continued the business about four years with good success, when, in August 1867, all was again destroyed by fire, leaving them with nothing but $4,000 insurance. With this they began building the following winter their present foundry, which is known as Eagle Machine Works. The partners were F. E. Frey, Mr. Sheckler and George Quinby, each owning a third interest. They manufactured engines, horse-powers and saw-mills, brick machines, and did a general foundry business, and of late years, made the Eagle Portable Engine. The firm changed in 1875, when Mr. Sheckler retired. selling his interest to Mr. Quinby, and, in the meantime, running the works for the firm. Mr. Quinby retired in 1877, and William Hoover purchased his interest. The firm now is Frey, Sheckler & Hoover. Mr. Sheckler having again taken all interest. The works at present employ eighteen hands, and have six buildings foundry, machine-shops, blacksmith-shop, engine house, coke and sand house, store and paint-shop, office and pattern-room.

      In 1884, the proprietors of the Eagle Machine Works, of Bucyrus, Ohio, Messrs. Frey, Sheckler & Hoover, recently enlarged their establishment by the addition of a brick structure 50 x 35 feet in size and two stories in height.

Information Sources

• Mechanics Magazine, 26 Apr 1884, pg 324
• More details of this company's history can be found in the history of Bucyrus Township from a Sheckler genealogy website.
• Small classified ad in the 1866-02-10 Scientific American from Frey, Sheckler & Co. for their brick machine. The 1868-02-29 issue had a small ad from "Frey & Sheckler" looking for a tenoning machine, sticker, and heavy 36-inch swing lathe.
• The Ohio Historical Society has in its collection the following items:
  • An undated 12-page Descriptive circular of clay crushers from Frey, Sheckler & Hoover.
  • Illustrated general catalogue and price list of the Eagle Machine Works, Frey, Sheckler & Hoover, 1883.
  • Illustrated general catalogue and price list of Eagle Machine Works / Frey, Sheckler & Hoover, proprietors, 1885.
  • Twenty-eighth annual catalogue of the Frey-Sheckler Co. : successors to Frey, Sheckler and Hoover, Bucyrus, Ohio : clay-working machinery, engines, boilers, pulleys, shafting, etc., 1890. Their online catalog also assigns this catalog to the Eagle Machinery Works.
• An 1897 edition of Brick and Clay Recordhas biographies of some Frey-Sheckler employees; the biographies indicate that Frey-Sheckler merged with the American Clay-Working Machinery Company.
• History of the Republican party in Ohio, Volume 2, ed. Joseph Patterson Smith, has a biography of Wilson C. Lemert. "[I]n 1889 [Lemert] bought the Brick Machinery Factory of Frey, Sheckler & Hoover, organizing the Frey-Sheckler Company, which operates the most extensive manufactory of clay-working machinery in the world... In 1896 he organized the American Clay Working Machinery Company at Bucyrus, Ohio, and by purchase and combination of the factories of the same specialties, to wit, the Frey-Sheckler Company, of Bucyrus, and the Penfield & Son, of Willhoughby, Ohio, created a clay machinery plant four times as large as any of its class in the world."
• Robert Grimshaw's 1882 book Saws shows a "machine for dressing mulay, circular or other saws" from this firm.