McFARLAN & NOTTINGHAM, Wood-Working Machinery and Machinists‘ Tools, 216-220 West Second Street.

      “This is one of those old established firms that has a wide and deserved reputation for substantial and reliable work in its line. It was founded in 1852 by Steptoe, McFarlan & Co., at the present location, Nos. 216-220 West Second street. In 1878 Mr. Steptoe retired, and the business was continued by the remaining partners, Thos. McFarlan and H. E. Nottingham.

      The building is a four-story brick, 75 by 85 feet, owned by the firm, and fitted up with a full complement of machinery, tools, etc., embracing the best machines and other devices in use, which are continually added to as occasion demands, or as new inventions and improvements appear, a rule of the firm being to always use the best machinery that can be procured. Among the machines in operation are mammoth planers and lathes, which are of great advantage in the work.

      The range of manufacture includes wood—working machinery and machinists’ tools, such as engine lathes, pulley turning lathes, turret lathes, Fox hand lathes, planers, shapers, drills, shafting lathes, milling machines, shafting, pullers. hangers, etc. In all of these the house supplies a large demand, its productions being in great favor with manufacturers, from the reliable character of the work and their adaptability to efficient and protracted service. Engine lathes are made up to 18 and 54 inches swing, and all the machines manufactured at this establishment are models of their kind.

      A fifty horse-power engine furnishes the motive power for the machinery, and only skilled workmen are employed, the whole being under the experienced personal supervision of the proprietors.

      The business is increasing, and the house is reliable and responsible—one of the few in the city that makes it an invariable rule to pay spot cash for all supplies, which gives it a desirable margin in the matter of expense. All orders sent to McFarlan & Nottingham receive prompt and satisfactory attention, and all letters of inquiry immediate reply.” (Quote from 1883)

      The partnership between machinist John Steptoe and carpenter Thomas McFarlan began sometime between 1845 and 1853, when they were known as Steptoe & McFarlan or Steptoe & McFarland (their own ads were not consistent in the spelling of "McFarlan"). Their factory was called the Western Works. The partners formally established their business in 1858, and this is apparently when they became "Steptoe, McFarlan & Co." A 1924 article in the Cincinnati Inquirer says that they were that city's first maker of woodworking machinery. In their early years much of their business came from their line of Woodworth planers, but by 1870 or so they were mainly making metal-working shapers.

      In 1878 the business failed and re-emerged as John Steptoe & Co. In 1903 it incorporated as the John Steptoe Shaper Co. By this time they were long out of the woodworking machinery business.

Information Sources

• Ad in 1853-54 Williams' Cincinnati Directory, as shown above: "Manufacturers of planing, mortising, tenon and sticking machines...". The ad has an illustration of a solid-chisel mortiser of distinctive design. Their works ("Western Works") were located on Columbia Street between Western Row and Plumb St.
• Ad in Montague's Illinois and Missouri State Directory for 1854-55, will an illustration of "Daniels' Planing Machine, as improved by John Steptoe. A detailed price list covers version from 9 to 50 feet long and from 24 to 36 inches wide; the corresponding range in prices was $190 to $450.
• Sketches and statistics of Cincinnati in 1859By Charles Cist, page 303.

  Steptoe & McFarlin, Western Machine Works, No. 218 Second street, between Plum and Western Row. This establishment also makes a variety of machines for working in wood, comprehending Steptoe's mortising machines, sash moulding and slat machine, improved resawing machine, Woodworth's planers, Steptoe's improved mortise machine, Daniels' improved planer, tenon and sash sticking machines, Fay's patent mortising machine, circular saw mandrels, journal mandrels, etc., etc. This firm makes more mortise machines than any other in the United States, and in respect to the Woodworth planing machine, they have entirely driven the eastern article from the market. Of these last, they make fifty to sixty annually, varying in value from five hundred to one thousand dollars. It has been the constant aim of the senior partner of this concern, for the last twenty years, to supply from Cincinnati the demand of the west with this kind of machinery. He has spared no expense to make the various articles of his manufacture both better and cheaper than the products brought from the east, so as to overcome the tendency of persons purchasing abroad what they can get at their own doors. Steptoe & McFarlin work thirty-two hands, and produce an annual value of seventy-five thousand dollars.

• Ads in 1867 and 1869 issues of Scientific American.
• The 1870 Report of the General Committee of the Cincinnati Industrial Exposition had exhibits from Steptoe, McFarlan & Co., including 8-inch Woodworth planer, 24-inch Farran's planer and matcher, weatherboard saw, iron-frame moulder, tenoner, four-footed mortiser, patent blind stile mortiser, 14' x 20" engine lathe, small metal shaper, and universal milling machine. The judge's report on the engine lathe said, "Fair design, but defective in workmanship." The report on the metal shaper was more positive, summarizing "A well-designed and convenient tool." The universal milling machine was "well proportioned, and well adapted to the purposes intended." The shaper and miller both won diplomas. The four-foot mortisers were "worthy of honorable mention". Their tenoner was "a good, practical machine, performing its work equally as well as [that from J. A. Fay & Co.], but not exhibiting so high a degree of finish in construction." The blind stile mortiser was "very useful and efficient" and earned an honorable mention. Their overall display of woodworking machinery earned a Large Silver Medal.
• Listing in the 1874 work, Wiley's American iron trade manual of the leading iron industries of the United States, "WESTERN MACHINE WORKS—Steptoe, McFarland [sic] & Co., proprietors. 216 West Second Street. Wood-working machinery."
• Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912, Volume 3, by S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, reiterates the biography of William Lodge, and says that he worked as foreman at "Steptoe, McFarland, Nottingham & Co." for eight years beginning in 1872.
• The May 10, 1917 edition of the Hardwood Record has a biography of William Lodge, including the following snippet: "...and became a resident of Cincinnati in 1872. He was made foreman of Steptoe, McFarland, Nottingham & Co.'s machine tools works, the pioneer concern of its kind west of the Alleghenies."
• The May 14, 1917 issue of the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce's The Cincinnatian carried an article on the "Machine Tool Industry of Cincinnati". The article begins as follows.

  Early machine tool manufacture in Cincinnati probably was the outcome of the steamboat business, and its development due to the inexorable demands of the proverbial "mother of invention."

  The first machine tool builder west of the Alleghenies was John Steptoe, the original founder of the resent John Steptoe Company, manufacturers of shapers, who came to this country from Oldham, England, about 1848, arriving in Cincinnati in 1850. With Thomas McFarland he started the Steptoe, McFarland Company, and they first built a foot-power mortising machine. Steptoe never was an originator or an inventor. They made a copy of the Putnam lathe. At the time of his death, about 1890, Bert Smith and James Mills were his principal men. They were discharged by Thomas Egan, Steptoe's administrator, who later sold the business to Otting & Louder, it netting the widow about $52,000. Steptoe had about 300 men in 1870 and was located on Second street, between Central avenue and Plum street....

  John Steptoe started in business about the time, or perhaps a little before the time that Niles & Company moved to Hamilton, and prior to that time was a workman in the shop of Miles Greenwood [of the Eagle Iron Foundry, maker of anchors and other ironwork for the shipbuilding industry].

  This foot-power mortising machine was one of the first of all mortising machines, and some time before 1873 there was developed from it a power mortising machines, which has become a world-wide factor in the rapid mortising of work. Steptoe also made a Daniels planer, which was, perhaps, the first machine made for planing the two sides of a log true with each other. His tenoning machines and wood planers are of much the same type as are in use today.

  The enormous cost and great task of getting machine tools from the East into Cincinnati in that early day suggested to Mr. Steptoe the making of such machines, and one of the first machines he ever made was one for the Globe Rolling Mills Co., Newport, Ky. This was a lathe, having a bed 26 feet in length, and as no planer was available for planing this bed, Mr. Steptoe, personally, chipped and filed the top of this bed, using straight edges for making it true. He later made a line of drilling machines which became popular with safe makers.

  Between 1860 and 1870 Steptoe had a partner—Johnson. They disagreed and Mr. Johnson started another shop and made machine tools. This Mr. Johnson was the father of the present works manager of the Bradford Machine Tool Company.

  This early history of Mr. Steptoe is given in detail because it was with the firm of Steptoe & McFarland that William Lodge first went to work in Cincinnati, in 1872. ...

• They Built a City; 150 Years of Industrial Cincinnati, 1938, has a history of the machine tool industry that provided information that misled us in our early research of this company. It says, "About 1850 Steptoe fashioned a wood planer, a machine used extensively in local woodworking plants. Marketing his product provided so profitable that Steptoe in 1855 took in as a partner Thomas McFarlan, carpenter, who not only believed that woodworkers needed machines to increased production, but also that he could give them exactly what they wished.". The 1855 date is demonstrably incorrect, and other sources suggest that a mortiser rather than a planer was the company's first product.
• Kenneth Cope's American Planer, Shaper and Slotter Builders says that Steptoe, McFarlan & Co. was "formed in 1860. The firm failed in 1878 and was reorganized as JOHN STEPTOE & CO... The firm incorporated in 1903 as the JOHN STEPTOE SHAPER CO. ..."
• Carriage and Wagon Makers Machinery and Tools by Kenneth L. Cope, 2004 page 173.
• A discussion in the Practical Machinist forum revealed that Steptoe claimed that they were established in 1845, as in a catalog cut that seems to be from the post-1878 "John Steptoe & Co." era. One contributor to the discussion said that neither Steptoe nor McFarland were listed in an 1850-51 directory but they are listed in an 1853-54 directory (see below).
• The Industries of Cincinnati., 1883, pg. 156