Mea Culpa

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

I’ve been dusting off my large archive of unpublished pictures, especially after my Fairchild gaffe the other day, to see what’s in there that I haven’t told you about.  I found something that I promised to my friend and loyal Knight of the Order, Irvine Nichols . . . and I should have posted it a long, long time ago.

Better late than never:

These are Henber pencils, made in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Both of these examples are in sterling, but they are also found in gold filled.

One unique design feature on Henber pencils is the engraving, which typically extends down closer to the point than you usually see - the machining on the cylindrical part is much easier to do than on the conical section approaching the nose:

There’s some variation on the caps here, but we don’t have documentary evidence to say whether one is earlier than the other:

But we do have documentary evidence, and that is what I had promised to Irvine so long ago:

The above instruction sheet has an address for the company at the bottom: 706 First Avenue North, Minneapolis.  The other instruction sheet I’ve turned up shows an address of 900 Hennepin Avenue, also in Minneapolis:

The brand proved difficult to research, because there isn’t much information out there.  All the advertisements I found for Henber pencils were along these lines, in which Henber promoted the pencils by having puzzle contests.  The lucky winner’s prize would be incrementally enhanced, depending on the number of pencils the entrant had ordered.  Here’s one of these ads, which ran in Successful Farming in December, 1921.

The earliest advertisement I could find was in the September 16, 1921 edition of the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal, which provided only “Department 11" for the Henber Company.  Articles of Incorporation for Henber were published in Echo de L’ouest, a Minneapolis newspaper, on April 28, 1921.  The incorporators were identified as A.B. Frizzell, Henry N. Schmidt, V.V. Byrnes and M.B. Johnston, all of Minneapolis, and there’s no mention of pencils specifically in the purpose clause of the articles – just a general reference to “merchandise of all kinds.”

I was never able to find an advertisement for the Henber with the First Street address, but the company moved several times in 1922 and 1923.  This ad, which ran in the February 18, 1922 edition of The Detroit Free Press, reflects a change in the company’s address to 414 South Sixth Street, Minneapolis:

All the advertisements I found were along these lines, with prizes for a write-in contest enhanced based on the number of Henbers the entrant ordered, and they reflect a lot of moving around for the company.  By June 11, 1922, an advertisement in the Chicago Tribune had an address of 230 Flatiron Building; on January 7, 1923, another ad in The Detroit Free Press shows the company at 228 Flatiron Building, Minneapolis, but just a month later, on February 25, 1923, The Philadelphia Inquirer indicated the company was at 411 South Sixth Street, Minneapolis.

And . . . as quickly as the Henber emerges, it’s gone.  I found no advertisements published after February, 1923.  I think it's because two of the principals were soon distracted with other projects: two of the four men behind the Henber Company were publishing guys, not pencil guys, and it looks like they were the financiers of the group.

Just a month after the announcement of Henber’s incorporation, two of its founders, A.B. Frizzell and Henry N. Schmidt, also participated in the formation of another merchanising company in nearby St. Paul, along with Henry D. Bratter.  The new company was called The Bratter Products Company, as announced in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on May 6, 1922:

The Star, in which the announcement were published, was having great financial difficulties.  On June 2, 1924, the Star itself reported that it had found new buyers after going into receivership: among the buyers were “H.D. Bratter and associates”:

After the dust settled, the Star ran a followup piece on June 30, in which the sale of the paper was explained in more detail.  Among Bratter’s associates was A.B. Frizzell, publisher of Farm, Stock and Home and formerly connected with the Minneapolis Daily News; there’s no mention of Frizzell’s involvement with Henber:

For some time thereafter, Frizzell was listed as co-publisher of the Star on the newspaper’s masthead, and periodic reports from the paper report that he and copublisher John Thompson were the only two shareholders owning more than one percent of the paper’s stock.

The pencil brains behind the Henber outfit appeared to be V.V. Byrnes, who remained in the pen and pencil business after Henber, going into business as the “Fountain Pencil Company.”  He apparently adopted the same sales gimmicks from his time at Henber, but the subjectivity of the “contest” got him into trouble.  In 1927, he was sued by a disappointed participant in his competition for prizes, who claimed that while the announced winner had found 714 words in a hidden word puzzle, he had found 2,063: