The Corona Pen Company

The pencils in yesterday’s article marked for the Corona Pen Company led me to delve further into the company’s history. Our collector’s lore teaches us that there was some unspecified relationship with Parker, which did not make sense in light of the fact that Parker sued Rex for patent infringement while Corona sourced pencils to accompany its pens from Rex.

Similar rumors had surrounded the Century Pen Company – fortunately, there were detailed shareholder records which detailed fully Parker’s involvement with Century (that was explored here at the blog in a three-part series beginning with “In the Footsteps of Giants,” June 9, 2020: Volume 6, page 163). While I did not find a comparable treasure trove of corporate records with respect to Corona, I did find enough to piece together a reasonably complete history of the brand.

The Corona Pen Company was named for Samuel V. Corona, an Austrian born on December 25, 1884 who immigrated to the United States in 1907, settling in Illinois. His granddaughter, Grace Willems, published this photograph of Samuel online:

Samuel entered into a partnership with James Pitt called the called the Janesville Tool Company “several years” before Samuel became involved in the penmaking industry, according to the Janesville Daily Gazette on August 28, 1922. The article credited Corona with designing parts for the Woodstock Typewriter Company; that detail caught my attention, since I also have a small collection of antique typewriters. Here’s my example of the Woodstock:

That detail sent me briefly down a rabbit hole of a tangent, since the name “Corona” associated with typewriters begs the question whether Samuel was involved with the Corona Typewriter Company, which merged with L.C. Smith & Bros. in 1926 to form Smith-Corona. As a general rule I do not believe in coincidences, but in this case I believe it was. The Corona Typewriter Company was originally organized as the Standard Typewriter Company in 1909 – in New York City, only two years after Samuel V. Corona had settled in the Midwest and without any indication that Samuel relocated to the east coast. In 1914, Standard’s name was changed to the Corona Typewriter Company . . . just because it was a cool name.

On July 15, 1921, Corona applied for a patent for a fountain pen, which was granted as number 1,540,763 on June 9, 1925. I described the patent as a “compound lever” fountain pen in American Writing Instrument Patents Vol. 2: 1911-1945, because turning the knob on the end of the barrel pushes down on an internal lever to compress the ink sac:

Samuel V. Corona filed a trademark registration application on behalf of the Corona Pen Company on December 26, 1922, in which Samuel claimed to have used the mark in commerce since February 25, 1922. 

The company may have been formed several months after Samuel began marketing his Corona pens: the announcement that Samuel Corona had formed the Corona Pen Company, was published in the Janesville Daily Gazette on August 28, 1922. Samuel was the president and Herman Stubbendick was the secretary; the “principal shareholder” in the new organization was Dr. E.H. Damrow, a prominent Janesville chiropractor:

According to a follow up article on October 14, the company settled into the Picknell Building at 22 North Academy Street, Janesville. The article repeats one important line . . . “No plans are being made to move away from here, Mr. Corona said.” Piecing the context together, it appears that the company’s prospects were so promising that Corona received three offers to relocate to other locations.

From the outset, Samuel’s interests were not limited to fountain pens. At the same time his Corona Pen Company was ramping up production, he also incorporated the Janesville Refrigerator & Pump Company, according to an announcement in Iron Trade on October 22, 1922:

By June of 1923, the company’s capital stock was doubled to raise capital for increased production. Three new directors were added to the board; while Samuel was still the president, new officers would be elected “in a few days,” according to the Janesville Daily Gazette on June 1, 2023:

Perhaps Samuel’s outside interests prevented him from focusing all of his energy on the Corona Pen Company. On August 10, 1923, Corona visited DeKalb, Illinois for a meeting with local inventor Clyde Morse, who had invented a new sash lock to be manufactured in Wisconsin – presumably by Corona’s partnership in the Janesville Tool Company:

Corona was replaced as president of the Corona Pen Company by Dr. Damrow, although he was re-elected to the board of directors, according to the Weekly Gazette on August 31, 1923:

By October 1923, the Corona Pen Company had absorbed the business of the Janesville Tool Company, advertising general toolmaking and light manufacturing services in the pen company’s name. This advertisement appeared in the Janesville Weekly Gazette on October 16, 1923:

Despite the company’s early promise, its diversification into general light manufacturing suggests that its fountain pens might not have been as profitable as news reports at the time suggested. Samuel may have been having financial difficulties: on November 10, 1923 the Janesville Weekly Gazette reported that one F.I. Wilbur had sued Corona and obtained a judgment for groceries:

On November 9, 1925 the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin announced the formation of a new Corona Pen Co., with Dr. Damrow as one of its incorporators, along with W.W. Dale and A.H. Pember were also named. Dale was President of the Janesville Business College who also had a side job selling rebuilt typewriters; Pember was an opthamologist in Janesville. 

On November 17, the Platteville (Wisconsin) Journal and Grant County News reported that the company had invested in new machinery and was planning to move into new, larger quarters. “Many of Janesville’s most prominent professional men are interested in the company,” the article concludes:

That last statement may be the source of the theory that there was some connection between the Parker Pen Company and the Corona Pen Company, since it is difficult to imagine a group of “prominent professional men” in Janesville that did not include George S. Parker or anyone else affiliated with the Parker Pen Company. However, as of this writing I know of no shareholder records or other documentation to support that theory, so it is only speculation that there was any connection between the two companies other than their coincidental location in the same tiny Midwestern town.

That is not to say that there might not have been overlap between the Corona and Parker orbits. Two improvements to the Corona Pen’s basic design were patented by George Washington Gilman, both of which were applied for on November 27, 1926: number 1704,470 was granted on March 5, 1929 and number 1,726,432 was issued on August 27, 1929. Both patents were assigned to the Corona Pen Company:

Gilman’s name has come up before here at the blog: in “Checking Off the Boxes” (April 16, 2021: Volume 7, page 49) I explored Gilman’s patents for what would become the Parker Lucky Lock pencil, the earliest of which was applied for on November 7, 1921. Gilman’s patent for the Lucky Lock was assigned, “by mesne assignments” (that is, first to one company and then ultimately to another) to the Parker Pen Company; his later patents for a price band and the Lucky Lock’s clip, however, were assigned to American Metals Company, which had abruptly relocated from Attleboro, Massachusetts to – you guessed it – Janesville, Wisconsin in early 1922.

Was Gilman a Parker employee by 1926? I don’t think so. The later assignments of Gilman’s patents to American Metals Company suggest that American Metals remained his employer and continued to have an independent existence after the move to Janesville.

But, as always, there is more.

After the Corona Pen Company’s reorganization in late 1925, its principals decided to build a larger new factory in Antioch, Illinois. Plans were announced in the Waukegan News-Sun on July 8, 1927, in which the article states that the newly organized company was under the “leadership” of C.K. Anderson, described as an “Antioch financier.” Again, there is no mention of the Parker Pen Company.  On October 22, 1927, the Waukegan News-Sun reported that some of the Corona Pen Company’s equipment had been installed in the new factory.

Tragedy struck just a few month later. On February 20, 1928, fire broke out at the new factory in the celluloid curing room. Superintendent W.G. Baker immediately recognized the danger and ordered everyone to evacuate: without a moment to spare, employees rushed into the office area, which was sheltered from the factory by a brick wall. A few seconds later, the stored celluloid and guncotton exploded and completely destroyed the building. Miraculously, nobody was killed or seriously injured, but the loss reported was $50,000 – twice the $25,000 that it cost to build the factory just a few months earlier. The following account of the incident was published in the Libertyville (Illinois) Independent on February 23, 1928:

If that seems suspicious, things began to smell downright awful in the days after the explosion. On March 1, 1928, the McHenry Plaindealer reported that the total loss was covered by insurance and that a new factory would be built just as soon as the claim was settled with the insurance company. Vice President Walter R. Borman further stated that he already had architect’s plans for the new factory and had received “many bids” on the reconstruction:

Only eight days after the catastrophe, Corona Pen Company was publicly announcing it was doubling its money with the destruction of its new factory – miraculously, with no serious injuries – and that it already had architects and contractors lined up to spend the expected insurance payout. If that did not trigger the insurer’s fraud alerts, I don’t think anything would.

One good thing that came out of the explosion was that in response to the disaster, the Libertyville Independent reported on September 6, 1928 that the City of Antioch had enacted its first building code.

There is no report detailing when the new factory was finished and production was resumed, which is odd given the detailed coverage of Corona Pen’s activities prior to the disaster. The company did eventually rebuild, but apparently without insurance money: the Corona Pen Company was forced to secure a $40,780 loan from investment firm Runyard & Behanna on September 17, 1928.  The loan was payable in full by September 27, 1930, but by then Corona Pen might already have been gone. The McHenry Plaindealer reported on September 3, 1931, that the “abandoned Corona pen factory” had been looted, and a “large part” of the equipment and stock were taken.

Yeah, I smell a rat . . . again. Random thieves breaking into a pen factory filled with large equipment, tools, pens . . . everything one might need to start another pen company . . . when the pen company’s mortgage was nearly a year delinquent and its creditors were closing in . . . 

On January 28, 1932, the Waukegan News-Sun reported that a foreclosure decree had been rendered against the Corona Pen Company.

The notice of sheriff’s sale published in the Waukegan News-Sun on February 12, 1932 indicates that the Corona Pen Company’s factory was sold at auction on March 7, 1932. With that, whatever remained of the Corona Pen Company was gone. There is no evidence that the company's namesake, Samuel V. Corona, was involved with the company after the 1925 reorganization; he passed away on October 10, 1948.

So how do the examples of pencils offered by the Corona Pen Company from yesterday’s article fit into the story? All of the examples I have found were clearly made after the company was reorganized in late 1925: the Rex Manufacturing Company-made models all bear the 1926 patent dates, and those marked with the Antioch, Illinois location were made after the company relocated to Antioch in late 1927 - perhaps in those brief months before the explosion, or perhaps between the time the company reopened and when the company folded, likely in 1930 or 1931.

Perhaps both were sourced at the same time, and the Rex-made pencils may even have been sourced later than the Antioch-marked ones. Perhaps also the Antioch-marked examples were actually made by Rex, after Parker won its patent infringement case against Rex.

Was Corona related to Parker, other than their close proximity in Janesville for a few years? There is not enough evidence to support or refute that theory. On the one hand, if there was a relationship between the two, one might suspect that the Corona Pen Company would source rebadged pencils from Parker rather than from other companies. Rex would seem to be the unlikeliest supplier, given that Parker sued Rex for patent infringement in 1929 over the washer clip, and after that litigation many of Rex’s customers wound up with Parker-supplied rebadges . . . except . . . 

In the case of the Century Pen Company, another pen company that our collectors’ lore indicated was somehow related with Parker, internal corporate records proved that Century was clearly controlled by Parker (see “The Second Century,” June 10, 2020: Volume 6, page 166). Notwithstanding Parker’s documented control, Century also procured pencils from Rex and National Pen Products.

More documentation must be out there to answer these questions . . .