After doing considerable research, I have discovered reliable evidence that I believe proves that tokens from the Louisville Fire Brick Works should be listed as coal scrip. There are several brickyard tokens listed as scrip in the Edkins Catalogue and for good reason. It took a lot of coal to fire the kilns to bake the brick. The financially feasible thing to do was mine your own coal to keep the cost down.

 

            I went to Louisville, Ky., to the courthouse and researched the Articles of Incorporation of the Louisville Fire Brick Works. It stated that “the nature of the business to be transacted and the object and purpose of the corporation is to manufacture, sell and deal in fire brick, fire clay and other clay products, and all by-products of the same, to mine, quarry, buy and sell fire clay and other clay, coal, and other minerals…….” Of course, the mentioning of mining coal in its own Articles is the key interest to scrip collectors. Also stated was the intention “to erect, own, and maintain dwelling houses at or near its place of operation for the convenience of and rental to its employees.” In Grahn today, there are several of these company houses still in existence, which is more reminiscent of a coal town than a brickyard town.

 

            The Louisville Fire Brick Works was founded by Karl Grahn. He was born in Hanover, Germany and at the age of 21, came to America and settled in Pennsylvania. He later came to Ashland, Ky. where he worked as a surveyor. Mr. Grahn and partners bought approximately 6,000 acres of land which includes what is now Grahn, Ky. In 1886, he discovered flint and plastic fire clay on this property. Mr. Grahn moved to Louisville, Ky. and built his first fire brick plant there around 1889. This company was called the Louisville Fire Brick Works. The fire clay was shipped by rail from Grahn to Louisville. In June, 1913, Mr. Grahn opened his second fire brick plant, also called the Louisville Fire Brick Works. This plant was located in Carter County at Grahn, Ky., near his extensive minerals and land holdings, where the flint and plastic fire clay was extracted. The village of Grahn, previously called Fireclay, changed its name honoring the prominent business man, Karl Bernhard Grahn.

 

 

 

 

             I had an elderly aunt who always called the place by the possessive name, Grahn’s. I asked a few people from the area, and it seems that some of the older generation called the place Grahn’s. However, the only place that I have ever seen it written in the possessive form is on this token. Since this one cent token is the only one that I have ever seen from this series, I inquired about it among other collectors. The only response I got from one long time collector was that he had “a .10(worn), .50(edges shaved down) and $1.00 (nice)!” He also said that his pieces were white metal, evidently either nickel or aluminum. My one cent piece is brass.

 

 

 

 

 Although N.R. Cobern and M.S. Qualls were named as owners, J.B.Denues and M.W.Armstrong owned as many shares in the company. I have several different tokens with all of these names on them. I fortunately have a complete set of the brass Cobern & Qualls tokens, .05 - $1.00. Since I first started collecting scrip and tokens, I have been monitoring all local pieces that I have seen. Currently, the $1 piece from this company is the only one that I know of, with all the pieces thus far falling in the R9 - R10 range. Sometimes one can be lucky enough to date a token to a certain year, but this company can be pinpointed to be in business under this name certain months. The business started under this name June 1, 1914 and according to an amended Articles of Incorporation, the name was to end Sept. 24, 1914. The new name was to be known as Cobern & Armstrong. 

 

I would like to show a better example of this aluminum token, but since it is the only one that I have or have personally seen, it will have to do. I acquired it from a friend who dug it up with a metal detector. There is also a picture of a nice one in the local Carter County history book.

 

            The 1915 Dun & Bradstreet lists the population of Grahn at 210 and has Colbern & Armstrong owning the store. (Thanks for the D & B information from my good friend, Howard Fortune). (Nimrod) Cobern was later a state senator and (Wiley) Armstrong the son-in-law of Cobern, was a doctor. It was thought that Armstrong was never active in the store business. 

 

 

Pictured is the Louisville Fire Brick Works company store as it looked in 1915. The name can easily be read above the door, as well as Grahn above the upper windows.

 

 

 

 

 

This picture is a .05 brass token. The only other one that I have seen is a .25 piece in the largest Kentucky scrip collection known. Pictured is the Louisville Fire Brick Works as it looked in 1920. 

 

 

            The picture comes courtesy Kentucky Historical Society, in which six kilns can be counted. I have another picture from the same time period that shows an additional nine kilns. That’s at least 15 kilns that can be accounted for. The caption with the picture says that the capacity is 50,000 bricks per day. One can see the coal around the kilns and get an idea of how much coal was needed to fire these kilns. In the very well researched book, Carter County A Pictorial History, by George Wolfford, it is stated on page 124 that “clay mining has paralleled coal and the two have been mined together.”

 

            On Jan. 2, 1926, the Louisville Fire Brick Works company store burned to the ground. The fire resulted from a defective flu in the offices of the fire brick company. M.S.(Mose Sanders) Qualls and J.T. (John Thomas) Powell were the principal stockholders. Mose Qualls was a bank president for many years, involved in several businesses, and was a stockholder in the Midland Coal Company in Olive Hill, Ky. Thomas Powell was involved in store businesses at other locations, including Powell & Company, listed as scrip in Hitchins, Ky. Mr. Powell was said to have built shelves in a old movie house a couple of blocks away and continued to do business from this location until the new brick store building was completed about a year and a half later in 1928. The new building was built on approximately the same spot. That the Grahn Mercantile Company was doing business somewhere in 1927 is evident due to several copies of invoices that I have bearing the company’s name from that year.

 

            Elvelyn Jackson, late historian from Ashland, Ky., wrote an article in the scrip newsletter in 1987, about the Grahn Mercantile Company. 

 

 

According to Elvelyn, the Louisville Fire Brick Works company store’s name was changed to the Grahn Mercantile Company in the early 1920’s. These tokens are aluminum, with the .25, .50, & $1 being somewhat easier to find than the .05 & .10. I have a complete set of these tokens. In all of the $1 denominations, the word “Mercantile” is misspelled “Mercatile”. In Elvelyn’s article, she points out variations in the .10, .25 and .50 pieces. The .25 & .50 have small and large beads encircling the wording on the obverse side. She says “the small bead .25 piece has 78 beads joined by a line, encircling the wording on the obverse side; the comma after “Grahn” is directly beneath the last “E” in Mercantile; the large bead .25 piece has 54 unconnected beads; the comma after “Grahn” is between the “l” and the “E” in mercantile. This is the newer and more common type. The small bead .50 piece is the older one, the comma after “Grahn” is to the left and nearer the “C” in Co. On the large bead type, it is to the right of, and nearer the “E” in Mercantile.”

 

            The variation in the .10 pieces are on the reverse. The one has “In Merchandise” on the same line, the other one is on two separate lines.

 

   

 

            My good friend, Larry Carroll, local historian and retired art teacher, has been releasing prints of his works on points of local historical interest around Christmas time. He also has Christmas cards of the print. Pictured is the Christmas card of the Grahn Mercantile Company, sometimes called Powell’s store.

 

 

 Pictured also is all that remains of the Grahn Mercantile company store for the Louisville Fire Brick Works. The “ruins” picture shows the left hand face of the building and upper side.

 

 

            The amazing thing about the Louisville Fire Brick Works is that it is still in operation. My cousin, Randy Salyers, an NSCA member who has been to some of the shows with me, is one of two foremen at the plant. The kilns are no longer fired by coal since gas lines were installed around 1950. Randy says that the Grahn location now employs around 25 people compared to 250-300 in years gone by. No longer needed are the coal mines or even the clay mines, since the company purchases the clay instead of mining their own.

 

            While working on this story, these tokens have become even more valuable to me as a collector, as I have begun to appreciate their historical significance. It has also become evident to me, based on this research, that the Lousville Fire Brick Works company tokens should be listed as scrip.