Mercer County PAGenWeb

William H. Bashline 


WILLIAM H. BASHLINE, president and general manager of the Imperial Company, of Grove City, Mercer county, was born in Clarion county, Pennsylvania, August 13, 1865, and was reared a farmer boy, remaining on the farm until almost of age. He attended the country schools and later, the Clarion State Normal School, from which he was graduated. He then spent one year at the Allegheny College. and taught school a few terms. For six years, he engaged in the profession of a photographer, after which he became a traveling salesman, going through almost every state and territory in the entire Union. Being by nature gifted with a mechanical turn of mind, as he traveled, he observed that there was room for vast improvement in the construction of valves of various kinds, they being in common use. As the result of much investigation on his part, he became the inventor and patentee of every article now so extensively manufactured by the Imperial Company of Grove City, to which place he came in 1896, soon after organizing this company, now so universally known for the superior quality of the goods they put upon the market. This stock company erected a concrete block forty by one hundred and forty feet, wherein are made an endless variety of plumbers’ goods, including bibs, basin and bath cocks, stops and wastes, all of which are neatly fashioned from rich brass metal—hence the plant is locally styled “The Brass Foundry.”

Mr. Bashline went to Grove City, a stranger, in 1896, but has now become thoroughly identified with the business interests of the sprightly city, where he is held in high esteem. He was married in 1891, to Miss Alzora Anderson, of Cambridge City, Pennsylvania.

 


Source: (Twentieth Century History of Mercer County, 1909, Vol. I, pages 512-513)


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