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)
|
|