Vintage Illustrated Advertising Cover: Keystone Manufacturing Co.* Sterling ILL
Postmark: Rock Falls, ILL 1892
*The first commencement of the present large concern, the Keystone Manufacturing Company, now doing business in Rock Falls, was in 1857, when Thomas A. Galt began the manufacture of farm implements in a small frame building, 16x18, one story high, which stood on the site now occupied by the C. B. & Q. passenger depot in Sterling, he being largely engaged in the hardware business at that time. This was then considered but a small auxiliary to his regular business, not dreaming it would grow into its present large proportions. In 1862 additional buildings were erected by Mr. Galt, on the ground now occupied by the Academy of Music. About this time a partnership was formed with Mr. George S. Tracy and the business consolidated with the planing mill, sash and door factory, which had been conducted by Mr. Tracy, on the land on which H. S. Street is at present engaged in the coal business. The business grew and prospered under the management of Messrs. Galt & Tracy, and they added a machine shop and foundry, when in the spring of 1867 the plant was burned, destroying nearly everything connected with it. Nothing daunted, they sold the old location and purchased an old warehouse located on Bridge street, now known as avenue B, and standing just to the south of the Wallace House block. In August, 1867, Messrs. Galt & Tracy purchased land and water power of A. P. Smith, located in Rock Falls, and commenced the erection of what is now a mammoth institution.