LeBoeuf history

The LeBoeuf Fountain Pen Company was a pioneer in the manufacture of celluloid pens. LeBoeuf was not the very first -- celluloid was not a new material by that time -- but earlier makers of celluloid pens hadn't made the material their selling point. It was instead used as a cheaper substitute for hard rubber, in almost all cases without any exploitation of its ability to be colored and patterned.

If you search online, you'll read that LeBoeuf was founded in 1921 and went bankrupt in 1933. You won't find much more beyond references to various company patents -- though the fact that the latest was filed in 1938 and awarded in 1939 should have been a bit of a red flag. What is all the more surprising is that the history of  LeBoeuf was thoroughly researched by Chris Odgers 30 years ago and published in two comprehensive articles in Pen World (vol. 6, no. 3, Jan/Feb 1993, pp. 20-25 and vol. 6, no. 4, Mar/Apr 1993, pp. 28-31, 52-54). The story is far too involved to recapitulate here, involving not just a bankruptcy but also stock manipulation, embezzlement, a hostile takeover, and multiple refoundings and name changes, with the last successor company surviving until 1973, so I strongly encourage readers to consult Odgers' article for themselves -- whether in the original Pen World issues, or through the PCA's Reference Library, to which the author has generously made his original typescript available.

Although one might think that Odgers' work would be easy to duplicate now that so many sources have now been digitized, it turns out that some of his most important information came from a local newspaper, the Springfield Daily News, whose back issues are not part of the holdings of Newspapers.com, but rather are to be found at Genealogybank.com. I've not made a search through the latter as of yet, but I did dig through Newspapers.com which yielded only rather minor addenda to Odgers' findings.

Perhaps the most significant was Frank P. LeBoeuf's obituary in the Hartford Courant of May 21, 1951 which is shown below. There is no mention of his involvement in the pen business, which by multiple other indications appears to have been remarkably brief.

Another obituary was of Aurore Bessette, who died in 1991. Originally published in the Springfield Union-News of Springfield, Massachusetts on December 17 of that year, it is reproduced on a Bessette family genealogy site:

Aurore M. (Roy) Bessette, 100, of Springfield, a retired employee of the former Springfield Celery Co. and former president and owner of the former LeBoeuf Pilgrim Pen Co. in Springfield, died Monday in Springfield Municipal Hospital.

She owned the pen company from 1945 to 1953, and retired from the celery company in 1967.

Born in the city, she lived in Springfield most of her life. She was a communicant of St. Thomas Aquinas, and a life member of its Dames de St. Anne.

She was the widow of Homer J. Bessette.

She leaves a son, John of Chicopee; a daughter, Alida Higgins of Great Barrington; two sisters, Alida Roy of Chicopee and Phelonese Caldwell of Wellesley Hills; nine grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren.

The funeral will be Wednesday morning at Grise Funeral Home and the church, with burial in St. Aloysius Cemetery. Calling hours are this afternoon and evening.

I was also able to make use of trademark research tools that were not available to Odgers at the time. There are two trademark applications for "Unbreakable", the first filed by E. E. Le Boeuf on May 13, 1922, claiming first use on January 1, 1920, the second by John J. Byrnes on February 21, 1925, claiming first use on May 1, 1919.

The half-page ad above appeared in Springfield Old and New: Tercentenary Souvenir, 1636-1936, p. 173.