52 Trade Houses in 52 Weeks Part 8 A.C. McClurg
Trade House Tackle, Part VIII
One of the most surprising fishing tackle wholesalers has to be the Chicago firm of A.C. McClurg & Co., a name far more famous in book circles than in fishing ones.
The company got its start as one of Chicago’s first enterprises known as S.C. Griggs, a stationery and book store founded in 1844. When Alexander C. McClurg–a recent Miami of Ohio graduate–went to work for them as a clerk in 1859, little did he know that his burgeoning book career would be interrupted by the great conflagration known as the American Civil War.
McClurg was born in Philadelphia in 1834 and in 1862 enlisted in the 88th Illinois Volunteers, was immediately promoted to Captain, and eventually breveted as a Brigadier General. He was Chief of Staff for the 14th Army Corps and accompanied Sherman on his march through the South.
Upon his return, General McClurg was offered a partnership in the Griggs company, which changed its name to Jansen, McClurg & Co. in 1872 after the Chicago Fire. Under General McClurg, the company became one of the leading book distributors and publishers in the nation, and soon added numerous other lines to its wholesale catalog including, as we shall discover, sporting goods.
Business boomed and McClurg even had time to found a literary magazine of note known as The Dial. The company published a number of important authors during this period.
“The Dial”
In 1899 A.C. McClurg & Co. burned to the ground (a total loss) but was rebuilt along the lines of a cooperative, with employees owning much of the company stock. The General passed away in 1901, having left behind a great legacy in arts and letters. Although the company was far better known for its distribution, it did hit a home run by publishing the first ten Edgar Rice Burroughs “Tarzan” novels. By 1923, McClurg become a strictly wholesale house, even selling its flagship downtown Chicago bookstore in 1923 to Brentano’s.
The company was distributing fishing tackle as early as 1890, in the 1919 Sporting Goods Dealer the company was listed as a sporting goods jobber. Marked McClurg tackle is both elusive, and mysterious. They surely sold a lot of tackle, but almost nothing is known of their trade names or how wide their distribution was.
In fact, one of the only marked pieces of fishing tackle I’ve found from this company is a line spool marked “McClurg’s Raven” that dates from ca. 1950. It is for 50 yards of 30 lb. test braided nylon casting line. We know they were active in the tackle field well past World War II, as recently a 1960 McClurg catalog came up for sale and it contained a full line of tackle.
This would explain why bamboo fly rods marked “McClurg’s Challenger” have been found; they are Union Hardware products, a pre-World War II manufacturer of note that never got back into the business after World War II.
These are ca. 1950 McClurg & Co. snells from the 1930s, likely manufactured for them by Pequea (who utilized that stylized “S” on many snells they made for other companies). They are fairly hard to find.
As the company went out of business in 1962, the firm wholesale’d tackle for almost seven decades. Surely these couple of pieces of vintage fishing tackle cannot be the sum total of this iconic Chicago firm?
It is not even known if Raven was one of McClurg’s trade names, or just a catchy name used to hawk this particular model of fishing lines.
For a more in depth biographical sketch the book below goes into great detail.
