Thomas Stockwell Simms

English: , The American Civil War had a significant impact on young Thomas Stockwell Simms. A native of Maine, he tried to enlist in Lincoln's Republican army at age 16 when he was too young. At 18 he was accepted by the Seventh Maine Light Battery to serve until the war's end in 1865. With his army discharge pay of $600 he bought a partnership in a Portland, Maine broom and brush manufacturing business. Simms wanted an investment where he could work for his future without exploiting anyone. Simms became salesman for the company with a territory that ranged from Boston to any new markets he might find. One of these was the New Brunswick city of Saint John, then a prosperous shipbuilding and commercial centre. , Within a few years Thomas Simms owned the company. Two of his Saint John customers, wholesale grocers, admired young Simms' business capability. When their firm became part-owners of a city brush factory, these men turned to Simms. Would the young Maine businessman move his manufacturing to Saint John and take over their brush factory? , Thomas Simms took up the challenge. In 1872 he brought his machinery, the foreman and a few workers from Portland to Saint John. Together they trained Saint John workers to make brooms. Simms spearheaded sales, finding wholesale customers for Simms' brushes and brooms throughout the Maritimes. Soon he expanded trade to Montreal and Newfoundland. , Simms' factory escaped the Great Fire of Saint John that destroyed most of the city's business district in 1877. Six years later Simms and his wife watched in despair as their plant burned to the ground. Insurance would not cover rebuilding but Simms' credit was good. In a short time he had new locations for both the broom machinery and the brush business. , Simms was the first manufacturer in North America to establish a direct connection with bristle works in China. From Germany and Scotland in the 1890's he imported new brush machines before the rest of North America. Simms found markets in the West Indies and in many centres across the United States. On the newly completed Canadian Pacific Railway he visited Vancouver and Victoria in 1897 to develop trade connections from Winnipeg to the Pacific coast, well ahead of his competitors. , Thomas Simms' final pleasure was a modern factory he built on Union Street opposite the Loyalist Burial Ground in 1902. The three-story brick building featured the latest in plant design and production equipment. It had the first sprinkler system in Saint John, using water from an on-site water tower. The workforce of 125 people manufactured over 450 different styles and sizes of brushes and brooms. When Thomas Simms died in 1908 he had made Saint John famous across North America and other parts of the world as the Home of Simms' quality brooms and brushes. , Today his great-grandson Thomas S. Simms carries on the family business in the present factory built in 1912 overlooking the Reversing Falls. From that landmark structure at Simms Corner opposite this park T.S. Simms and Co. Limited is known as "Brush Makers to the World". ,