Charles Knox
BY KEVIN SHIELDS
Emigration has been a feature of Donegal family life for many generations, and success abroad has been achieved spectacularly by some who grasped their opportunity and worked hard. Charles Knox was one such Donegal man, who went to America with nothing and rose to become the biggest manufacturer of hats in the world.
Born in Ramelton in 1817, Charles Knox was 13 when he and his younger sister Margaret left pre-famine Ireland for New York. Their father Charles Sr. who was a coppersmith, and mother Margaret (nee Black) were already in New York having emigrated two years earlier with their eight eldest children. Charles and 10 year-old Margaret boarded a small sailing vessel in Moville but mid-Atlantic encountered a vicious storm. Badly crippled, it was blown off course and the young Knox children ended up stranded in Wilmington, Delaware - 120 miles from their parents. "How are you going to get to New York?" asked the ship’s captain, who wanted to put Margaret in a Wilmington household and ship Charles as a cabin boy. "We'll walk," said Charles, and they did. The journey took two weeks as they did chores for food, and slept in barns along the way.
Charles’s first job in New York was as an errand boy in a book store before gaining an apprenticeship with Leary & Co., the then famous Hatters. His apprentice pay was $25 for the full year. So good was Knox at his job that after one year Leary & Co. presented him with a bonus of $250 and raised his pay to $10 a week.
In 1838, aged 21, Charles Knox resigned from Leary & Co. and founded his own hat company in Lower Manhattan, initially prospering by selling the extremely popular beaver hats in the run up to the American Civil War. Also in 1838, Charles married Hannah Hyslop who was to bear him two children, Mary Ann and Edward.
Emigration has been a feature of Donegal family life for many generations, and success abroad has been achieved spectacularly by some who grasped their opportunity and worked hard. Charles Knox was one such Donegal man, who went to America with nothing and rose to become the biggest manufacturer of hats in the world.
Born in Ramelton in 1817, Charles Knox was 13 when he and his younger sister Margaret left pre-famine Ireland for New York. Their father Charles Sr. who was a coppersmith, and mother Margaret (nee Black) were already in New York having emigrated two years earlier with their eight eldest children. Charles and 10 year-old Margaret boarded a small sailing vessel in Moville but mid-Atlantic encountered a vicious storm. Badly crippled, it was blown off course and the young Knox children ended up stranded in Wilmington, Delaware - 120 miles from their parents. "How are you going to get to New York?" asked the ship’s captain, who wanted to put Margaret in a Wilmington household and ship Charles as a cabin boy. "We'll walk," said Charles, and they did. The journey took two weeks as they did chores for food, and slept in barns along the way.
Charles’s first job in New York was as an errand boy in a book store before gaining an apprenticeship with Leary & Co., the then famous Hatters. His apprentice pay was $25 for the full year. So good was Knox at his job that after one year Leary & Co. presented him with a bonus of $250 and raised his pay to $10 a week.
In 1838, aged 21, Charles Knox resigned from Leary & Co. and founded his own hat company in Lower Manhattan, initially prospering by selling the extremely popular beaver hats in the run up to the American Civil War. Also in 1838, Charles married Hannah Hyslop who was to bear him two children, Mary Ann and Edward.
Knox Hatters expanded slowly at first from a modest shop at 110 Fulton Street to larger premises on Broadway, Nassau Street and eventually his corporate headquarters and shop on Fifth Avenue. The shop was described as "the most elegant establishment of its kind in the country". By the middle of the century, Knox Hats were sold all over America and manufactured in Knox’s Brooklyn factory – the largest hat factory in the world. This was the golden age of the top hat and Knox could name many famous Americans as his customers. 23 US Presidents wore Knox hats including Abraham Lincoln whose famous ‘Stovepipe’ hat was designed and manufactured by the Ramelton man. Lincoln famously kept important papers in his ‘Knox Stovepipe’. Knox built his reputation on the quality of his hats and was a genius for promoting his business, on which he spent huge sums in the newspapers. By the time he retired, Knox had a hugely successful business, had amassed a fortune and was one of the largest property owners in New York, owning 28 private houses, three hotels and a farm of 33 acres in the Bronx.
The Knox Hat Factory in Brooklyn....
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.... now converted to social housing
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The Knox Stovepipe hat
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In 1878, aged 61, Charles Knox turned the management of his business over to his only son, Col. Edward M. Knox, a Civil War hero who had fought at Gettysburg. Edward took over from his father with the intention of “making the Knox name known wherever a hat was sold”. Edward Knox succeeded in his intention. The second half of the19th Century was a good time for quality hat sellers. No man would leave his home without a hat, whether a bricklayer or a financial mogul. There were specific hats for specific occasions and a gentleman’s closet would hold a silk top hat, a beaver business hat, a straw boater for casual recreation and other hats for other purposes. An entire set of etiquette regulated when to wear a particular hat, when to remove it, tipping it to greet a lady, and so forth. It was a time when men were valued by their hats, or used them as a badge of social station and power.
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When Charles’ beloved wife Hannah died just days before their Golden Wedding anniversary in 1888, he retired from active business life. Knox’s obituary states that he died of ‘gradual exhaustion’ after an attack of pneumonia in 1895 aged 78. Knox was known both for his enterprise and his kindly ways. He was extremely charitable, but gave quietly. Described as a happy and pleasant man with genuine emotions and true sympathies; he reportedly never took a drink or used tobacco. Known for his honesty, uprightness and Christian integrity, his observance of the Sabbath was very strict.
Edward Knox took the family business from strength to strength. The financial accounts of 1928 show that Knox Hat Co., Inc operated 62 retail stores and distributed through 2,500 agencies across America. Net sales in 1928 were over $8 Million. The Knox brand lasted until the great depression when in 1932 the three largest Hatters; Cavanagh, Dunlap and Knox merged to become the Hat Corporation of America (known as Hat-Co). Men wore hats right up to the 1960’s, but it was President John F. Kennedy’s dislike of wearing hats that eventually sealed the fate of the entire industry. Charles Knox left Donegal with nothing; worked hard to build a successful business and made a sizable fortune as a result of his efforts. |
Knox HQ on 5th Ave - as it is today
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The interior of the Knox Hat Store at 212 Broadway,
corner of Fulton St. c.1870's
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