Webster L. Marble (1854–1930) was an inventor, early outdoorsman, and prolific patent-holder who spent the majority of his life in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. His manufacturing company, now known as simply as Marble Arms, has operated in the town of Gladstone, Michigan since 1898.
Biography
Early life Webster Lansing Marble was born on March 23, 1854, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the third of six children born to Mary Chipman Marble and her husband Lansing Marble, a trapper and basketmaker. The family moved to Vassar, Michigan in 1858, where they would live until Webster was 15. He spent the majority of his childhood outdoors: hunting, fishing, and trapping alongside his siblings. Webster's family moved again in 1868, this time to Frankfort, Michigan, where his parents would remain for the rest of their lives. His father, Lansing Marble, operated a bushel basket-making business that used proprietary machines to increase stave basket-making capacity from one-a-day to over one hundred. He owned a basket factory back in Milwaukee from 1863 until 1867, when he sold the business to devote more time to the outdoor interests he shared with his son. It has been said that his both his father's entrepreneurial spirit and his passion for the outdoors likely heavily influenced Webster.
Timber cruiser For two decades, Webster Marble worked as a timber cruiser and surveyor throughout Northern Michigan's white pine forests. Timber cruisers played a vital role in the logging industry, traveling ahead alone to hike into the forests, take measurements, and report data back to the lumber companies for months at a time. During his time as a cruiser the Upper Peninsula was largely unsettled, viewed primarily as a deposit of resources like copper, iron, and lumber rather than a residential location. Demand for wood in the area had skyrocketed following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, providing Webster with more than enough work for many years.
Marble was widely admired amongst his fellow cruisers for his uncanny ability to calculate the amount of useable lumber produced from a given acreage of forest just by looking at it. Not known for being a large man, Webster had to carry more than 50 pounds of heavy cruising and surveying equipment through the woods every day, including a large, razor-sharp hatchet. When his fellow surveyors settled down at the fire after a long day's work, Webster was known for pulling out his sketchbook and working on ideas for new tools that could improve work in the woods. Memories of this time did not escape him in his later years, as he would eventually invent numerous products that made his previous career significantly easier for those now employed in the timber industry.
Webster married Rosa M. Derry, a former resident of New York, in Frankfort, Michigan in 1878. The pair would have two sons, William Lansing (1880–1977) and Floyd Webster (1891–1937).
Gladstone Webster Marble moved to Gladstone, Michigan with his wife and young son William right when the town was forming in 1887, after learning about the area's industrial and natural potential. Noting the Soo Line Railroad and nearby Little Bay de Noc, Marble decided to join several other industrial businesses in staking a claim in the town. In 1889, his then-86-year-old father died in his home while on a visit from Frankfort. The following year Webster founded the Gladstone Exchange Bank and served as its president for the next four decades. Webster began manufacturing gunsights in his small garage workshop at approximately the same time, patenting his first invention in 1891. Webster and Rosa's second son, Floyd, was born in Gladstone the same year.
Webster became heavily involved in the local Gladstone community as it began to form, joining both the local Republican Party and the Gladstone branch of the Freemasons, and winning a seat on the Gladstone School board. He also became heavily involved in the local Episcopal church, serving on the church board for many years as a treasurer and trustee. Marble's wife Rosa died in 1923, and he married her younger sister Eunice Derry a year later in 1924.
Webster L. Marble died on September 22, 1930, and was buried on the Protestant side of Fernwood Cemetery, one of the Gladstone's earliest cemeteries.
Upon his death, control of Marble Arms went to his son William Marble, while his second son Floyd Marble inherited the Gladstone Exchange Bank.
Marble Arms and Manufacturing Co.
At the beginning of the 20th-century, Americans began to view the outdoors as more than just a place to source resources. Until the early 1900s, fishing, hunting, camping, and other outdoor activities were done to survive, not have fun. Webster Marble, an avid outdoorsman who had grown up trapping, fishing, and hunting alongside his father, sensed the public's rapidly growing interest in the outdoors and jumped to capitalize on it. Marble was an inventor who believed that a person only needed four simple items to be safe in the woods: a waterproof compass that secured to your clothes, a sturdy hatchet, a well-designed knife and a waterproof matchbox.
History
In the early 1890s, Webster Marble created the first Marble Universal Gunsight from his garage in Gladstone, patenting his invention under the name Gladstone Manufacturing Company. The gunsight would eventually be manufactured in 37 sizes to accommodate a number of popular gun models, including those made by Winchester, Marlin, Remington and Colt, though the Financial Panic of 1893 delayed their wider release (and thus the start of the company) by over a decade.
Marble continued working on his inventions in his garage at odd hours, while returning to timber cruising to support his family, until 1898. He had a brand-new invention that gave his company a new name, the Marble Safety Axe Company, so he extended his workshop to include 640 sq. ft. of floor space. For a year, the company would only produce the Marble Safety Axe – until the wealthy founder of Gladstone itself, Frank H. Van Cleve, became a partner in the business. In 1900, with investments from Van Cleve and a second nearby financier named James T. Jones, Marble Safety Axe Co. moved to a 24,000 sq. ft. factory that was lauded as the largest of its kind in the world. The company's name would undergo several more changes, but it would remain at this location until more than three decades after Webster Marble's death.
Marketing Webster Marble used many advertising techniques that are still popular today, as he had an early understanding of the importance of marketing in retail. In the early 1900s, Webster sent boxes of his merchandise to stores across the United States that he thought might be suited to carry his products. He even included a packet of instructions on the best way to display Marble products in every package. In 1899, Webster travelled to New York City to showcase his products at the national Sports Expo at Madison Square Garden. At the height of his marketing ideas, Marble distributed more than 1 million copies of Marble's Message monthly magazine, and his advertising had been seen by more than 20 million people by 1912. He sent his marketing materials to more than 50 national outdoors magazines, changing his address slightly each time so he could chart how much each magazine had helped his sales just by looking at the envelopes of the orders. This allowed him to funnel more of his advertising budget towards running ads in the exact national magazines that generated the most revenue for his company.
In 1905, Webster Marble tried celebrity endorsements and hired trick shooter and expert marksman Captain Jack O'Connell to serve as head of Marble's Sighting Department. If a customer purchased a Marble gunsight, they could have it professionally installed and sighted by Captain O'Connell for merely the cost of ammunition. If you didn't purchase your gunsight from Marble but still wanted to see the Captain, you could use the service by paying a $1 fee to the company. Captain Jack O'Connell was the only real person ever pictured in a Marble's advertisement.
Legacy For more than 125 years, the company that Webster Marble founded has outfitted fishermen, soldiers, scouts, hunters, and campers with reliable tools for the outdoors. The present Marble Arms manufacturing facility was built in 1966 in Gladstone and is still in operation today. As of 2022, Marble Arms employs dozens of workers who primarily manufacture Marble gunsights that are distributed by an exclusive number of firearms businesses in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Germany. Two successful Delta County businesses, Bark River Knives and Rapid River Knifeworks, were founded by former Marble Arms employees in the early 2000s.
In 1966, a man in Iowa named Dennis Hoegh invented a vacuum-formed plastic, hard-shell gun case. Hoegh soon made a deal with Marble Arms that included a generous relocation package, opening a brand new vacuum-formed plastic factory in Gladstone later that year. Marble's deal ended soon after, leaving Hoegh with a factory full of expensive machinery specifically built for manufacturing small plastic boxes. In 1971 Hoegh received a $50,000 small business loan and used it to create the world's first pet casket manufacturing company. The Hoegh Pet Casket factory remained in Gladstone as the world leader in pet casket production for decades, generating a reported $5 million a year in revenue. The company was purchased and rebranded to simply Hoegh Caskets in 2019 as a sign of respect and acknowledgement of the human need for such products.
Notable inventions Over the course of his lifetime, Webster Marble registered official patents for more than 60 of his best inventions. Today, Marble Arms is largely known for producing quality all-steel gunsights, though they were best known for crafting hunting knives, safety axes, fishing gaffs, match safes, and waterproof compasses during Webster's time. Webster Marble's inventions set the standard for outdoor tools in the 20th-century, with many of them still in use by people looking to safely enjoy the outdoors today.
Marble Safety Axe During his decades working in the woods as a timber cruiser, Marble saw an unfortunate number of men become severely injured by the exposed, razor-sharp edge of their axe blade. One of Marble's first major inventions, the Marble Safety Axe No. 3 featured an attached blade cover that folded into the handle when the axe was in use. Webster's company was renamed the Marble Safety Axe Company by the time his patent for the safety axe was approved in 1898. After finding success with their first safety axe, Marble Safety Axe Co. produced 11 different models from 1911 until the mid-1970s.
Hunting knives Prior to Marble's inventions, the only knives available for outdoorsmen were either flimsy kitchen-style knives or Bowie-style fighting knives. The Marble Ideal knife introduced in 1900 was built for the outdoors, featuring a sturdy handle that made it practical to use for a host of tasks and reliable enough to be easily carried by anyone. The Ideal could be customized by the purchaser, with options available for the handle, guards and sheaths, and blade lengths ranging from 4–8 inches. The larger Marble Woodcraft knife was introduced in 1915 as the choice knife for hunters and trappers, with the Boy Scouts of America endorsing it as the official knife of the Boy Scouts from 1933 to 1940. The small Marble Sport knife of the late 1920s became the official knife of the Girl Scouts of America, with the Boy Scouts authorizing it as a cheaper alternative to the Woodcraft that was then required for scouts. Marble's knives were offered with a variety of handles, but the most popular was a stacked leather washer handle introduced and popularized by Webster. Marble Arms ended most knife production in 1976, selling the trademark to an overseas business.
Marble Waterproof Compass