The "Family Toymaker" Story

It was an ordinary day. Going through a bunch of old photos with my mom to see if she knew the names of the people in the photos. I do this every so often to see how well her long-term memory is holding up. Today she aced it! Even knew where the photos were taken. Big smile across her face as we looked at one photo after another. "Where'd you get all these pictures from," she asked. Same question she asks every time I take the photos with me. Her long-term memory is perfect, but her short term memory is the problem. One new photo that I took with me today came from an old newspaper and was of a guy "brightening up the models of toys" at the Hubley plant in Lancaster. Hubley Manufacturing is one of the oldest and largest makers of toys in the United States. The company was first incorporated in 1894 by John Hubley and originally produced accessories and equipment for electric trains. In 1909 the company added cast iron toys to their inventory. They also produced castings for other companies in Lancaster that didn't have foundry facilities. In 1936 Hubley added a moving assembly line to produce their toys. The early toys were made of cast-iron, but around 1940 they shifted to zinc. Household objects such as door stops and bookends were added to the collection of toys that Hubley made. Items ranging from horse drawn vehicles and dogs to tractors and guns appear in the Smithsonian collection of Hubley products. Eventually, after trying to compete not only with metal, but with plastic, the toy business went out of business in the mid-1970s. Today Hubley is a division of Gabriel Industries. The Hubley plant is still located in Lancaster on Pitney Road. Getting back to the photo I shared with my mom; she studied and studied it and said, "That's your great-grandfather, Maris." Right she was. Maris lived on Ross Street in Lancaster for almost all his life. He took a job with Hubley when he was 31 years old when they were located on Plum Street in Lancaster near his home. He was a pattern-maker by trade, but also helped design quite a few of the toys that were made by the company. The photo I shared with mom shows him at the age of 73, still working for the company. I stared at the photo and wonderd how, or even why, at the age of 73, he can still put in a full day's work in a demanding job such as he holds. I sure hope I have quite a few of his genes in me. Before my dad was drafted into the Army during WWII, he worked at Hubley on the production line. Ended up cutting part of one of his fingers off in a stamping machine. Whenever I see a Hubley toy at an antique store, it always brings back fond memories of my great-grandfather who died in 1947, three years after I was born. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - photos from the top are: Hubley logo found on it's toys, cast-iron cap gun like my friend Jerry has, photo of my grandfather Joseph (child on left) and great-grandfather Maris, and the copy of the article in the local newspaper.