Thomas G. Griswold, ca. 1897 (Courtesy Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation)

Thomas G. Griswold, ca. 1897 (Courtesy Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation)

Thomas G. Griswold, ca. 1897 (Courtesy Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation)

Thomas G. Griswold, ca. 1897 (Courtesy Herbert H. and Grace A. Dow Foundation)

This was the first man employed by Dow Chemical Company

As Midlanders, we all know (or should know) that Herbert H. Dow started the Dow Chemical Company in 1897, but few still remember the name Thomas G. Griswold, Jr. who was the first man employed by the company.

Griswold helped nourish the development of the early company with his skills as a chemical engineer, land surveyor, inventor, machinist, photographer, and patent attorney. He also enriched the business, cultural and humanitarian part of our community as an early organizer of the Community Center, the Chemical State Savings Bank, the Midland Chapter of the American Chemical Society as well as sharing his talents in music, gardening, furniture design, and the devotion to his church.

Griswolds documentary skills in his 1973 autobiography, The Times of My Life, and other narratives also offer us some of the earliest and most quoted stories about Herbert Dow and Midlands 19th century history. Among many other insights, Griswold said that Herbert H. Dow, had a new idea every morning, and when he was faced with challenges, he didnt know he could be beaten.

Thomas Griswold was born Sept. 29, 1870, in Ashtabula, Ohio, east of Cleveland and later his parents moved to Cleveland, where Tom concurrently attended high school and the Cleveland Manual Training School to learn carpentry, woodturning, pattern-making, and blacksmithing. He learned to make blueprints as a boy working for his father, who was a surveyor and civil engineer. Tom worked as an apprentice for more than two years at Brown Hoisting and Conveying Machine Company in Ohio, and then enrolled at Case School of Applied Science (Case-Western University today) in 1892 at the age of 22. He was an outstanding student and achieved recognition as the business manager of The Accumulator annual and winner of the Reid Physics Prize.

It was at Case School that Griswold met Herbert Dow who, during his senior years, asked Griswold to work with him at his early company in Navarre, Ohio. But Griswold decided to stay in school until he graduated with a chemical engineering degree in 1896, and then rejoined the Brown Hoisting company for a year. After looking at his long-term options there, he approached Dow in 1897 about a job and joined the brand-new Dow Chemical Company in Midland on May 22 as an engineer for a salary of $1,000 ($31,000 a year in todays money), only two thirds of what he received from Brown Hoisting. Griswolds father was jubilant, but his mother wept because he was going to the frontier.

Griswold set up the Dow Chemical engineering department which was pivotal for the early company. During his first 29 years at Dow Chemical Company, Griswold laid out the original electric, water, and gas lines, streets, drains, and sewers and designed equipment, machinery, and buildings including the companys first manufacturing facility, a 40 x 90-foot building to house the electrolytic cells for the manufacture of bleaching power, the original focus of the Dow Chemical company. He also designed the small wooden office that was fitted with drafting tables, a home-made chest of drawers, wall shelves, and a solar blueprint outfit. Twelve-hour days were common for everyone, and since Herbert Dow had to answer to the company directors in Cleveland, economy was always on his mind.

Griswold reminisced about those very early days in his autobiography saying, A few days after starting on my drawings, Mr. Dow sat on a stool at the back side of my drafting table and explained to me his theories of design and manufacture. He gradually slowed down and finally burst out with the remark, Say I am important enough around here for you to listen to me when I talk. I had continued working on my drawings as he talked. I explained to him that I had been brought up by a superintendent who wouldnt talk to me unless I continued to work while he talked. Mr. Dow never did get used to my habit of working while he talked to me. They had a stormy relationship throughout their time together at the company, although as brothers-in-law, they would often spend time together including playing checkers or chess together on Sunday evenings.

Griswold had met Herbert Dows sister, Helen, previously while living in Cleveland, and it was love at first sight. On Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25, 1897, Griswold returned to Cleveland to marry her with the Dows attending. Grace and Herbert held a reception for them at their home (the old Charles A. Andrus House on Main Street between St. Nicholas and Auburn) upon their return to Midland. The Griswolds lived initially in the old Mary Patrick House (where the Dows themselves had lived as newlyweds), between the Larkin Farm and the Dow Chemical Company. The Griswolds eventually had three children.

Even early on, Griswold was a trouble-shooter and innovator for Dow Chemical. Shortly after the company began full production, small explosions caused frequent shutdowns in chorine production. Tom Griswold and the companys first chemist, Jim Graves, were asked to fix the problem. Griswold bought some paraffin from the local drug store and dipped the carbon electrodes in the melted paraffin. When they put them back in the cells, the explosions stopped saving the process. Griswold was responsible for the beginnings of the calcium chloride business in 1905, after visiting Cleveland seeing an automobile garage man selling gallon jugs of the product to keep down dust and melt ice. It was a great match for the Midland brine stream and Dowflake and Peladow eventually became two of the companys very successful products.

In 1926, Griswold took 18 months leave of absence due to illness but after his recovery, he was asked to organize a patent department for Dow Chemical (his notes are at the Midland Area Archives) and later obtained a license as a patent attorney. At one point, he served on the advisory committee in the patent office of the U.S. Department of Commerce. He worked in patents until his retirement in 1936 (again due to illness) and after his recovery, he took on a third career as a consulting engineering. Griswold was issued 29 patents between 1911 and 1949, as either the inventor or co-inventor including patents for apparatus for the manufacture of carbon tetrachloride, chlorine, caustic alkali, and phenol. Longtime Dow Chemical Gulf Coast manager, Dr. Albert P. (Dutch) Beutel, who was recruited to Dow by Griswold, said of him, Tom had a lot of vision as an engineer and also had the ability to accomplish engineering and construction projects at a minimum of cost to the company.

Griswolds first wife, Helen, died in the spring in the flu pandemic of 1918, and he married Vera Ann Hadsall in Oct. 17, 1918. He was director of the St. Johns Episcopal Church choir for 10 years and served as a church vestryman for 40 years. He was recognized for his long-term devotion to his church when he as awarded the Bishops Cross in 1960, and the church further honored him by naming its new guild meeting facility the Griswold House.

Before his death on June 21, 1967, he held the double distinction of being the oldest living alumnus of the Case Institute of Technology and the oldest former employee of the Dow Chemical Company.

For more Midland County history or to begin your own research, visit the Midland Area Archives at the Doan History Center or call 989-631-5930.

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This was the first man employed by Dow Chemical Company - Midland Daily News