Benjamin Severence and the Oregon Barrel Company

B. O. Severence, founder of the Oregon Barrel Company, was also the settlement’s first postmaster.

Benjamin Otis Severence was born on January 15, 1820 in Orrington, Maine

During a military tour in Panama, Severence heard stories from the West and contemplated moving there following the Civil War. By donkey he traveled the Isthmus of Panama until he boarded a boat which took him to his new city of promise.

He was heavily involved in local civics, often serving as the election judge or Justice of the Peace. He also founded and helped build the St. Johns Methodist Church. Severence was St. Johns first postmaster starting in 1868.

The Oregon Barrel Company was established by Severence in 1865 and later included co-owners. By 1876, the factory was employing 30 workers with 12 others who supplied the cottonwood timber. Five-hundred barrels were being produced per day with 800-1000 barrels per shipment.  By 1883 the factory was making 100,000-150,000 salmon crates yearly.

Most of their business by this point came from sugar farms in Hawaii as well as local fruit caners. Beer was bottled in their kegs by local breweries. In 1890, the factory employed 50 people.

The City of Portland hosted a ‘Mechanics’ Fair’ in Fall 1879, where the Oregon Barrel Factory had displays of their products. A large barrel factory was constructed in Seattle, Washington, hampering the Severence’s plant as well as most Oregon barrel factories, which made up a great deal of industry at the time. At the ’85 fair they won a silver medal for their display of barrels, crates and kegs made from cottonwood and fir. They repeated their silver status the next year.

In July 1875, an Asian worker at the factory had his left forearm cut-off after getting caught in the planing machine. He was rushed to a doctor in Portland where he recovered.

Marshal O. Smith, described as an elderly man, served watch over the barrel factory in the late evening. His job was to mainly watch for fires, which could understandably become dull. In March 1876, Smith fell asleep and fell off the masonry where he was perched and onto the boiler. He received a blow to the head which caused his “whole scalp nearly torn off” as described in The Oregonian. 

With the new revolutions in food manufacturing barrels became increasingly obsolete by the 1890s. A plan to build water pales and other wooden odds and ends but the factory was shut down by the turn of the century. The first electric sawmill in the United States was built on the barrel factories location in 1903.

Severence died in 1897.

A drawing of the Oregon Barrel Company from The Oregonian, c. 1886.