organizations · updated 2026-08-28
The Company That Followed
confidence: single-source weakest: ev-0059
The glass company two Three Rivers men founded at Santa Anna after the receivership, which Hartford pursued and which failed by April 1936
When the Three Rivers Glass Company went into receivership in 1932, two of its men did not scatter. They found a different plant in the same state, acquired it, and started again. Hartford-Empire found them at Santa Anna with the same notice it had served on Three Rivers three years before.
The plant they found
West Texas Utilities — during the Insull utility expansion of the late 1920s — built a glass plant at Santa Anna, Texas. The plant had been moved down from Oklahoma. West Texas Utilities operated it for roughly three or four months and then shut it down [@ev-0059, part 04, fol. 3430]. By the Depression, it sat idle, held as the Texas Glass Company and owned substantially by the First National Bank of Dallas.
Steve Coleman and Knape had worked together at Three Rivers — Coleman as chief chemist, Knape later as mould shop foreman [@ev-0059, part 04, fol. 3452]. They became interested in the Santa Anna plant while Three Rivers was closed during its receivership. In the latter part of 1932 and the early part of 1933, they acquired the assets [@ev-0059, part 04, fol. 3430].
The company they organized
The Knape-Coleman Glass Company was organized in approximately June or July of 1933, at Santa Anna, Texas. Capitalization was $72,000, with roughly 98 percent of the stockholders from Austin. The principal stockholder was Mrs. Ed R. Harrell, who held the office of vice-president [@ev-0059, part 04, fol. 3431].
Coleman — a Texas A&M graduate of 1927 — was president and general manager. Knape was secretary and treasurer. A superintendent named Hooper, who had been chief engineer of the Liberty Glass Company at Sapulpa, Oklahoma, ran the floor [@ev-0059, part 04, fol. 3431].
The equipment
At the time of acquisition the plant held two Lynch LA type machines, one Miller milk bottle machine, and two Miller feeders. The lehrs — the annealing ovens — were in place as well; Coleman could not recall who had built them [@ev-0059, part 04, fol. 3431].
The machinery profile is the direct parallel of the Three Rivers forming floor: Lynch LA machines for general ware, a Miller machine for milk bottles. The same configuration, acquired from a defunct prior operator, running on feeders that Hartford held the patents on.
Hartford’s attention
Hartford learned from the Liberty Glass Company that Knape-Coleman apparently intended to continue with its automatic feeders. Hartford wired the company, reminding it of assurances it had given not to incur litigation by continued use of infringing feeders, and asked for a definite statement of intentions. No reply had yet been received when Hartford wrote its internal summary [@ev-0059, part 16, before fol. 59495].
Hartford then engaged its Texas attorney — S. S. Searcy, the same attorney it had used in the Three Rivers matter — for information about the Texas courts and the procedure for an infringement suit. Formal infringement notices covering several patents were sent the same day as the letter [@ev-0059, part 16, before fol. 59495].
The infringement at that moment was one feeder only:
Since the Knape-Coleman infringement consists at present of the use of one feeder only, and is thus the smallest of all the present infringements of our patents, we should not regard the Knape-Coleman infringement as warranting a suit for some time to come, considering it purely as a patent matter. However, we understand that the Knape-Coleman infringement is important from the business point of view, especially as regards competition with the Liberty Glass Co., and that you desire us to push this matter promptly.
[@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 59495]
The competition the letter names is the Liberty Glass Company at Sapulpa — the same plant whose former chief engineer was running Knape-Coleman’s floor.
The end
Hartford’s tabulated licence register records the entry for Knape-Coleman on the same page as Three Rivers and Knox: “4/11/36 - Kna[p]e-Cole - Licenses expired upon financial failure” [@ev-0059, part 18, line 68242]. The entry is read from a two-column table that the scan has badly damaged, with the adjacent column’s text interleaved; the words following “financial failure” are not legible. The date, the name, and the fact of expiry are.
April 11, 1936. Seven months before Ball Brothers acquired Three Rivers in the November 1936 foreclosure auction, the company Coleman and Knape had built failed for want of money. The venture ran three years.
It ran in the same posture as its founders’ former employer. Three Rivers had been licensed by Hartford for some ware while Hartford held an unlicensed milk-bottle feeder in reserve to sue over at its own discretion. Knape-Coleman ran its one infringing feeder while Hartford prepared a suit it may never have filed. In both cases Hartford’s own file names the commercial stakes — competition with a specific rival — as the real motive for action. The patent was the instrument; the competitor was the reason.
What this expert does not hold about Knape-Coleman
- Corporate records. No Texas filing, no charter, and no deed is held. The company’s existence and structure are known entirely through Coleman’s own testimony.
- The capital structure. The question of how the $72,000 was divided between preferred and common stock was asked on cross-examination; the OCR renders the answer as unintelligible characters. The total is clear; the division is not.
- What the plant manufactured. The equipment list names machines by type, not output. The products — what Knape-Coleman actually made and sold, in what quantities, to whom — are not in any held document.
- The formal infringement notices. Hartford’s letter states they were being sent that day; the notices themselves are not in the extract and their specific content is not stated.
- Whether the suit was ever filed. The licence expiry on April 11, 1936, for financial failure may have rendered the suit moot before it reached filing. Nothing held settles this.
- What happened after April 1936. Whether the plant was liquidated, sold, idled, or put to another use is not in any held document.
- Any account that does not come from the trial record. No secondary history, no Texas newspaper account, and no collector record naming this company has been found in the evidence base.