BIO: Jesse W. Ringrose, Cumberland County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Bookwalter

Copyright 2009.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/cumberland/
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History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania.
Containing History of the Counties, Their Townships, Towns, Villages, 
Schools, Churches, Industries, Etc.; Portraits of Early Settlers and 
Prominent Men; Biographies; History of Pennsylvania; Statistical and 
Miscellaneous Matter, Etc., Etc.  Illustrated.  Chicago: Warner, Beers 
& Co., 1886.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/cumberland/beers/beers.htm
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                                PART II.

             HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY. PENNSYLVANIA.

                             CHAPTER XXXIX. 

                        BOROUGH OF MECHANICSBURG.

431  BOROUGH OF MECHANICSBURG.

  JESSE W. RINGROSE, proprietor of the Ringrose Fly-Net and Collar 
Manufactory, Mechanicsburg, was born on the old homestead farm of the 
family, two miles northeast of Berwick, in Luzerne County, Penn., 
August 30, 1847.  E. Aaron Ringrose, his father, was born in 
Northamptonshire, England, but came to this country while still a young 
man, and settled in Luzerne County, where he engaged in buying and 
selling stock.  He married Miss Catharine, daughter of William E. 
Fowler, one of the old settlers of Columbia County, Penn.  The family 
consisted of eight children, of whom four sons and three daughters are 
still living, of whom Jesse W. is the youngest.  Our subject attended 
school until he was fourteen years of age, when he began clerking in a 
grocery at Lock Haven, which position he continued to hold until he was 
twenty, when he entered Andalusia College, Andalusia, Penn., where he 
remained three years; he next engaged in a flour, bread and cracker 
manufactory, in which business he remained for a period of about 
fifteen months.  He then sold out his interest in that business, and 
entered the Pennsylvania University of Medicine, at Philadelphia, where 
he remained for a period of two years, until, his health failing, he 
went south to Martinsburg, W. Va., and opened a general grocery store, 
in which business he continued until the death of his father-in-law, 
Henry W. Irvine, in 1877, when he came to Mechanicsburg, and soon after 
invented a leather net.  Mr. Ringrose was married, January 28, 1875, to 
Miss Dessie A. Irvine, a daughter of Col. Henry W. and Mary (Kanaga) 
Irvine, and born at New Kingston, this county, where both the Irvine 
and Kanaga families are well known.  Mr. Ringrose is a successful 
business man.  He first established his fly-net and collar factory at 
Mechanicsburg in 1881, since which time his business has continually 
increased, and his facilities have been greatly enlarged, until, to-
day, he has one of the largest manufacturing establishments of this 
kind in the United States.  Mr. Ringrose is the patentee of most of the 
improved machinery used in the manufacture of his nets, and which he 
will not sell or lease, it giving him an immense advantage over other 
manufacturing establishments of the same kind.  To give some idea of 
the rapid growth of this business:  Mr. Ringrose starting unaided (or 
with the help at first of only one man); now uses steam-power, gives 
direct, permanent employment to from 75 to 100 workmen, and employs 
three traveling salesmen.  From a small beginning the business amounted 
last year to $60,000, and has extended from a small field to a 
territory which covers nearly the whole of the United States.