The Winnebago City Brick and Tile company has filed articles of incorporation. It has $10,000 capital stock. The incorporators are A. C. Dunn, William Milne, William C. Campbell, John P. Haines, W. Z. Haight, N. M. Hathaway, Nathan Baxter, John A. Armstrong, George D. Eygabroad, John J. Eygabroad, Joshua C. Belts, William Stauffer, William P. Sherman, James F. Damon, Paul McGuiggan, Ed McGuiggan, Henry McKinstry, Robert J. Muir, James Hertzog, all of Winnebago. (The Saint Paul Daily Globe, Thursday Morning, March 16, 1893, Volume XV, Number 75, Page 2)
The annual meeting of the Winnebago City (Minn.) Brick and Tile Co. was held resulting as follows: J. F. Damon, president and manager; David Secor, vice-president; S. S. Secor, secretary; G. D. Eygabroad, treasurer; E. E. Comley, superintendent. (Clay Record, Clay Record Publishing Company, Chicago, February 10, 1898, Volume XII, Number 3, Page 21)
Page 226. Winnebago (Faribault County). Brick and Tile – 1903. Winnebago City Brick & Tile Co. Total Number Wage Earners - 8. Adult Males - 8. Number of Hours Each Day - 10. Number of Hours Each Week - 60. Average Number Weeks Operated During 1902 - 25. Number Employed between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. – Not Listed. Number Persons Regularly Employed Sunday - 1. Established in Year – Illegible.
Page 227. 1904. Total Number Wage Earners - 10. Adult Males (Excluding Office Force) - 10. Number of Hours Each Day - 10. Number of Hours Each Week - 60. Average Number Weeks Operated Last Year - 22. Number Employed between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m. - Not Listed. Number Persons Regularly Employed on Sunday - Not Listed. Changes in Name of Firm or New Inspections – None. (Ninth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor of the State of Minnesota, 1903-1904, Volume 2, Great Western Printing Company, 1904)
The Winnebago City (Minn.) Brick & Tile Co., will soon begin to build a $200,000 brick and tile plant in place of the one destroyed by fire a few weeks ago. The new plant will be fireproof and will be built of brick, steel and cement. (Clay Record, Clay Record Publishing Company, Chicago, June 15, 1910, Volume XXXVI, Number 11, Page 35)
The brick plant at Winnebago, Minn., which has been installing machinery to wash its clay and remove the limestone, has completed the installation of the additional machinery, and the management expects to be able to turn out a first class article hereafter. At Fairmont, Minn., a short distance away, the clay plant which was installed there during the summer, encountered the same difficulty, and has been working on the solution of the problem ever since. It has been planned there, to ship in clay which is free from the limestone from an outside point, and a number of test runs have been made on clays from various adjacent beds. The results have been quite encouraging, and the stockholders expect to be able to operate the plant and produce clay wares and drain tiles which will be unequalled anywhere. (Brick and Clay Record, Kenfield-Leach Company, Chicago, January 1, 1912, Volume XL, Number 1, Page 74)
Page 98. The fine, plastic, laminated clay had been used at Winnebago and Blue Earth for brick and tile. The only clay plant in operation in the county is located at Winnebago, although Blue Earth City supplies the raw clay which is used at the Fairmont plant where it is shipped.
Page 99. At Winnebago, in Faribault County, along the Milwaukee tracks west of town, there is a deposit of about 70 acres of clay which is known to extend to a depth of 30 feet. It is covered with only 2 or 3 feet of soil. Limestone pebbles occur here and there in this deposit, especially near the top, but the Winnebago Drain Tile Company, which has a good plant making use of the clay, have a process of treating the clay with salt to counteract the effects of lime. This is said to work very satisfactorily. The details of the process, of the particular salt used, the company was not free to make public. (Clays and Shales of Minnesota, Frank F. Grout and E. K. Soper, The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1914)