As the 19th century evolved, so too did manufacturing and industry. The rise of factories in the Midwest expanded towns and cities almost exponentially. Between 1880 and 1900, cities in the United States grew at a dramatic rate, states the Library of Congress U.S. History Primary Source Timeline. Owing most of their population growth to the expansion of industry, U.S. cities grew by about 15 million people in the two decades before 1900.

Chicago was no exception to that rule. By 1870, Chicago had grown into the second largest U.S. cities. On October 8, 1871, fire broke out on the southwest side of the city and burned for two days. By the time rain had extinguished most of the fire, 17,500 buildings and 73 miles of street were destroyed. Ninety thousand people were left homeless.

A 2011 National Geographic article, The Chicago Fire of 1871 and the ‘Great Rebuilding: Article on the 140th anniversary of the Chicago Fire focusing on city planning and the “Great Rebuilding” states that the rebuilding of Chicago started immediately. Sometimes, construction began even before the architect and engineers had completed the design.

The phase of reconstruction stopped three years later when a second fire, in July 1874, destroyed more than 800 buildings over 60 acres.

Two years into Chicago’s “Great Rebuilding,” three brothers, Rich, Ancil and Martin, of Omro, in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, operated a lumber business there. In 1873, the three brothers entered into a partnership with another lumberman, by the name of Stillman. In 1873, they bought Johnson’s sawmill, located on Rose Island, in the Ontonagon River, and began operating under the company name of Rich & Stillman. In 1876, Horace arrived in Ontonagon, and with his two brothers, purchased the sawmill and began the manufacture of lumber. A year later, they opened a general store in the village. The mill burned in October, 1880. The Rich Brothers suffered a loss of $40,000, but were only insured for $10,000. They rebuilt the mill a year later, however, and installed better machinery.

In 1881, they formed a partnership with David Kelley, G. B. Shaw and other investors, of Chicago, under the title of the Ontonagon Lumber Company. None of them had any previous vested interest in Ontonagon, but their intention was to greatly capitalize on Ontonagon County’s White pine forests.

Horace, now living in Ontonagon, was named the president of the Ontonagon Lumber Company. Kelley was vice president, and G.B. Shaw, according to the History of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, was G.B. Shaw, of Chicago. Other financial backers of the company were all Chicago men: A. B. Gray, Thomas Shepard and P. Lowe.

The Ontonagon company owned some 13,000 acres of pine lands in the Ontonagon River region, and the mill, now on the east bank of the river within the village, had a cutting capacity of 200,000 feet of lumber and 300,000 shingles per day.

G.B. Shaw was actually lumber baron Gilbert B. Shaw, according to “A History of the City of Chicago: Its Men and Institutions” (published in 1900). Shaw was born in New York, in 1837. He graduated from Genessee College, in Lima, New York, in 1860. Meanwhile, his parents had moved to Illinois, settling in Moline, where his father engaged in the lumber manufacturing business. Gilbert went to Wisconsin in1865, going into logging and manufacturing in Wood County. He then went to Chicago and worked for Kelley (most likely David), Wood & Co. for about five years. In 1870, he opened a retail lumber yard at Kankakee, Illinois, in partnership with a man named Brown. The Chicago history book continues, saying that Shaw and Brown sold the yard a year later and started another one at Burlington, Kansas, on the advance line of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, then in course of construction. This was the beginning of a policy of establishing a chain of retail yards throughout the rapidly West, and especially in Kansas, Nebraska and Western Iowa, which subsequently became quite popular among Chicago wholesale dealers. Extending their venture, Messrs. Shaw and Brown followed the lines of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, and also that of the Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad, establishing yards in advance of settlement, and thus becoming pioneers in this new territory.

The newspaper Arkansas City Republican, on Aug. 1885, reported that the two Chicago lumber yards have combined.

“Also, the two belonging to Shaw & Co.,” the paper states. “This is a new kind of pool, and price of lumber has gone up.”

When that business was dissolved, in 1881, Shaw partnered with a Mr. F. C. Jocelyn to form G. B. Shaw & Co. During the next years, their Western yards were increased to the number of seventy-five. The year 1881 was when the Rich brothers became associated with Shaw. All of this may help to explain why all the Ontonagon Lumber Company’s product was shipped to Chicago.

In 1883, the Diamond Match Company had become a large enough presence in Ontonagon that took over the other companies, and their timberlands. This included the Chicago Lumber Company.

Shaw began to back away from the lumber industry. In 1883, he was elected vice-president of the Metropolitan National Bank in 1883, and devoted much of his time to the bank. In 1887, he sold his lumber interests, and in the spring of 1889, he organized of the American Trust & Savings Bank, of which he, of course, was elected president.

Horace Rich, on the other hand, was a different story. He stayed on in Ontonagon and became involved in its well-being. He became the president of the Ontonagon River Improvement & Boom Company, which built a number of dams and blasted rock in the Ontonagon River to float logs to the sawmills. He materially improved the river under his management. Before the company was organized, in 1881, the Ontonagon River had never been successfully run for logging purposes.

While Rich was the president, George M. Wakefield, for whom the town in Gogebic County was named, was the treasurer.