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Saginaw's Mershon Family Helps Float Duck Soap
by
James Kinnaman

It was said later by one of his grandsons that when Elias James Mershon decided to pull up stakes in New York, in the early 1850s, and move his family westward, he had two possible destinations in mind – California with its fabulous gold rush, or Michigan with its burgeoning lumbering industry. He chose Michigan, which likely was his first choice all along seeing as how he had been in the lumber business in New York from as early as 1827. By 1860, Elias owned and operated an active planing mill on the northwest corner of Johnson Street and Franklin Street in Saginaw, and had inadvertently founded a family dynasty of lumbermen who remained a powerful influence in Saginaw into the early decades of the twentieth century.

Elias’ sons, Augustus and James, took over their father’s planing mill, and developed new lumber-related enterprises on their own. They discovered ways of using scrap lumber left over from the planing operations, and developed and sold a special band saw which revolutionized this business. Each enterprise became a source of enormous income, and the brothers became wealthy and influential in Michigan’s timber industry, and in Saginaw’s civic and cultural communities. Augustus served as a trustee for East Saginaw. In 1856 – a year after his marriage to Helen Johnson – Augustus’ first child, William Butts, was born. In many ways this youngster became more powerful and influential than any of his forebearers.

His father’s businesses shifted to William as he came of age, and he ran them well. And his interests went beyond the day to day obligations of being a businessman in Saginaw. As president or director, he became associated in a number of companies interested in lumber, salt and copper in Michigan, Arizona and Idaho. For many years he was a leader in the civil, social and cultural life of his community. He was mayor of Saginaw from 1894 to 1895, and a member of several state commissions. He helped found the Saginaw County Club and the Saginaw Club. For recreation William found pleasure in hunting and fishing, and wrote two books relating to wild life. One of his favorite projects became the Lumbermen’s Memorial on the AuSauble River, the creation of which was solely his own. And he built a home for himself and his family on the corner of Houghton and Michigan which required eight square blocks to contain the three-story, 15-room house, and the bird sanctuary he required for graceful living.

It was to this mansion about the year 1900 that an interesting visitor came to call on William Butts Mershon. The conversation between the two of them – William and his visitor – was overheard by William’s son, Edward, who later gave this report of the meeting:

“I was a youngster the day Bob Schultz came and talked with my father about producing soap, but I had big ears for business deals and remember the details well. We called him “Uncle Bob” Schultz. He had discovered a soap that would float and marketed it under the slogan “Duck Soap – It Floats”. He told my father that he had received an offer from two Cincinnati business men who had been trying unsuccessfully to produce a soap that would float. They had offered him what seemed to be an astronomical sum to produce soap for them. The main difficulty for Schultz was that he didn’t have sufficient capital to provide shipping boxes for the first month, until he began receiving the profits. The W. B. Mershon Co. was the biggest box manufacturer in the world, and father said he would provide the boxes and Schultz should accept the Proctor and Gamble offer. That was the start of Ivory Soap.”

Editor's Note: Author James Kinnaman is distantly related to the Mershons, who lived in Saginaw for about a hundred years - from 1850 to 1950.
 
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