Rich-Con

Richards & Conover / Rich-Con



In 1849, following the death of his parents, when John F. Richards was but fifteen years old, he moved to Jackson County, Missouri to work in a country store.  The store, which was located on the Missouri River, had been the site of the Fort Osage outfitting station.   About three years later John became a clerk for Indian trader Captain John Shaw.  After a trek into Indian country he returned to St. Louis where he worked as a clerk on a Missouri River steamboat.  Soon after, with the help of Capt. Shaw, he signed on with the St. Louis hardware company of Child, Pratt & Company. 

On March 4, 1857 John Richards relocated to the growing frontier city of Leavenworth, Kansas Territory and opened his own hardware business. It was located on the southwest corner of Second and Cherokee streets.  As the business grew it was moved to a much larger brick structure at Third and Delaware. 

W. E. Chamberlain, a hardware dealer in Kansas City, moved to Leavenworth and joined up with Richards in 1862.  The new company was known as the Richards & Chamberlain Hardware Company.  Richards brought out Chamberlain in 1866 and hired John Conover to become a traveling salesman.

 In 1870 John Conover became a partner in the J. F. Richards & Company.  The company grew until it was sold in 1884 to Park-Crancer & Company.  John Conover had migrated west to Chicago and Quincy, Illinois in 1856, where he attended school.  He later worked as an engineer on a U.S. dredge boat on the Des Moines River.  He also served in the military and on October 21, 1864, was commissioned colonel.

Richards and Col. Conover moved their enterprise to Kansas City in 1875 and built a building on the southeast corner of Fifth and Wyandotte.  By 1902 the business had expanded until it occupied a floor space of nine plus acres.  In 1906 the company established a branch in Oklahoma City, Indian Territory.   1

In 1999 the 140 years of family owned Richards-Conover Company, or Rich-Con Steel, closed its long run in business.  Rich-Con President Martha Richards Sawyer gave the reason for its demise as competition from cheap imports and problems with a new computer system.  The building has been turned into loft apartments.

My Story -

This pair of Rich-Con scissors was found at an estate sale in Oklahoma City.  They were rusty, bent, and very dull.  I got them with the hope that I could clean them up, reshape them, and sharpen them.  It worked!  They now cut like new.  Their age and size suggest that they were very early scissors of the Rich-Con company. It could be that this pair of scissors cut tent fabric for early settlers in Indian territory. They may been used by a tailor who made gowns for pioneer women who attended a ball at the celebration of the new state of Oklahoma, just one year later. To hold history in your hand and think about the real possibilities exciting.  It is a  great way to learn about the not-so-long-ago people who shaped a new country. This is the pair that got me started collecting scissors and researching the story behind them.

1.  A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, written and compiled by William E. Connelley, Secretary of the Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka. Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, copyright 1918; transcribed 1998

2. See Antique Padlock for good information on that aspect of the Richards-Conover Company http://www.antique-padlocks.com/d_richardsconover.htm

 3.  Special Collection, Kansas City Library