Schaeffer Manufacturing

Lubricant Maker
Founded in 1839
St. Louis

The company got its start as a maker of soaps, candles, and axle grease, and eventually diversified into a number of industrial lubricants. According to company history, the business made German immigrant Nicholas Schaeffer, the company's founder, St. Louis' first millionaire.

John Shaeffer Shields runs the company that his great grandfather established 169 years ago. He attributes the firm's ability to get through the Depression mostly to luck. "Like many other businesses, we had our ups and downs," he says. "We were soap merchants [when] Procter & Gamble came in and were much better merchandisers, bringing our soap business down. And when electricity replaced the candle, our candle business went down. We concentrated on oil, and the Depression came and we were hanging on, mostly selling oil and grease. A lot of it we packaged to a Missouri farmers association. We made maybe a penny on a quart doing it. It was hardly enough to keep the doors open. We got some government contracts on soap."