In 1846 the partners John H. Knapp, Henry L. Stout, William Wilson, and Andrew Tainter founded the Knapp, Stout Company, which then began its long and profitable career in the lumber industry, first in Wisconsin and later expanding to adjoining states. Benefiting by superior leadership and a strategic location in Menomonie, the company withstood the financial crises of the 1870s by plowing its earnings back into large-scale timberland investments, improvements, and enlargements of its physical facilities as well as by integrating and diversifying its operations. In 1878 the company easily made the transition from a partnership organization to a corporation, changing its name to The Knapp-Stout and Co., Company, which title it retained until its dissolution in the early years of the twentieth century.
For further information about the development of this company, see the company history in Box 2 of the collection; and for more information concerning the lumber industry in Wisconsin, see James Willard Hurst's Law and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964.)
