The John H. Kaiser Lumber Company of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was founded in 1905, with John H. Kaiser as president and his two sons, Edward W. and William A. Kaiser, vice-president and secretary-treasurer respectively. The company ran a large lumber yard and made wooden boxes and crates. In addition, it owned about 16,700 acres of Wisconsin timber land, held timber deeds to another 2,200 acres, and owned twelve miles of logging railroad, as well as logging equipment.
By 1917, box making had become the principal operation of the John H. Kaiser Lumber Company and a separate company was organized as the Eau Claire Box and Crating Company. A new factory was built and the production of boxes was continued there until 1924, employing about two hundred full-time workers. The factory was partially destroyed by a fire in 1917, but box making was resumed at the original factory on Tenth Avenue. In 1931, the entire business was sold to the General Box Company of Chicago, which moved the production facilities to Sheboygan.
The repeal of prohibition in 1933 created a new market for beverage cases; therefore, John H. Kaiser, then 81, returned to box production on a limited scale in the Tenth Avenue building. He remained in business until he died in 1939, when the company ceased operations. The John H. Kaiser Lumber Company was finally dissolved in 1957.
John H. Kaiser, the founder, was born in Hulda Germany, on May 10, 1852, and immigrated to the United States in 1871. He moved from New York to St. Louis in 1878. There, in a small shop and with little capital, he began making boxes by hand for a dry goods company. From this beginning he later expanded to operate sawmills and box factories at Muscatine, Iowa; at Stillwater, Minnesota; and at Eau Claire. Kaiser came to Eau Claire in 1908, bringing his wife, the former Emma Bersch of St. Louis, and their five children. His death in 1939 came some fourteen years after that of his wife.
