Hi, Jeremy,
 
One of my collateral ancestors was a competitor to Fairbanks.  You can
find a woodcut of Joel F. Keeler's livestock scales exhibited at the
Ohio State Fair in 1858.  It's on page 98 of the 13th Annual Report of
the Ohio State Board of Agriculture for 1858 , published at Columbus,
Ohio in 1859.  You can find an online copy of this book by Googling the
key words in the name and title.
 
Joel Keeler started making scales in Cazenovia, NY by the mid- 1840s,
moved to Cleveland about 1851 and, then opened a works in Pittsburgh in
the mid 1860s.  He died in 1873 and, I believe a few years later his
business was absorbed by Fairbanks, though I'm not certain of that fact.
 By the time he was in Pittsburgh he was mostly making industrial scales
for the railroad and steel industry, though he continued to produce
scales for weighing livestock.  I have his trade card, probably from the
late 1860s, which I bought recently on Ebay.  You may still be able to
find a photo of it by searching the archive of past Ebay listings using
his name and some key words.
 
For more information than you likely want about scales of all kinds,
check out the journal Equilibrium, published by the Scale Collectors
organization.  Sorry, I don't have an exact reference ready to hand.  A
couple of years ago they did an article on Joel F. Keeler, after which I
had some correspondence with their editor.
 
Best wishes,
 
Robert W. Keeler
Instructor in Anthropology & Geography
 

>>> [log in to unmask] 6/3/2008 7:51:02 AM >>>

Greetings again everyone,

I am still looking for any archaeological or historical information
anyone has on agricultural freight/weight houses circa 1850-1900.  Scale
types, farming uses, significance, etc. - would be greatly appreciated.

Best,

Jeremy Nienow, PhD, RPA