Washington Iron Works Inc.

🏛️The era

In the 1870s, North Texas stood at the crossroads of two eras. Railroads were beginning to reach the region, but much of the moving of people, mail, and freight still depended on horses, mules, and heavy wooden wheels. Stage lines and freight wagons fanned out across the prairie, and every one of them needed constant repair.

Sherman, the county seat of Grayson County near the Red River, was a natural hub. Before the Civil War the famous Butterfield Overland Mail had passed through the area, and in the years after the war the town remained a jumping-off point for routes heading in several directions. Where there were stagecoaches and freight wagons, there was steady work for anyone skilled with iron and fire.

Meanwhile, across the Midwest, many families were looking west and south for better opportunity. Quincy, Illinois, a Mississippi River town, was one of countless places that sent ambitious craftsmen and their families to Texas in search of room to grow.

👥People & events

The story begins with a young blacksmith on horseback. In 1875, Solon Totten, then in his late twenties, rode to Texas from Quincy, Illinois not once but twice, scouting for a better place for the family trade. In Sherman he found what he was looking for: stage companies that needed blacksmiths. He went home and persuaded his father and family to make the move.

In 1876, Solon and his older brother Levi opened Totten Bros. Blacksmith on Cherry Street. They built wheels for freight wagons and stagecoaches and repaired the vehicles that kept the region moving. The venture soon took on partners, and the original stockholders included L. L. Roussel, Adolph and Max Seisfeld, Noah Swain, and the two Totten brothers. In 1881 the business took the name Washington Iron Works.

In 1890 the firm moved to East Lamar Street, where it settled for good, and by 1893 the Totten brothers and their father Joseph had gained full ownership. After 1904 Solon ran the company with his sons Harry and Jesse until he retired in 1922. After Jesse's death, Harry and his own son Harold carried it forward, making this a business passed hand to hand across generations.

The company changed with the times. The foundry section closed in 1938, and during World War II the shop turned its skills to the war effort, making molds for gun barrels. From there, the family business kept evolving until it served clients around the world.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Washington Iron Works is a compact history of American industry. It began in the age of the stagecoach, building wooden wheels by hand; it adapted to the railroad and automobile age; it answered the call of wartime production; and it grew into a service company for oil and gas processing, petrochemical plants, power generation, and marine work.

That arc mirrors the larger story of Texas, which transformed over the twentieth century from a largely agricultural state into an energy and industrial powerhouse. Many small-town shops did not survive those shifts. This one did by continually finding new uses for old skills in metal and machinery.

It is also a reminder of how important family businesses have been to the American economy. Four generations of Tottens are named on this marker, and the company remains, as the inscription notes, the oldest industry in Sherman.

🧭If you visit

Find the marker on East Lamar Street, where the company settled in 1890, and take in the setting. It is easy to picture the clang of hammers and the smell of hot iron when this was a place that kept stagecoach wheels rolling.

This is a working industrial site, so enjoy it from public areas and respect the business going on around you. Standing here, try tracing the whole timeline in your mind, from a young man riding horseback across the country to a company whose work now reaches around the globe.

Sherman makes a good stop on a North Texas road trip, with a historic downtown and courthouse square to explore. It pairs well with other markers in Grayson County that tell the stories of the Red River borderlands and the old overland routes.