George Warren CODDINGTON ^{429,878,879,1621,3727}

  General Notes:

"George Coddington owned the largest industry, the Coddington Wax String factory, being based upon one of his inventions. A description of it is found in a 1921 News-Signal article. It reads, in part: "At the Coddington Wax String factory, wax strings are made and shipped to all parts of the U.S. This industry has been in operation for many years and the goods manufactured there have become so well-known that they are now considered a necessity and the housewives much prefer the cleanly wax string to old-fashioned method of pouring sealing wax on their canned goods. The wax string does away with the possibility of accident by burning with the hot sealing wax and this one feature alone had made the Coddington wax string a well-known commodity."

"At present the factory is operating, making approximately 180,000 strings daily. This gives employment to about 20 people and the work is clean and the surroundings pleasant."

At one time, sealing wax played an important part in canning. Some still remember when heated sealing wax was poured from a special small iron utensil around the grooved rim of a tin can.

Using the new string method, the impregnated string with its red wax was placed in the groove and a heated iron would seal it without the "muss and fuss" of the liquid wax.

George Warren Coddington obtained his patent of this new method sometime around 1880 and set up a plant to manufacture them. After his profitable string invention, in 1886, he turned his mechanical genius to making a fruit can fastener, patent number 336,796. He had noted that when a can or jar was in use that sometimes a "slight blow to the lid would cause the sealing material to become detached," resulting in spoilage. His new fastener prevented this. In the same year he received a patent for a new head for the glass jar.

A son, George D.C. Coddington, inherited his father's inventive ability, working on improvements to the submarine for the U.S. Navy and many other projects that brought him national attention. It was he who built the beautiful home still standing on the West Middletown hill north of Ohio 122.

When the wax string business was hit by the development of the new rubber ring, he returned home to his father's factory. He had soon invented new and improved rubber rings, noting those in use were not a tight enough sea] to preclude spoilage. He designed a machine to coat these rubber rings with a wax that made the proper closure. It was patented Jan. 5, 1904.

In the early 1920's Ball Brothers, leaders in the glass jar industry, began negotiations, and ended up purchasing the Coddington patent rights for a princely sum. By this time it was evident that the days of the small owner-operated industry were coming to an end, resulting in West Middletown losing its major industry. Its smaller glove factory had burned some years before. The wax string production had fallen from a peak of 300,000 a day to half that number. Housewives had begun to buy canned goods, rather than home canning.

The string factory discontinued operations around 1924, but some years before that time other machinery had been installed in the building, which was making binder twine used by the new threshing machines, which not only cut but automatically bound, with twine, the wheat into sheaves. Both manufacturing operations ceased about the same time that the structure was converted into Coddington's Machine Shop, operated by a new generation of Coddingtons. As far as known, Jack Coddington is the only local descendant of the family bearing the same surname, although there are other descendants as the Coddingtons trace their lineage back to Doty and Vail."

Mary Elizabeth is alive in 1850, and said to have died in 1869, which would be 11 years after George Warren married Ruth. Perhaps they divorced. ^{1517,1623,3728}

  Noted events in his life were:

• He appeared on the census on 29 Sep 1850 in Cincinnati, Hamilton Co., Ohio, USA. ¹⁶²¹

George married Mary Elizabeth HULBERT, daughter of Unknown and Elizabeth HULBERT. (Mary Elizabeth HULBERT was born in 1831 in , , Ohio, USA ¹⁶²¹ and died in 1869.)

George next married Ruth Jane DOTY, daughter of Joseph DOTY and Mary VAIL, on 18 Mar 1858 in , Butler Co., Ohio, USA ⁸⁷⁹.^,1517 (Ruth Jane DOTY was born on 14 Jan 1840 in Middletown, , Ohio, USA ^1517,1619 and died in 1930 ⁸⁸¹.)