Sturtevant Name Legacy

The company may be gone but Sturtevant lives in perputuity through the naming of buildings and locations! During his life Benjamin Sturtevant contributed approximately $250,000(7 million in todays dollars) to charitable causes, particularly Baptist, that led to many of them.

In the vicinity of the old US Shoe Machine Corporation plant, built in 1903 and now known as the Cummings Center, are numerous streets named in honor of American shoe manufacturing pioneers.

Sturtevant's development of a shoe-pegging machine in the late 1850s and a wood-veneer lathe to feed peg strips into the machine coupled with sole-sewing machines that were being introduced had a profound effect on the industry.

Its no exaggeration to say these combined inventions gave birth to the New England shoe-factory system.

Sturtevant's post-war expansion search for a midwestern factory led them to Wisconsin.

Brown Corliss Engine Co. of Milwaukee completed a factory in 1902 in the village known as Western Union Junction. The village showed their appreciation by renaming themselves Corliss.

The arrival of B.F.Sturtevant in 1923 was greeted by an equal degree of appreciation with another name change by the village to Sturtevant. An immediate boost to the area economy occured with the long list of equipment needed to retool the factory for the manufacture of blowers and ventilating equipment. They stayed till the late 1930s when the factory was relocated to LaSalle,IL.

This is the first of two Sturtevant buildings built at Hebron, a small, independent, college preparatory boarding and day school founded in 1804.

During the 1880s, Hebron began a fund raising campaign to replace their inadequate campus buildings. Sturtevant was the largest contributor and had this large 1891 building named in his honor.

Sturtevant Home/Residence Hall was originally the girl's dormitory and provided central dining for the whole school.

Phoebe Sturtevant, the widow of Benjamin, contributed significantly to the $90k construction costs and bequeathed an even greater sum of $150k to the school upon her death.

This Newton,MA brick Victorian building was named Sturtevant Hall in appreciation for his contributions to the school that was founded in 1825 by Baptists for the education of ministers in that major Protestant branch.

The campus was sold in 2017 to a property developer.

Vermont Academy, a co-educational, college preparatory school in Saxtons River, Vermont was founded in 1876 as a Baptist school which attracted the interest of Sturtevant.

He contributed both to the school and an additional $2000 to the academy-endowment fund. He funded the construction of this building, the only wooden one still existing on campus.

Named after him, it was used as the principal's office and now is a student residence.