Connolly Shoe Company

During the first part of the 20th century, Stillwater's lumber industry started to decline. Because of this, the Stillwater area had an unusually high unemployment rate. To combat this problem, 24 retail merchants from Stillwater decided to form a shoe company. They enticed the production manager from the prison shoe shop to come and manage their new enterprise. The manager's name was Thomas F. Connolly.

The merchants invested a total of $150,000 to begin the operation of the Connolly Shoe Company. The company was founded in September 1905, and was located at 123 North Second Street in Stillwater. Production began in 1906 with sales of $196,407.03. While the profits that year amounted to less that $4,000, the company had put 25 men to work.

The main types of shoes that Connolly's first produced were work boots and shoes. The main concentration of sales was located west of the Mississippi River. Within three years, Connolly began production of a dress shoe, but still the emphasis remained on work shoes and boots.

Connolly Shoe Company in 1910 Sanborn Map
Library of Congress
The Connolly Shoe Company factory, as seen in the 1910 Sanborn Fire Insurance map of Stillwater.

In 1915, John Schadegg joined the company as a timekeeper. He gradually worked his way up the ladder, and in 1918 he was made paymaster and put in charge of factory specifications. Later that year he was called into military service and served in France until the end of the war.

From 1919 to 1927, Schadegg developed and maintained production lines. With the onset of the Great Depression many businesses closed, and Connolly Shoes struggled until 1931. That year, the company almost met its fate, but another group formed and reorganized the company and selected Charles Englin, the former sales manager, as president.

Under Englin's guidance, sales rose from $604,000 in 1935 to more than $1.5 million in 1953. From 1931 to 1950, the company made exclusively kid and kangaroo shoes, with the exception of 1942, when they made 85,000 pairs of brown oxfords for the U.S. Army. With a total annual production capacity of 170,000 pairs of shoes, the Army contract made up half of the companies orders that year.

By 1950, the owners of Connolly Shoe Company sensed a decline in demand for conservative styles of kid and kangaroo shoes, and determined to get back into the market for more stylish types of dress shoes. They did not, however, abandon kid and kangaroo leathers that had always been well thought of for their soft comfort and tough wear qualities.

In 1953, John Schadegg, a Connolly Shoe Company veteran of almost 40 years, became its president. Under his guidance, sales rose to nearly $2 million.

In 1958, an investment group started to gather funds to buy the company. In 1963, the purchase took place. O. Walter Johnson was installed as executive vice president, with Schadegg staying on as president.

One of the first new lines introduced under the new management was a line of sport shoes, including a line of quality golf shoes that quickly captured an important share of the market. The new management did was to open Connolly's own retail store in Stillwater, directly north of the factory building.

However, these new innovations didn't seem to help the small company. In April 1967, the Connolly Shoe Company went out of business. "Costs were going up and we were just not able to have an efficient plant here," Johnson told the St. Paul Dispatch. "Labor costs were a little higher and our production was a little lower, so, as a consequence we got squeezed."

As news of the closing hit the streets and the employees, some didn't take the news well. One of the veteran employees was Otto Berg, who had been at the company for 50 years.

"I feel bitter," Berg told the Dispatch. "As long as I felt good, I had figured on working. They didn't seem to care much for the employees."

The closing left 185 workers unemployed.

Today over forty years later, the Connolly building still stands, and has been used as temporary quarters for the Stillwater Public Library among other uses. Since 2015, it has been home to JX Venue, a wedding and events center. The Connolly name is still seen on the building almost as a ghost of what things used to be, or maybe, what things might have been.

— Brent Peterson

Brent Peterson is the Executive Director of the Washington County Historical Society