Program

NYS Historic

Subject

House, People

Location

42 E Court St, Warsaw, NY 14569, USA

Lat/Long

42.742408969677, -78.12982792095

Grant Recipient

Warsaw Historical Society and The Gates House Museum

Born in Ontario, Canada, in December 1873, William Chamberlain Embury founded the Embury Manufacturing Company in Rochester, New York, in 1908. In 1911, he relocated the business to Warsaw, New York, after the local Board of Trade provided a $28,000 incentive to facilitate the move.

The Embury Lantern Factory specialized in producing electric lanterns for agricultural use and road construction. In 1930, the company acquired and merged with a Rochester-based competitor, the Defiance Lantern Co. Three years later, in 1933, Embury was awarded a patent for a specialty portable electric lantern. The company’s growth was driven largely by the Rural Electrification Act of 1936, which provided federal loans for farm electrical systems, and the high demand for lanterns during World War II.

By the early 1950s, the end of the war and the successful electrification of the majority of American farms led to a decline in product demand. Consequently, the Embury Manufacturing Company was sold to the R. E. Dietz Co. of Syracuse in 1953. William C. Embury died in June 1943.