Vintage Baseball Glove Forum

Butler Brothers was a mail order general merchandise firm out of Chicago. They formed circa 1877. They were on the same par as Sears & Roebuck and Montgomery Wards. Due to the increased demand, Butler Brothers opened retail variety stores in the 1920's under the names "Scott" and "L.C. Burr". In the 1930's, Butler Brothers sold retail franchises under the name "Ben Franklin Five & Dime". These franchises were located mainly in small towns(mine was one!). One of the trademark names of Butler Brothers was the "Pennant" brand of merchandise. Below is a box camera circa 1900 carrying the Pennant brand.
Pennant Brand was also their line of sporting goods. Below is a beautiful early 1900's full web glove with a rare pennant cloth patch.

Hello,
Were Pennant gloves made by Montgomery Ward? They have many similarities. I thought that maybe they made some of Pennant's gloves too. Also, do you know off hand, in which year Pennant stopped making gloves?

Montgomery Wards was a retailer, like Sears, and they didn't produce the gloves they sold. They would contract with established glovemakers who would make the gloves, then stamp them with Montgomery Wards model numbers and logos. It's possible that whoever was making gloves for MW was also making them for Butler Bros. at some point.

e_esco, that is an interesting point. Here are two similar logos, the Hubbel box from Montgomery Wards and the baseball box from Pennant. I am not familiar with Montgomery Wards selling Pennant gloves accept for the "Pennant Series" they made in the 1960's. Here is a "Stan musial" example that is an import model.

here is a full page from a 1940's Pennant catalog. I contacted the ebay seller and they confirmed "Butler Bros" is printed at the bottom of the catalogHere is the ebay description:
"This is a used 4 page brochure published by Pennant Brand. I do not know the age of this brochure but it is from the 1940's based on the autographed mitts from Bill Dickey, Dolph Camilli, Augie Galan, Billy Herman, Gabby Hartnett, Hank O'Dea, Eddie Marshall, etc. This brochurs contains photos, illustrations and prices of sporting goods. Some of the items are: baseball bats, softball gloves, baseballs, soft balls, uniforms, baseball shoes, tennis rackets, tennis balls, Stevens Bolt Action .22 Rifles, golf balls, catchers' mitts, basemen's mitts, fielders' gloves and more."
BretMan had a good point about the actual manufacturer of the Pennant brand. Rawlings was hinted at in the search but maybe someone has a better familiarity with these endorsed gloves and mitts and could add something.

Butler Bros. may have used Wilson Sporting Goods for some of their gloves since both companies were located in Chicago. here is a Wilson "Paul Derringer" model K351 glove from the 1930's. The "K351" letter and numbering is common for Pennant gloves.

As many of your know, we've been able to backtrack on who was making the "private label" gloves through the player endorsed autographs that show up on both brands as , evidently, the makers had contracts in hand that stated multi-brand deals. We know for instance that
Wilson made gloves for Sears (Higgins) also for Lowe & Campbell ('till Wilson acquired that retailer) Western Auto.
Rawlings made gloves for Montgomery Ward and J. C. Penneys. etc.
Off hand I do not remember who, of the early major manufacturers, like Draper & Maynard (Winchester), Goldsmith, who they made "off-brand" gloves for.
We certainly know that Denkert was the busiest of these glove makers with many private branded gloves.
This is a common practice today among many manufacturing industries.
Another meaty topic.
Thanks Mike and fellow posters on this one. Keep the thread going!

Will this information of who made gloves for whom be documented somewhere for future reference? It would be a shame to uncover mysteries only forget them with time.
Dan

I too love this stuff. Tie Winchester to Thomas E. Wilson.

In order to preserve all of Mike's research and these great company histories, Mike, if you e-mail me your write-ups, I can copy and paste them into each manufacturer gallery so the company histories would come up first above the pictures, thus tying them to the galleries and preserving them. Food for thought.

JD

That seems like a good idea. It would be nice if the whole postings could be exported intact. I'm not sure how to do that. Otherwise, the pictures could be sent easily enough, but the writing would all have to be done over again. it isn't saved any place but on the forum site. maybe it is possible to copy it to a Word document however.

Our Mike Tinney has done an unbelievable job of tracking down these glove companies and mass sellers! Then, providing wonderful write-ups and pictures. Kudos to you Mike!
These firms had been buried in our past but were a thriving way of business for three-quarters of a century. Mail order catalogs were the internet of the day. The old timers remember ordering their family goods from Sears and Roebuck or Montgomery Ward I'm sure. Visiting the stores was even more fun if you lived in or close to town.
I would think these forum write-ups and descriptions could be copied and pasted into a word format.

I experimented with copying and pasting the photos and write-up in each post onto a MS Word document. It worked pretty easily, so I could start to gather the old posts together and send them to JD in the form of pages with the .doc file extension. Any further additions to a topic could be sent along at later date.

Hi Guys,

Mike, JD, Joe and Dan,

Sounds like a very cool idea. Great job Mike.

Dave