by Elisha Lee for The Curious Yankee

Vermonters have always been an innovative breed, and yet most of the Green Mountain State’s iconic manufacturers built their companies elsewhere. Henry Wells, co-founder of both American Express and Wells Fargo, left Thetford for New York, as did Elisha Graves Otis of Halifax, founder of Otis Elevator. John Deere left Rutland for Moline, Illinois. One Vermonter, however, managed to achieve iconic status without leaving his hometown of Manchester.

Charles Frederick Orvis was born in 1831, the fourth child of Levi Church and Electa (Purdy) Orvis. Levi had relocated from Bennington to Manchester in the early 1820s, establishing a general store and dealing in locally quarried marble. The family appears to have prospered, raising five of six children in a house situated on the north side of Main Street across from the First Congregational Church. Tragedy struck, however, in 1849, when 50-year-old Levi contracted cholera and died while on a business trip to Philadelphia. Apparent prosperity notwithstanding, Levi died intestate and in debt, forcing the family to sell their home and store. Franklin Henry, the oldest of the Orvis sons, left his job as a merchant in New York City to purchase his father’s home and convert it to a hotel, which he called the Equinox House. His younger brother,Charles, then 18 and yet to make his way in the world, was an avid fisherman and an early devotee of the still predominantly British pastime of fly fishing.

As the Orvis family was still reeling from Levi’s death, fate intervened yet again, this time in the form of the Western Vermont Railroad. Its arrival in Manchester in 1852 enabled wealthy New Yorkers to escape the city via the railroad’s western terminus in Troy and enjoy the healthful benefits of fresh air and clean water. Charles, then 21, went to work as an express messenger for Pullen, Virgil & Company (later the National Express Company).

Franklin’s establishment did well and developed a distinguished clientele. By 1860, it was reportedly the largest hotel in the state. Mary Todd Lincoln and her sons would stay there during the summer of 1864, as would Presidents Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt, the last of whom gave a campaign speech on the front lawn in 1912.

Charles’ tenure in the express business was less remarkable. The Orvis Company tells us that he started a fishing tackle business in 1856. While he was undoubtedly making and selling fly rods, that was probably a side business. By 1860, he was running the Equinox Drug Store and advertising his services as a dental surgeon (the profession would not be regulated in Vermont until 1882).

Like Franklin, Charles recognized the potential offered by a captive market of wealthy New York “summer people.” By 1861, the two brothers had constructed and stocked a trout pond for the use of Equinox House guests.

On 11 June 1861, the Manchester Journal reported, “Last week C. F. Orvis caught in a short time twenty-seven trout from the artificial pond belonging to the Equinox House, three of which weighed over a pound each; and the entire number averaged three-quarters of a pound. They were caught with the fly, and in three instances, two were taken at a single cast.”¹

With the onset of the Civil War in 1861, Charles also served as the recruiting officer for a company of the 2^nd Regiment of U. S. Sharpshooters, commanded by Colonel Hiram Berdan – an elite group of marksmen with the ability to put 10 shots within a 50-inch circle at a distance of 200 yards. Title notwithstanding, this was a civilian position that didn’t entail actual military service.

By 1870, Charles’ reputation as a rod maker had reached the point at which he could abandon both the pharmacy and his dental practice to focus fully on making and selling fishing tackle. The business was housed in a factory building on Union Street, not far from the Equinox House.

The 1870s were an enormously successful decade for Orvis. In 1874, he received a patent for the first “modern” fly fishing reel, a narrow metal frame with perforations to prevent the silk lines then in use from rotting when stored wet.

Orvis is also credited with being the first to use cork handles on his rods—an innovation for which he was denied a patent on the grounds that cork was already in use on the handles of tennis rackets.

It was in this period that Orvis issued his first mail-order catalogue. While the Orvis Company proclaims itself the oldest mail-order company in the United States, the devil (as usual) is in the details. The oldest Orvis catalogue known to me is an 1874 edition in the collections of the University of New Hampshire. If this was indeed his first, it was issued two years after Montgomery Ward’s 1872 “wish list,” which would make them the oldest American mail-order company still extant. The honor is ultimately less significant than the actual accomplishment, in that fishermen across the country could now order products that were previously available only on a regional basis.

The challenge presented by this innovation was the standardization of what were essentially local fly patterns so that a fisherman in Montana and a fisherman in Ohio could order a Black Gnat or a Blue Dun pattern and be certain of what they were getting. Imposing order upon this chaos fell to Orvis’s only daughter, Mary Ellen. In 1874, Mary Ellen had married William McCoun Marbury, the son of a prominent Wall Street attorney. It was a brief and unhappy union, and Mary Orvis Marbury returned to her father’s home in Manchester within several years, along with an infant son, John Morton Marbury. Having been brought up in the family business, Mary once again immersed herself, taking charge of the fly-tying department, which consisted of between six and ten local women.

In 1883, Charles acquired a house on Main Street, just north of the Equinox House, which served as both his personal residence and a seasonal boarding house.

In 1892, Mary Orvis Marbury’s extensive research on the composition and specific history of both American and British flies was published as “Favorite Flies and Their Histories,” and became a classic of angling literature. Both Mary and her illustrations then represented the Orvis Company at the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, thereby placing the Orvis brand in front of some 27 million visitors and further popularizing both the company and the sport of fly fishing. Sadly, her son John’s death from kidney failure in 1904 plunged her into a depression from which she never recovered. Mary Orvis Marbury spent the rest of her life as a recluse, dying at her Manchester home in 1914. Charles Frederick Orvis died a year later, leaving ownership of the company to his two surviving sons, Robert J. “Robbie” and Albert C. “Bertie” Orvis.

The Orvis sons shared their father’s passion for innovation and soon automated the splitting and planing of the Tonkin cane that formed their rods. By the 1920s, the company was producing four grades of rods and approximately 500 varieties of flies. However, with the onset of the Great Depression, demand for what were essentially premium products plummeted. With the death of Robbie Orvis in 1939, the company was sold to a Philadelphia-based sportsman, Dudley “Duckie” Corkran, at a reported price of $4,500. Corkran’s vision extended beyond just rods and flies – restructuring the company, he expanded its product line to include clothing, embraced the use of emerging technologies such as fiberglass, and, within a few years, returned Orvis to profitability.

In 1965, Corkran sold Orvis to Leigh Perkins, another passionate angler. Perkins further expanded both the company’s product line and its ancillary businesses, adding nationwide retail stores and distributors, its own line of pet products, fly-fishing schools, shooting grounds, and a global network of Orvis-endorsed lodges and sporting destinations. Through it all, the company has remained committed to the natural world that makes their business possible, donating 5% of pre-tax profits to conservation-related causes.

While very much a global brand, the Orvis Company’s roots are alive and well in Manchester, which boasts an Orvis “Flagship” retail store, a retail outlet, and a fly fishing school. The history of the sport is ably preserved and presented at the American Museum of Fly Fishing on Main Street. The Equinox House survived foreclosure and a devastating fire in 1985 to be restored to its former glory as the Equinox Golf Resort & Spa. Guests can still fish for trout in Equinox Pond, and even stay in the Charles Orvis House, now part of the Equinox complex. I think Charles Orvis would appreciate that.

1. The Manchester Journal 11 June 1861 ↩︎