Embury Manufacturing

William Chamberlain Embury was born in Napanee, Ontario, Canada on December 17, 1873. Embury worked for a Canadian tin and lantern company, Kemp Manufacturing in Toronto, as a young man, after which he relocated to Rochester, New York and founded the Defiance Lantern & Stamping Co. in 1900. Embury?s partners in Toronto financed Defiance Lantern and Stamping, however when they insisted Embury hire several relatives with no experience, he left to start Embury Manufacturing on November 27, 1908, in Rochester, New York. Enticed by financial incentives, Embury moved his factory to Warsaw, New York in 1911. Warsaw provided easy access to the Erie Canal and the B&O Railroads, which was a boon to shipping their product.

During the first quarter of the 20th Century, Defiance Lantern and Stamping manufactured common hot blast and cold blast barn lanterns a well as a conventional No. 39 railroad lantern. Defiance was unable to survive the Stock Market crash of October 1929 and Embury acquired the dies and equipment from the now defunct Defiance Lantern and Stamping in 1930.

William C. Embury retired in 1936, turning control of Embury Manufacturing over to sons Phil, Fred, and William. Use of the kerosene lantern was in decline after World War Two when electric power became widely available in the rural areas of Europe and North America after the second world war. This led to the dissolution of Embury Manufacturing Company on the last day of 1952. The Dietz Company purchased the assets from the Embry Manufacturing Company, relocating it to the Dietz factory in Syracuse where some of the more popular Embury lanterns continued to be manufactured.