Background
Richard Esterbrook was born in Liskeard, county of Cornwall, England, of Flemish ancestry, the son of Richard and Anna (Olver) Esterbrook.
His father was financially interested in tin-mining.
Richard Esterbrook was born in Liskeard, county of Cornwall, England, of Flemish ancestry, the son of Richard and Anna (Olver) Esterbrook.
His father was financially interested in tin-mining.
He provided his son with a liberal education and immediately upon the completion of his course launched him in a business career by purchasing a shop in Liskeard where young Richard established a stationery business.
The enterprise prospered, and he invested his profits in the local tin-mining industry, which, in turn, in the course of a few years yielded him a considerable fortune.
He thereupon gave up the stationery business, purchased a home and two farms in the neighborhood of Liskeard, and for upwards of twenty years lived the life of a gentleman farmer.
They were unsuccessful, however, and went to Philadelphia where they undertook the enterprise a second time.
Bringing with him a corps of skilled workmen whom he had selected in Birmingham, Esterbrook successfully organized the pen company which now bears his name.
A few years after his arrival he bought the old water-pumping plant of the city of Camden and it thereupon became the nucleus of the pen factory which has since grown on this site.
In his organization, Esterbrook made the wise selection of his own son for general sales manager, and the latter by his genial personality and extraordinary salesmanship succeeded in establishing with the trade a wide distribution of the pens.
As is often the case with infant industries —and especially those without an overabundant supply of capital—Esterbrook’s company ran nto financial difficulties about 1875.
Esterbrook, however, had already gained the reputation of a man who always kept his promises, and his largest creditor, who supplied the steel, volunteered to continue to furnish on credit that much-needed raw material as long as necessary.
This offer prevented the complete collapse of the business ; Esterbrook secured whatever credit he required ; and the Esterbrook factory has continued to grow ever since and is to-day (1930) the largest and most modern establishment in the United States for the manufacture of steel pens.
He had the faculty in the selection of his employees that resulted in the creation of an organization in which each individual felt himself part of a large family gathered under one roof.
Like all of his ancestors, Esterbrook was an orthodox Friend and was a minister of that society both in Philadelphia and Camden.
Esterbrook was an orthodox Friend and was a minister of that society both in Philadelphia and Camden.
He married Mary Date of Tavistock, England, in 1835, who with a son and a daughter survived him at the time of his death in Camden.