The Kirksville Brick Industry: What Happened to Adair Brick & Coal?

Kirksville once had a local brickmaking industry, but the paper trail does not provide a neat company-history ending.

The strongest near-contemporary account comes from E.M. Violette's 1911 History of Adair County.

It describes a paving-brick experiment west of town, the organization of Adair Brick & Coal Company and plans for larger production.

What happened after that is less certain.

Brickmaking predated Adair Brick & Coal

Violette wrote that building brick had been manufactured by several different parties in and around Kirksville.

That means Adair Brick & Coal was not the beginning of all local brickmaking.

It was one documented attempt to organize the industry on a larger scale.

J.M. Ivie & Son tried paving brick in 1907

According to Violette, J.M. Ivie & Son tried in 1907 to organize a company to manufacture paving brick on land just west of Kirksville.

The following year, Adair Brick & Coal Company was organized.

The new company temporarily leased the Ivie land and machinery.

Violette says one kiln of paving brick was fired with what he described as excellent results.

The company wanted a railroad connection

The 1911 account says larger operation depended on getting a railroad switch laid to the plant.

That detail is important because heavy industries such as brick and coal depended on transportation.

Brick is bulky, heavy and expensive to move by wagon over distance.

A rail spur could determine whether a plant served only a nearby market or shipped at commercial scale.

The current research has not yet found proof that the proposed switch was actually completed.

The company was still part of Kirksville business life in 1911

Another Violette biographical entry provides a useful additional trace.

It says local businessman Stephen L. Eggert had an interest in the Adair County Brick and Coal Company in 1911 and served as its secretary.

That confirms the company still had an identifiable corporate or business organization several years after the 1908 formation.

It does not prove how much brick the company ultimately produced.

A later archival reference complicates the story

Truman State University's Trudex database indexes a 1965 Nemoscope article titled "Coal Mining in Adair County."

Its subject indexing includes both J.M. Ivie and Sons and an entity called Adair County Brick Coal and Construction Company.

The similar name is intriguing.

It is not enough to prove that the 1965 reference is the same legal company organized in 1908.

A merger, reorganization, renamed company or completely separate business could produce similar wording.

Until the article itself or corporate records establish continuity, the names should not be collapsed into one firm.

So what happened to Adair Brick & Coal?

The accurate answer is:

The later fate is not yet fully documented in the recovered sources.

The current evidence establishes:

• local brickmaking before the company;
• the 1907 Ivie paving-brick effort;
• organization of Adair Brick & Coal in 1908;
• a successful experimental kiln;
• plans for railroad access and larger production;
• an identified company secretary in 1911;
• a much later archival reference to a similarly named brick, coal and construction company.

It does not yet establish:

• the date large-scale production began;
• whether the rail switch was built;
• a closure date;
• the exact plant parcel;
• the relationship to the 1965 company name;
• surviving kilns or structures;
• which Kirksville buildings used the company's brick.

An incomplete history is still useful history

Local industrial history often survives this way.

A company can be well documented at formation and nearly disappear from easily searchable records later.

The responsible approach is not to invent a failure story around the missing railroad switch or assume the business quietly closed.

The next useful evidence will come from directories, railroad maps, mine reports, corporate records and the full 1965 Nemoscope article.

Until those sources close the gap, Adair Brick & Coal's ending remains an open Kirksville-history question.