During the coming spring homeowners will crowd their local nurseries or hardware stores to buy huge sacks of chemical fertilizer to feed the roots of grass, trees and shrubs, or the vegetables and flowers in their gardens. In the fall many will buy grass seed and fertilizer to build up lawns. Twice a year there are "high tides" of gardening interest.
But Herbert Bryant, Inc., of Alexandria, Va., concerns itself with the business of meeting fertilizer needs the year round.
Though the company's sales naturally are heaviest during the appropriate times of year, the job of mixing ingredients-of desired fertilizer formulas continues throughout the winter months. Bryant is ready to meet customer needs at any time.
Supplying fertilizer, as well as seed and feed, to farmers of the area surrounding the then Virginia city has kept Bryant's waterfront plants operating for well o1er three-quarters of a century. It has only been in more recent years that homeowners have been numbered in volume among its customers. They are the inhabitants of the mushrooming communities that have turned once-thriving farm lands of northern Virginia near Washington, D. C., into vigorous suburbs where flowers, shrubs and trees furnish topics of conversation for men while women discuss babies, drapery fabrics and balky household appliances, And, they garden, too.
When I. C. Herbert Bryant, the company's founder, first settled in Alexandria, the city was a trade and supply center primarily for an agrarian population. It was shortly after the War Between the States. The 19-year-old Confederate veteran had gone to the city to exchange his army tunic for a merchant's vest. He became manager of a branch of a Georgetown, D. C., farm implement and seed dealer.
Bryant's fertilizer manufacturing plant, originally located in downtown Alexandria, Va., was bordered by the Potomac River and tracks of Southern Railway or one of its predecessor lines. Facilities shown here, near the northern edge of the city and still flanked by the railroad and the river, stand on the site of an earlier plant built in 1908. |
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Within two years he was offered the opportunity to purchase the local business. That was in 1867.
He was barely of legal age, had only a minimum of experience and enjoyed none of the privileges of a modern-day ex-G.I. But young Bryant applied the same resourcefulness and energy which had carried him through the Confederate ranks from a 14-year-old private to a 19-year-old captain. Proof of his success is the fact that the name "Herbert Bryant," which today is borne by one of his grandsons, is still prominently displayed in northern Virginia by a thriving family-owned business concern.
At the time he began, the plant and office were located in downtown Alexandria between the Potomac and the tracks of the old Orange and Alexandria Railroad running parallel to the river along Front Street. Tracks are still there, though they now extend north to a point near the edge of the city beyond Bryant's present plant site.
This was the railroad which had played such an important role in the service of both the North and the South during the war. Its importance did not cease with the war's end. As the Orange, Alexandria and Manassas Railroad, it continued to be a vital link between Alexandria's merchants and their markets to the south and west. Today, of course, the famous line is a part of the Southern Railway System, having been a segment of the Southern predecessor Richmond and Danville System when it became the Southern Railway in 18.94.
Hard work dominated Bryant's life, particularly during those early years- so much so that he was later to advise a son to find an easier way to make a living.
After establishing The Bryant Fertilizer Company, he set out to find new customers. No doubt the railroad provided a means for him to visit customers and prospects throughout a rich farming area as it did for one of his sons at a later date.
Bryant's hard work, attention to details and ability to adjust to economic changes carried his business through many difficult periods. Self-sufficiency, however, had long been a part of his good character.
Southern serves both the plant (right) and the company's 'Warehouse on the opposite side of the tracks that parallel Alexandria's waterfront. |
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His father, an Episcopal clergyman, died when Herbert was a young boy in his native Buchanan, Va. His mother, faced with the problem of raising several children, moved the family to Washington's historic Georgetown where she ran a boarding house. When the Civil War broke forth, Herbert was only 14 years old. But his sympathies lay definitely in the South.
With the courage that might be attributed to a reckless youngster but which later proved to be characteristic of the man, he ran away from home and made his way across the Potomac River and on to Richmond, Va. Misrepresenting his age, he managed to join the Confederate army. He had been four times wounded and had attained a captaincy by the war's end. Thus, the boy quickly became a man.
As a businessman, J. C. Herbert Bryant was as successful as he had been as a soldier. His business increased to a point where, in the early 1900's, he decided to establish two divisions-one for the manufacture of fertilizer; the other for farm implement and seed sales. A short while later, he sold the fertilizer division to a larger organization at a substantial profit.
Of six children, two were sons. The eldest, named Arthur, entered the farm implement and seed business with him and soon took over its management. And although he had been the one advised against it, Arthur decided to build a new plant for the manufacture of fertilizer. This he did in 1908. Twice destroyed by fire, the latest plant, built in 1924, stands today on the same site as the original. (The company's offices, however, are located not far from the first location. )
Over the years, he took even more interest than his father had in the city and in civic affairs. He, too, served on the city council. His charity work becal1Je a legend in Alexandria. Shortly before his death in April, 1952, he set up the Bryant Foundation, a family fund for scholarships and charity grants.
The present J. C. Herbert Bryant first entered the family's business in 1932. A long-time association with t~ company-working at its offices and plant during summer vacations from school-gave him an advantage his grandfather didn't have. By the time it was his turn to manage the company's affairs, he was thoroughly familiar with every phase of the business. And with ideas of his own for improvement and expansion, he set about establishing branch warehouses throughout the territory the company serves.
His grandfather and father depended upon agents in the area and traveled considerably by rail to maintain contact with them. Today's Herbert Bryant relies on the railroad mostly to haul bulk fertilizer, seed and feed.
Branches in northern Virginia are at Maurertown, Brandy, Fredericksburg, Manassas, Winchester, Warrenton, Leesburg and Herndon. A large branch warehouse is also located at Gaithersburg, Md., at the site of the company's feed manufacturing mill.
The latest Bryant to head the firm has also found that today's methods for manufacturing fertilizer and the ingredients used in its manufacture have changed considerably over the years. Whereas his grandfather and for a while his father as well relied on buffalo bones and fish meal, he uses mostly nitrogen, phosphate and potash in various percentages. This mixture is familiar to the homeowner as well as the farmer as 5-10-5, 10-6-4, etc., dependent upon percentages of ingredients used which in turn is dictated by the special needs of the crops being grown.
Potash, for example, encourages growth and helps discourage disease. It is used in larger percentages during the spring when growth is desired. Leguminous plants, capable of manufacturing their own nitrogen, on the other hand need very little of that particular element in fertilizer.
From its Gaithersburg mill the company distributes feed in the local area and to its branch warehouses and other outlets in northern Virginia in tonnage nearly matching that of fertilizer shipped from Alexandria.
Herbert Bryant, Inc. and other fertilizer companies in the Southeast-account for a relatively large percentage of Southern Railway's business. In 1958, for instance, Southern moved over its lines about one million tons of chemical fertilizer, amounting to around 2.2 per cent of total tonnage.
Like so many other business stories, there's no great drama in the day-by-day doing of necessary things either in the plants of Herbert Bryant, Inc., or on the rails of Southern Railway System. But for more than 75 years this partnership in service has been important, often vital and always satisfactory to those who depend upon it. o o o