Bear Brand Hosiery

Bear Brand Hosiery got its start in Bucyrus, OH when William Pope and William Franz started the Franz & Pope Knitting Machine Company in 1869. William Pope went on to start the Paramount Knitting Company in Chicago, IL in 1894. The company was moved to Kankakee, Illinois in 1897. The company had facilities in Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Virginia & North Carolina. The company was taken over by Henry Pope in 1947 and then by his son, Henry Pope, Jr.

Do you have any vintage Bear Brand Hosiery Socks, Boxes, Advertisements, Post Cards or Marketing Items? Then we want to hear from you. We also love to see any photos you have Bear Brand factories, mills and buildings. Send us pictures of what you have to [email protected] or private message us. We'd love to hear from you.

The leveling this past summer of the sprawling Roper Stove plant site on West Station Street echoed a demolition, almost 50 years ago, that wiped out another of Kankakee's major industrial locations.
During the spring and summer of 1969, wrecking cranes and bulldozers battered their way through a block-square complex of buildings that had housed the Bear Brand Hosiery Company since the early 1900s. Referred to locally as "The Bear Brand," the factory occupied a site bounded by West Avenue, Hickory Street, Washington Avenue and Bourbonnais Street.
Hundreds of workers (mostly women and teenaged girls) tended machines inside the tall brick buildings, turning out as many as 30,000 pairs of socks per week. The Kankakee factory was the oldest and largest of the Bear Brand's plants; others were located in Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky and Virginia.
e leveling this past summer of the sprawling Roper Stove plant site on West Station Street echoed a demolition, almost 50 years ago, that wiped out another of Kankakee's major industrial locations.
During the spring and summer of 1969, wrecking cranes and bulldozers battered their way through a block-square complex of buildings that had housed the Bear Brand Hosiery Company since the early 1900s. Referred to locally as "The Bear Brand," the factory occupied a site bounded by West Avenue, Hickory Street, Washington Avenue and Bourbonnais Street.
Hundreds of workers (mostly women and teenaged girls) tended machines inside the tall brick buildings, turning out as many as 30,000 pairs of socks per week. The Kankakee factory was the oldest and largest of the Bear Brand's plants; others were located in Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky and Virginia.

Henry Pope Sr. was Kankakee's connection to FDR

Share your experience about Bear Brand Hosiery. Did you work for the company and if so, which location? Did you supply Bear Brand Hosiery with equipment or materials? Did you ever use their products. Tell us all about it and share photos if you have any....

Paramount Knitting Company Mill
222 Madison Street, Beaver Dam, Dodge County
Dates of construction: 1883, 1911, 1930, 1937
The former Paramount Knitting Company Mill is associated with one of Beaver Dam's largest manufacturers. It is also the only relatively intact industrial building once powered by the Beaver Dam River. Set on the south bank of the river and oriented along Madison Street, the four-story red brick mill building served cotton milling from 1881 to 1906 and hosiery manufacturing from 1911 until 1934. Paramount Knitting Company was the parent corporation for Bear Brand Hosiery Company a prominent company in the hosiery industry nation-wide. The Beaver Dam plant housed Bear Brand Hosiery Mill No. 3.

The Bear Brand Hosiery plant closed in 1934, in the heat of a labor strike. The City of Beaver Dam acquired the property soon afterward and, in 1937, coaxed the Milwaukee-based Weyenberg Shoe Company to open a plant in the building, which the company occupied until 2005.

170 South Lincoln Street, Spokane, WA

Bear Brand Post Card c1910

Just acquired these Bear Brand socks for Engineers and Firemen.

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