New York Knife Co.

Walden, New York · organized 1852 · the Hammer Brand, the first Boy Scout knife, and a trademark that dates the imitator

Researched & written by Ethan Trex, a lifelong pocket-knife collector. · Reviewed August 2026

Walden, New York was called “Little Sheffield” for its three knife companies, and this was the eldest — a pure independent cutlery, not a gun-maker or a family dynasty, grown from an 1852 breakaway of Waterville cutlers into one of the largest pocketknife works in the country. It made the first official Boy Scouts of America knife. This entry follows it from Matteawan to the 1931 Depression that closed it, the Hammer Brand that survived it, and the primary documents that pin all of it down.

Corporate genealogy — the oldest cutlery in the guide

• 1852Organized at Matteawan (now Beacon), Dutchess Co. — reportedly ~16 cutlers who broke from the Waterville, Conn. works. (“New York” = the state.) ✓ primary · S1
• 1856Removed to Walden, into a vacant former cotton-factory at the falls of the Wallkill. ✓ primary · S1
• 1878 / 82The arm-and-hammer device adopted (1878); the words “Hammer Brand” added (1882). ~ S10
• 1881~250 hands, 1,600,000 pieces a year — “one of the largest cutlery establishments in the United States” (Bradley family). ✓ primary · S1
• 1903Thomas W. Bradley sells to the Fuller brothers (Electric Cutlery Co., Newark); James E. Fuller becomes president. ~ S14
• 1911Makes the first official Boy Scouts of America knife — sole authorized maker until 1923. ~ S15
• 1916President James E. Fuller patents the pocket-knife punch (U.S. 1,171,422) — the number seen on Hammer Brand tangs. ✓ primary · S2
• 1928–31The terminal “Wallkill River Works” tang stamp — a precise last-three-years anchor. ~ S11
• 1931Closes — killed by the Depression. The Hammer Brand name passes to Imperial (Providence, RI). ~ S7

The number — the guide's one plain-sequential scheme

New York Knife Co. did not code the handle material into the number the way Case, Remington, and Winchester did. The number is blade-count first, then a sequential pattern, and the material is spelled out in words on the catalog page.

The proof there's no material digit: the same 3-blade frame appears as 3378N (stag) and 3381N (pearl) — adjacent, non-coded numbers, the material given in words. The N is Hibbard-Spencer-Bartlett's house line-code, not the maker's (Biddle's catalog lists the same knives without it). ✓ primary · S3/S4

Notable patterns & materials — a first, not a beauty-piece

Where Remington has its Bullet and Winchester its #1920, New York Knife Co.'s signature is a historical first: the 1911 official Boy Scouts of America knife — a four-blade bone camp knife, made under sole license until 1923. Beyond it, the collectible line (numbers from the 1910 catalog):

Handles & etches (named on the 1910 page): cocoa and ebony work knives; iron at the cheap end; genuine mother-of-pearl (and “smoked pearl”), ivory, genuine tortoise shell, buffalo, and aluminum at the top; later celluloids (cracked ice, waterfall). Work-jack master blades were etched with names — “Rustler,” “Old Reliable,” “Ranchero.”

Dating a knife by its mark — and the trademark that runs backwards

The hard window is 1856–1931; because the firm died and never reopened, a genuine New York Knife Co. knife is always pre-1931. Date within it by the Hammer Brand progression and construction — then rule out the later Imperial reuse.

What a knife cost — 1910, wholesale per dozen, image-verified

Straight off the 1910 HSB scans (the plates above), a full ladder from an iron work-knife to a four-blade pearl — every blade “Highest Quality Crucible Tool Steel.”

✓ primary 1910 Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett catalog, pp. 1631 & 1635, image-verified (S3); the Biddle Hardware catalog (S4) corroborates (No. 187 stag jack $13.00/doz).

In period print

The New York Knife Co. of Walden — the oldest American cutlery firm (1852) — stamped its blades “Hammer Brand,” and the trade knew its president as “the pocket knife trust.” The record runs from Reconstruction to the firm’s last years. Each quote was read on the original page; all are public-domain.

Sources

Primary sources are documents read directly; secondary are reliable leads. Full metadata (identifiers, URLs, quotes) lives in data/nyknife.json.

1. Ruttenber & Clark, History of Orange County, N.Y. (1881), p. 601 — the founding, the 1856 Walden move, the 1881 scale/officers, and the New-York-Knife-vs-Walden-Knife separation. Internet Archive historyoforangec00rut · PD · opened & quoted. ✓ S1
2. U.S. Patent 1,171,422 (“Pocket-knife punch,” James E. Fuller → New York Knife Co., 1916) — the company patent that's also a tang stamp. ✓ S2
3. New York Knife Co. section, 1910 Hibbard, Spencer, Bartlett catalog, pp. 1631–1636 (new-york-knife-co-1910) — prices, numbering, and Hammer Brand branding image-verified; and the Biddle Hardware 1910 catalog (…-biddle) — “Hammer Brand Trade Mark stamped” + “Crucible Tool Steel.” ✓ S3/S4
4. USPTO TSDR — HAMMER BRAND Reg. 344,466 (Imperial, 1937) & Reg. 3,705,335 (AOB Products, 2009) — the successor/revival registrations. ✓ S5/S6
5. Pomeroy Foundation markers — “New York Knife” (1856–1931, first BSA knife) & “Walden Knife Co” (“Little Sheffield”); and the Church & Dwight “Arm & Hammer” history (conflation clearance). ✓ S7/S8/S9
6. Secondary / leads: the NY Pocketknife Historic Information Database; AllAboutPocketKnives (tang stamps, Wallkill River Works, the fakes warning); BladeForums's NYKC history; Hawley (the Bradleys); iKnifeCollector (the Fuller/Electric story, the Imperial afterlife); scoutknives.net & the Smithsonian (the 1911 BSA knife); and Goins' Encyclopedia of Cutlery Markings. ~ S10–S16