Randolph  County,  Indiana
Historical  Articles
Businesses  through  the  Years

The  J. W.  McCamish  Company

Back in 1895, while  Alva Kitselman  was inventing his famous wife eaving fence machine another inventor was about to become well known.  It was one of Alva's three sisters,  Ida Kitselman.       The girls in the Kitselman family, under their mother  Mahala's  supervision received that practical training which was to be so helpful to them in their future roles as homemakers and mothers.  There was endless work to be done for a family of ten and in the 1870s it was sans modern conveniences.  Although, Alli  and Ida, the tow older girls did most of the housework, they somehow found time to open and run a millinery shop in Ridgeville, a most unusual thing for young ladies to do in the 1880s.  This venture was made possible by a $300 loan from brother Alva.  Ida Florence Ketselman met and married  James W. McCamish  who had been a clerk in her father,  Davis Kitselman's  dry goods and clothing store.  In the 1920s, Ida designed, patented and made "burial slippers" at home for about five years while her husband, James, traveled, introducing and creating the demand for the McCamish Slipper.  Mr. and Mrs. McCamish moved to Winchester where the McCamish Burial Slipper Company was a successful business for over thrity years.  Their son,  Carl,  was in Ohip State University (Medical School) and helped to develop the business during vacations.  Mrs. McCamish, with the help of her daughter,  Edna,  whose enthusiasm and courage knew no bounds, looked after the manufacturing.  Upon the death of his sister in 1918, Carl felt it his imperative duty to give up his chosen profession, stay with his mother and father and push the business.

      Success came, not by chance, but through years of patient labor, courage, sacrifice and perserverance on the part of each member of the McCamish family.  Mr. McCamish once said, "It has been our pleasure to unite our efforts in producing a burial slipper that will meet all the requirements of American undertakers in better and more pleasingly completing the funeral dress of their patrons."
      This successful business story also has its sad events.  Mr. and Mrs. McCamish's only surviving child, their son Carl, died in 1926 from a self-inflicted gunshot.
      In the 1940s, undertakers began changing the habit of opening the casket for full length viewing to just half corpse viewing.  Consequently the flootwear became optional for the deceased and the Burial Slipper Company closed in 1949.
      James W. McCamish died in 1949 at the age of 87.  He was a lifelong resident of Randolph County.  In addition to purchasing the clothing store first owned by Ida's father, Davis Kitselman, in Ridgeville, has was at one time the President of the old Ridgeville State Bank.
      Ida Kitselman McCamish died June 24, 1953, at the age of 91.
From the Ridgeville Kitselman Museum Newsletter, unknown date.

More  McCamish  Information

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