Old Familiar Memories - Photo 163

Fuller Brush

Alfred C. Fuller began what was to become Fuller Brush Company in a basement shop in Somerville, Massachusetts; In 1906 he moved to Hartford, Connecticut and founded the company. In 1931, the establishment of the first of what became known as the Green River Ordinance led Fuller Brush to challenge the ordinance's limits on door-to-door sales; the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where on March 1, 1937 it dismissed the appeal "for want of a substantial federal question."

World War II saw the company "cut its normal civilian output drastically to make brushes for the cleaning of guns;" Fuller's son Howard became president in 1943.