The name John Loughlin will be forever associated with The Sidney School Furniture Company and the Mary L. Poultry Plant in Sidney, Ohio. Along with those two industries, a beautiful castle was built by John Loughlin on top of Walnut Avenue hill. The castle was patterned after an Irish castle in Cork, Ireland in 1886. When it was completed, it was Sidney’s most famous residence. Bonnyconnellan, beautiful girl, remains in the Walnut Historic District on the National Register of Historic Homes.
John Loughlin was born in 1852 to Irish immigrants. When John was 14 years old his father died leaving John to apprentice in the molding trade. By the time John was twenty, he was the superintendent of the Variety Iron Works Co. in Hamilton, Ohio. In 1876, he married a widow 19 years his senior who had 4 children. Two years later the couple were blessed with a daughter Mary Loughlin. Around 1880 the family moved to Sidney, Ohio. Only the youngest son of Eliza, William Perry and daughter Mary Loughlin, moved to Walnut Avenue in Sidney.
John Loughlin along with T.D. Scott formed the Sidney School Furniture Company. The plant was built north of the feeder canal between Main and Ohio Avenues. The factory opened In February of 1881. The ‘Fashion’ desk was introduced after the factory opening. A company advertising piece of that era contained the following assertion, “No desk in the market is made with more care, nor of better materials than the ‘Fashion’, and none has met with a more popular reception, or gives better satisfaction.”
Each desk carried the words ‘Sidney O’ entwined in the cast iron supports on each side of the desk. In addition to the text, there is a number from one to six which denotes the size of the child for which it was intended. Many desks today can be found, owned by collectors and museums throughout the United States.
The owners of the company realized an amazing $75,000 profit in the first year. The building was immediately expanded. Over the next two decades, the company also made a variety of chairs, blackboards, school bells, and other school products. The company produced 300 desks per day in 1883. At the height of production, 125,000 desks were manufactured within a year’s time and sold all across the country.
The Mary L. Poultry Plant once an important industry in Sidney, was founded in 1895 by John Loughlin. The poultry plant was built just south of the city limits. It was named for John’s only daughter Mary. The plant was considered the largest poultry plant in the world when it was constructed. It consisted of both an egg house and a chicken house, hatching an average of 300 chicks daily while shipping just as many broilers (breed of chicken produced specifically for meat). In the summer months, Loughlin and his family vacationed nearby at the brick home built by Isaac Fulton along S. Brooklyn Avenue.
Unfortunately, John Loughlin lost his poultry plant and his beautiful castle with the collapse of the German American Bank in 1904. John Loughlin died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1908.