Bissell’s founder’s widow took over in 1889 and made it the world’s largest sweeper maker.
Anna Bissell had been the company’s best saleswoman since 1876, taking the sweeper her husband Melville designed from store to store by train and stagecoach. When he died in 1889 she took over with five children to raise, and by 1900 Bissell was the world’s largest maker of carpet sweepers, turning out 1,000 a day.
Bissell on Brandseum