I don’t know much about 4 Hisgen Brothers, other than there were at least four of them, and they manufactured axle grease right here in Albany. This ad from 1898 represents that their axle grease was the best in the world for wagons, buggies, and all kinds of journals. That usage of journal (“the part of a rotating shaft, axle, roll, or spindle that turns in a bearing”) has fallen by the wayside.
Eliot’s “Biographical History of Massachusetts” says that when Thomas L. Hisgen, born in Petersburg, Indiana, was 16, “the family removed to Albany, New York, where four of the boys took places in clothing stores, while their father, who was something of a chemist, invented and manufactured an excellent axle grease.”
Thomas L. Hisgen became president of the business, and also tried to become president of the United States (with a stab at the Massachusetts governorship along the way). He fought Standard Oil, which tried to take over Hisgen Brothers (with an offer of $600,000), or put them out of business, or both, and his platform in 1907 in Massachusetts and in 1908 as an independence candidate for the presidency both involved excoriating the power of Standard Oil and the Rockefellers in deciding elections. Hisgen Brothers had expanded beyond simple grease into the oil business, and had decamped to Springfield, Massachusetts.
A Hisgen family website says the factory was located at 443 South Pearl Street. Who’s Who from 1915 had this to say about Thomas Louis Hisgen: He began the manufacture of axle grease in 1889 with his father and brothers, and erected a “complete, modern factory, now said to be the largest of the kind in the world; refusing an offer to sell out to the Standard Oil Co., a fight which still continues, was precipitated, resulting in the HIsgen Brothers going also into the kerosene oil business as competitors of the Standard Oil Co. in N.E. and central N.Y.” Somewhere along the way, the company moved its headquarters to Springfield, Massachusetts. Who’s Who notes that he ran for state auditor of Massachusetts in 1906, for governor of that state in 1907, and for President (on the National Independent Party line) in 1908. He then became president of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association, a vigorous anti-Standard Oil association.
We have to note that Albany was once the home of Albany Grease, too.