This steam engine builder was established in 1876 by Frederick Fosdick, taking over the plant of his recently failed employer, Haskins Steam Engine Co.

From the 1891 book, Inland Massachusetts Illustrated

Information Sources

• The Massachusetts corporate registry database lists this company's first registration as 1876-09-15.
• Inland Massachusetts Illustrated by Elstner Publishing Co. 1891 pg 124.

  Fitchburg Steam Engine Co.

  Frederick Fosdick, President; William E. Sheldon, Treasurer; William J. Clifford, Secretary; Charles Fosdick, Superintendent—Manufacturers of Steam Engines and Boilers,—Water Street, Worcester, MA.

  President Frederick Fosdick is a practical engineer, machinist and inventor of long and varied experience, formerly employed by the Haskins Steam Engine Company of this city, established in 1870. On the failure of that company in 1876 there was organized and incorporated the Fitchburg Steam Engine Company, capital $40,000, which purchased the former company's plant and made a gratifying success where there had been only failure—a success with merit for its corner-stone and industry, enterprise and upright dealing as its foundations. In this instance at least the expected happened, and the prosperity that has crowned the company's labors might have been safely predicted from its inception. It seems a pity that Fitchburg should lose so valuable and influential and industrial a concern, but so it is, and a lack of elbow room is the cause. As above intimated, this company upon its establishment occupied the shops of its predecessor, the Haskins Machine Company—three floors of a four-story brick building, 40 x 130 feet, on Water street, thoroughly equipped, the machinery driven by a 40-horse-power engine of their own construction. This arrangement did well enough for some years, but as the demand for their work increased they found themselves more and more crowded; expansion in any direction was impracticable, and it became necessary to look elsewhere. An eligible site was finally secured at Gardner, plans perfected, work begun, and in July the works will be removed to the fine new shops at that point, a substantial two-story-and-basement brick structure, 70 x 150 feet, fitted up with every convenience, including new and improved machinery and tools, and connected with the main railway line by means of a spur track for convenience in handling materials, fuel and finished product. The corporation will retain the name—Fitchburg Steam Engine Company—which has earned an excellent reputation, and President Fosdick will continue for the present to reside here. He, in conjunction with Charles Fosdick and William E. Sheldon, are proprietors of the Willard Screen Plate Company of Leominster. The engine company's present works are well fitted up and of great capacity, the concern employing sixty-five men and paying out in wages about $35,000 per annum. The engines made by the company go to every part of the world, the demand for these engines being especially great in the United States, Canada, Germany arid Holland. These engines embrace the latest improvements (many of which are special and peculiar to this company, being patented) in high and low speed steam motors, horizontal, vertical, automatic, cut-off, "Cross" or twin and tandem compound condensing, portable, semi-portable, stationary and marine—the latter of reversible pattern for tug boats and yachts.

• American Steam Engine Builders: 1800-1900 by Kenneth L. Cope, 2006 page 90 & 114
• More history is available at the Fitchburg Steam Engine web site.