Kinfolks Knives

To understand Kinfolks Cutlery you must travel time and place, four decades before the company was founded in 1926 in Little Valley, New York. Rewind to the 1880s and Spring Green, Nebraska, where the Cases homesteaded – And where three cousins were as wild as they wanted: Russ Case stuffing rags in the chimney of the schoolhouse to smoke the teacher out, instead burning the building down; Dean Case, helping his older cousin Russ stuff those rags, then scouring the prairie for bones that would later become knife handles; and Tint Champlin, a partner of J.B.F. Champlin & Son Cutlery by the age of seven, getting a brief reprieve from business to be with family along the Kansas-Nebraska border. As this moment none knew that their family would come to dominate the cutlery industry. Tint’s father had been selling others’ knives since the Civil War, long before Cattaraugus Cutlery’s first factory was built in Little Valley in 1890, and the infamous Case brothers – Russ’ father W.R., Dean’s father Jean, and their uncles Andrew Jackson and John D. Case – wouldn’t start making “hand-forged” Case Brothers Cutlery until 1900. Tint Champlin, Russ and Dean Case were witnesses to the start of the family dynasty, as well as its near destruction. It is well documented how 32 different cutlery companies were founded by Case relations, with market demand and family feuds playing equal parts in both their boom and bust. There were simply too many relations for this one industry. Champlins were the mainstay: Tint would focus on Cattaraugus Cutlery and Little Valley, while also serving as mediator for many battles between his uncles and cousins over the “Tested XX” trademark, or what he called “the Case double-cross.” On the contrary, Russ Case would leave Little Valley for Bradford, Pennsylvania, and was often in the middle of these feuds – leaving Case Brothers Cutlery over a spat over moneys owed to start W.R. Case & Son Cutlery in 1902, with the help of his father and the image of his grandfather, Job, for marketing. Dean, meanwhile, worked for them all: Selling for Cattaraugus Cutlery, Case Brothers, then starting his own cutlery in 1901, Standard Knife, until typhoid took his partner and brother, Elliott Case, in 1903, sending Dean back to Case Brothers Cutlery. Until its fiery demise, when Dean went to work for his cousin Russ and W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery, serving as general manager. The three Case cousins were entwined – before the family started making cutlery, during their expansion and implosion, then after, to rejoin once more, to form Kinfolks Cutlery. This is why Kinfolks is one of the more critical among the 32 Case-related cutleries of the past 140+ years: Despite myriad disagreements over money and product, another relative leaving to start another cutlery, the three cousins still kept a connection that allowed them to work together. Through it all, for the sake of family and cutlery, they never forgot that they were kin.