Although The Forest City Wood Ash Company was located in London, advertisements for the wood ash it supplied are found in newspapers as far south as Florida. Apparently wood ash can be used as a fertilizer to enrich soil for plants. One can find many articles about wood ash, but I am not sure why The Forest City Ash Company had such large quantities of it and would ship barrels of it by train to DeLand, FL.
Source: The Florida Agriculturalist, Dec. 3, 1890
This bill head is currently offered on ebay for $22 (US). The company was obviously still around in 1895.
The Bonus: Apart from learning that ash can be useful, I learned that DeLand is named after Henry DeLand who made baking soda. The town had a better name before it was DeLand - Persimmon Hollow. And a school founded by DeLand, later became Stetson University, and yes, it is named after the hat fellow.
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