Solingen, the old blade-city of the European "home town" of the Studebaker family, is located about fourteen miles (thirty kilometers) northeast of the Rhine River city of Cologne. It is in a great industrial belt in Germany, and its present population entitles it to a place on most maps. However, in the times of which we now write, it was a village in the forest devoted almost entirely to the single trade of ironworking. That had been the specialized function of this community for endless generations, in fact for so many years that the beginnings are lost in the mists of time. This span is illustrated by the recent discovery of an ancient smelter in a nearby forest which, after careful investigation, was estimated to be 2,500 years old!

Metalsmithing seems to have been carried on continuously since that time, with knives for hunting and swords for fighting the major items of commerce. Europe was conquered and re-conquered a dozen times by men brandishing weapons created in Solingen, but their use probably was not limited to that continent. The swords of the freebooting Vikings made here were used to terrorize the known world of that day and eventually reached Iceland, Greenland, and the North American mainland. The awesome Kensington Stone, dated about A.D. 1000, seems to confirm one such voyage. Thus it is possible that Studebaker-crafted implements reached America some 700 years before the family itself decided to come!

The steel finishing plants of Solingen still make a variety of knives, together with such things as scissors and razor blades, and all of them are carefully marked with the word "Solingen." When this word, label, or trademark appears on an edged tool, it is recognized internationally as being of superior quality.

To this brief description of their home town, we should perhaps remind readers that the guild system prevailed through many centuries and that the "closed-shop" premises of that system extended to family life. This accounts for the fact that surviving records of the trade are also valuable genealogical clues because choice in marriage was restricted to the son or daughter of another in the guild (these guilds were also known as "brotherhoods.") Within this guild system not only was membership strictly constructed and restricted, but techniques and trade secrets were carefully guarded. Information regarding forging techniques, the art of steel making, and especially, tempering or heat treating of cutting tools was handed down from father to son to grandson for generations. This secrecy existed not only in the metalworking industry but within others, including the profession of medicine. We can establish that at least five generations of Studebakers followed the metalworking trade and, by extension, we can assume that many and perhaps most of the families were related in some distant degree. That was a characteristic of the guild system.