Founded 1835, North Berwick, Maine

"I remember my grandfather telling me stories of the Depression, when the company almost went out. It was just a handful of employees, and he would go out and sell the fire escape and then come back, design it, go on out to the fab shop with a welder or two and weld it up, and then they'd go over to the nearby town and install it, and he'd collect the money. That was part of his kind of entrepreneurial perseverance, just sticking to it in tough times and finding a way to make things happen."

-- Tim Hussey, 51, CEO, sixth generation