In 1889, her husband died and left her a failing company.
The banks said: Sell.
Her family said: Sell.
Anna Bissell said: “Watch me turn it into an empire.”
March 1889, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Melville Bissell, age 45, died of pneumonia.
Anna, 42, was suddenly a widow with five children, a mountain of debt, and a carpet-sweeper factory on the brink of collapse.
Everyone—advisors, relatives, bankers—delivered the same verdict: Liquidate. Take the scraps. Retire into respectable silence.
After all, it was 1889. Women couldn’t vote, couldn’t sit on juries, and in many states couldn’t even control their own money. A woman running a factory was unthinkable.
Anna walked into the boardroom anyway and took the chair at the head of the table.
Not as a placeholder. As the boss.
She had done it before.
Six years earlier, in 1883, a fire had destroyed their factory. Insurance paid almost nothing. Most companies would have folded.
Anna went bank to bank, charm and steel in equal measure, and talked them into new loans. Three weeks later the factory was running again. Melville got the headlines; Anna had done the saving.
Now, widowed, she did it again—only bigger.
She understood something her era’s tycoons often missed: a good product is nothing without fierce branding and ironclad patents.
She trademarked everything, built a recognizable identity, and pushed Bissell sweepers across Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
She landed the ultimate seal of approval: Queen Victoria insisted Buckingham Palace be “Bisselled” weekly.
By 1899—just ten years after everyone told her to sell—Bissell was the world’s largest carpet-sweeper manufacturer.
Profit was never her only goal.
While other factories worked people twelve hours a day in dangerous conditions, Anna introduced:
– One of America’s first corporate pension plans
– Workers’ compensation long before it was required by law
– Paid vacations
She knew every employee’s name and their children’s names. During the brutal depression of 1893, when companies everywhere slashed payrolls, she cut hours instead of jobs and kept every person employed.
In 149 years, Bissell has never had a strike. That is not luck. That is Anna.
She paid her success forward.
She founded the Bissell House for immigrant women and children. She served on hospital and orphanage boards. She personally found homes for at least four hundred destitute children.
She ran the company as CEO from 1889 until 1919, then as chairman until her death in 1934 at age 87—forty-five straight years at the helm, while raising five kids alone.
Today Bissell remains family-owned, still based in Grand Rapids, still a billion-dollar leader in floor care.
In 2016, a seven-foot bronze statue of Anna was unveiled downtown.
But her real monuments are quieter: every decent pension, every paid sick day, every woman who has ever walked into a boardroom and refused to apologize for being there.
In 1889 the world told Anna Bissell a woman couldn’t lead a company.
She led it for forty-five years, lifted hundreds of families out of poverty, and proved that strength and kindness can share the same heartbeat.
Anna Bissell didn’t just become America’s first female CEO of a major manufacturer.
She swept the floor with every excuse that said she couldn’t.
