The following information is from the Garland Manufacturing Company website:
"The company was founded back in 1866, the year after the Civil War, and was incorporated in 1873. The company is now under the management of the fifth generation of the Garland family. The original products were items called pickers made of water buffalo hide for use on textile looms to weave cloth. These pickers moved the shuttle back and forth from one end of the loom to the other and water buffalo hides were used because it was such a tough material. These items were made until the year 1900 when the company started making rawhide mallets and rawhide faced hammers, once again out of water buffalo hides because of the toughness of the material. These items are still being made today.  In 1950 Garland bought out a defunct company called Snowcraft in Norway, Maine that was down to one employee repairing snowshoes that had been made by the company for the government during the second world war. Over the following twenty-four years that was built up to fifty employees manufacturing snowshoes and wooden toboggans. In 1974 that division was sold off."