Maximilian (Max) Wocher was the most successful among Cincinnati cutlers-turned-instrument makers active just prior to the Civil War.  Max Wocher entered the trade in 1838 and his firm would later take to calling itself “the Oldest House in the West” as evidenced by like entries on the title page of their catalogs.  By 1855 Wocher installed his shop in the premises of the Ohio Medical College and remained their until 1895.  During this period the elder Wocher brought his Louis into the firm, becoming Max Wocher & Son in 1870.  The name persisted into the 20th century despite Max’s death in 1883 and the subsequent passage of ownership to partners Max Schmidt and Henry Hoeller in 1895.  Between the close of the Civil War and the turn of the century the company dominated the instrumenttrade of the Ohio River Valley.