Alsey Refractories Company has been a family owned and operated business since 1906, when Matthias Hoots organized the Alsey Brick and Tile Company in Alsey, Illinois (a small town with a population of 250 people located 80 miles north of
St. Louis, Missouri). The original plant was constructed from lumber used in the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. Alsey Brick and Tile Company made shale brick using the stiff mud process and burned them in twelve woodfired beehive kilns.

In 1911, H.T. McLaughlin, operator of McLaughlin Mining Company, bought Alsey Brick and Tile from Matthias Hoots and combined the two companies operations of clay and coal mining. The mining of clay and coal--oftentimes from the same mine shaft--were carried out by fourteen men and three mules with daily production averaging fourteen to fifteen tons of clay. There was one shaft, approximately 90 feet deep with a main tunnel and multiple drifts consisting of a total of 2260 feet.

In 1917, Alsey Brick and Tile created a company town within the town of Alsey, Illinois called "Checkertown," most of which still remains today. In addition to operating a boardinghouse, the company built housing from its own stiff mud acid brick for its workers and rented them to workers for six dollars a month. During later years, these homes were sold to individuals or plant employees, with the last one sold in 1971. In 1918, the twelve beehive kilns were converted from wood to the coal mined by Alsey Brick and Tile's mining operation. Over the next few years the plant facilities were enlarged and improved; in 1927 a large wooden storage shed was added. In 1928 a dry press was added, allowing the manufacture of Intermediate and High Duty brick to be added to the line of stiff mud products.

Alsey's first laboratory testing took place in 1930 and production continued steadily in spite of the Depression. During World War II, Alsey Brick and Tile manufactured circle brick to line "Warm Morning" stoves which were used to heat U.S. Army barracks.

Mechanization came to Alsey Refractories in the postwar years. In 1948, electric motors replaced steam boilers to power the plant's machines, and the forklift enabled the palletizing of brick. Brick was previously hauled in wheelbarrows and loaded onto trucks and into rail cars by hand with straw packing between them for protection against breakage.