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Ohio Columbus Barber (April 20, 1841 – February 4, 1920) was an American businessman, industrialist and philanthropist. He was called "America's Match King" because of his controlling interest in the Diamond Match Company, which had 85 percent of the market in 1881. At his peak, his companies had a labor force of thousands while his products were used by most people in the United States and a sizable fraction of the world's population on a daily basis.

Barber founded the city of Barberton, Ohio, in 1891 and moved his manufacturing plant there in 1894. It produced 250 million matches per day. He also founded the Akron City Hospital.

Biography

Ohio Columbus Barber (called O.C.) was born the second son of George and Eliza Barber in Middlebury, a small Ohio village later annexed by Akron. His father used to be a barrel maker from Connecticut but started producing matching when the family relocated to Akron. He made matches by hand, which his sons sold door to door.

O.C. first received a common school education, and at age 15 began working for his father. At age 16, O.C. Barber became the company salesman. At 20, he was a partner in the business, and by 21 the general manager.

Barber was long a leader in his own home town, Akron. He was, for many years, president of the First National Bank of Akron, and when it was consolidated with the Second National Bank under the name of the First-Second National Bank he was unanimously elected to the presidency of the combined institutions. The factory produced 250 million matches each day.

In 1889, Barber founded and organized the American Straw Board Company. He was one of the early manufacturers of rubber products, and organized and managed the Diamond Rubber Company, which he acquired from the Sherbondy brothers. He ran the company, which focused on bicycle and automobile tires, up to the time of its acquisition by the B. F. Goodrich Company in 1912. Diamond Match Company was also reorganized on February 13, 1889.

The sewer-pipe and steel-tube industry next engaged his attention, and he became a western pioneer in this line of endeavor. He founded the Stirling Boiler Company which was merged with the Babcock & Wilcox Boiler Manufacturing Company of Barberton and Bayonne, New Jersey, the concern thus becoming the largest manufacturer of steel boilers in the world. For a number of years, they constructed four-fifths of the product used by the United States Navy. Barber and his family moved into the mansion in October 1910. It stood until 1965, when it was demolished.

In addition, Barber had 35 structures built as part of his experimental, scientific Anna Dean Farm, which covered . He named it after his daughter Anna and her husband, Dr. Arthur Dean Bevan. These were also in the French Renaissance Revival style, as he believed farm buildings should be both beautiful and functional. He intended to have a farm that operated as efficiently as industry. For education, he opened the grounds to the public weekly on Sundays. Many of his facilities were the largest in the world at the time, such as the greenhouses, covering and heated by the Heating House; Barn #3, long, wide and three stories high, the largest barn in the world when constructed in 1912, It was divided and redeveloped.

Family

After the American Civil War, when Barber was 26, he married Laura Brown of Coventry, Ohio. They had one daughter Anna, the namesake years later for a lake and park in Barberton, and a son Charles, who died young. Anna Dean Farm was named after their daughter and her husband, Dr. Arthur Dean Bevan.

  • Barberton, Ohio
  • The Barberton Erie Depot
  • Barber near Chico, California was named after him. He had the neighborhood built as workers' housing for the employees of the Diamond Match factory in Chico. At its peak, Barber also had orchards, shops, a swimming pool, social hall, and neighborhoods of bungalow houses. Barber faced stiff competition by local manufacturers, and in 1908 he consolidated his operations in Ohio. The village of Barber was eventually absorbed into the town of Chico, California.
  • He founded Akron City Hospital in 1904 and in 1906 the Akron Chamber of Commerce.

References

  • "O.C. Barber Mansion Collection", Summit Memory