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Benjamin Goodrich

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Benjamin Goodrich
Born
Benjamin Franklin Goodrich

(1841-11-04)November 4, 1841
Ripley, New York United States
DiedAugust 3, 1888(1888-08-03) (aged 46)
Manitou Springs, Colorado, United States
NationalityAmerican
EducationFredonia Academy
Cleveland Medical College
University of Pennsylvania
OccupationIndustrialist
Known forFounder of B.F. Goodrich Company
Parent(s)Anson Goodrich
Susannah Dinsmoor Goodrich

Benjamin Franklin Goodrich (November 4, 1841 – August 3, 1888) was an American industrialist in the rubber industry and founder of B.F. Goodrich Company.[1]

Early life

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Goodrich was born in the farming town of Ripley, New York on November 4, 1841.[2] He was a son of Anson Goodrich (1792–1847) and Susannah (née Dinsmoor) Goodrich (born 1799). Orphaned at the age of eight, he was raised by his uncle.[3]

He received his M.D. from Cleveland Medical College (now Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine) in 1861, studied surgery at the University of Pennsylvania in 1863 and served as a battlefront surgeon for the Union Army in the Civil War with the rank of captain. After a few years in a struggling medical practice, he went to work in Pennsylvania's oilfields and became a real estate speculator.[4]

Career

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After the war, he reached a licensing agreement with Charles Goodyear and bought the Hudson River Rubber Company in partnership with J.P. Morris in 1869. The company, located in Melrose, New York, failed. The following year he accepted an offer of $13,600 from the citizens of Akron, Ohio to relocate his business there. He founded Goodrich, Tew & Co. in 1870. Goodrich bought out Tew, and in 1880 the company became the B.F. Goodrich Company.[4]

Goodrich was the first in Akron to own a telephone, which was a gift from Alexander Graham Bell in 1877. The telephone connected Goodrich's house on Quaker Street to his factory on Rubber Street.[citation needed]

According to a story, Goodrich had seen a friend's home burn to the ground, with firefighters rendered helpless because their leather hoses had frozen and cracked. Once settled in Akron, Goodrich ordered his company to begin producing cotton-wrapped rubber hose that would resist freezing. A few years later Goodrich started selling garden hoses (allowing bucketless garden watering) and bicycle tires. Still, the company teetered near bankruptcy and went through numerous name changes, its success still uncertain when Goodrich died at the age of 46 in 1888.[citation needed]

The business began booming at B.F. Goodrich Company a few years after Goodrich's death with the company's introduction of a pneumatic tire that could endure the speed and load of the evolving automobile. The radial tire was designed by an advertising employee in his company. Over subsequent decades, Goodrich Company chemists invented plasticized polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in 1926, synthesized rubber in 1937 and built spacesuits for NASA astronauts in the 1960s. Now renamed Goodrich Corporation, the company abandoned the tire business in 1988 and subsequently described itself as a global supplier of systems and services to the aerospace, defense, and homeland security markets. In 2012 the Goodrich Corporation was sold to United Technologies.[5][6]

The brand name BFGoodrich now appears on tires made by Michelin, which bought the Uniroyal Goodrich Tire Company in 1994.[7]

Personal life

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Portrait of his wife, by Ellen Emmet Rand, 1906

On November 4, 1869, Goodrich was married to Mary Elizabeth Marvin (1841–1907), a daughter of U.S. Representative Richard Pratt Marvin and Isabella (née Newland) Marvin. Her uncle, William Marvin, was a United States federal judge and the 7th Governor of Florida.[8] Together, Mary and Benjamin were the parents of:

Goodrich died on August 3, 1888, in Manitou Springs, Colorado, where he had been in hopes of improving his health.[4] He was buried in at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, New York.[17] After his death, his wife hired architect Guy Lowell in 1905 to design a 23-room mansion known as River House in York, Maine.[18] His widow died in April 1907.[19]

Descendants

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Through his daughter Isabella, he was a grandfather of Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, the photojournalist, cinematographer, and philanthropist,[20] who married diplomat Jefferson Patterson.[21]

References

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  1. ^ Goodrich Corporation website "Goodrich > GRHistoryOfInnovationDetail". Archived from the original on April 30, 2012. Retrieved April 25, 2012.
  2. ^ "MONUMENT TO GOODRICH; Ripley; N.Y., Marks Centenary of Rubber Pioneer". The New York Times. November 5, 1941. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  3. ^ Goodrich Corporation website
  4. ^ a b c "A Prominent Citizen Gone". Akron City Times. August 8, 1888. p. 3. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  5. ^ "UTC To Acquire Goodrich For $18.4 B". Retrieved October 12, 2010.[permanent dead link]
  6. ^ "United Technologies buying Goodrich in $18.5B deal". USA Today. Retrieved October 12, 2010.
  7. ^ Hicks, Jonathan P. (September 23, 1989). "Michelin to Acquire Uniroyal Goodrich". The New York Times. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  8. ^ The National Cyclopædia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States as Illustrated in the Lives of the Founders, Builders, and Defenders of the Republic, and of the Men and Women who are Doing the Work and Moulding the Thought of the Present Time. J. T. White. 1954. p. 33. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  9. ^ a b "C. C. GOODRICH DEAD; RUBBER FIRM OFFICIAL; Director of Akron Concern Which Father Founded and a Maine Legislator". The New York Times. July 11, 1932. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  10. ^ "Mrs. Charles Cross Goodrich". The New York Times. December 14, 1928. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  11. ^ Revolution, Daughters of the American (1907). Lineage Book – National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Daughters of the American Revolution. p. 313. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  12. ^ "J. C. BRECKINRIDGE, RETIRED LAWYER; Grandson of a. Vice President of U. S., Whose Name He Bore, Dies in Maine Resort". The New York Times. July 19, 1941. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  13. ^ "D. GOODRICH DIES; LED RUBBER FIRM; Chairman Until Last Month of Concern Founded by Father Fought in Two Wars". The New York Times. May 18, 1950. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  14. ^ of 1898, Harvard College (1780-) Class (1913). Harvard College Class of 1898 Quindecennial Report. Harvard College. pp. 127–128. Retrieved March 10, 2020.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ "MRS. BEATRICE PRUYN WED TO D. M. GOODRICH; Bride Sister of Mrs. Cleveland E. Dodge and W. F. Morgan Jr., Markets Commissioner". The New York Times. November 19, 1936. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  16. ^ "LONG BRIDAL PROCESSION.; Many Attendants for Morgan-Pruyn Ceremony To-day". The New York Times. February 5, 1907. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  17. ^ Hugh Golden (April 16, 2019). "B.F. GOODRICH". Lake View Cemetery. Retrieved July 26, 2024.
  18. ^ Mattor, Theresa; Teegardeb, Lucie (2009). Designing the Maine Landscape. Down East Books. p. 308. ISBN 978-0-89272-885-5. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  19. ^ "MRS. GOODRICH PASSES AWAY IN NEW YORK". The Akron Beacon Journal. April 15, 1907. p. 3. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  20. ^ Saxon, Wolfgang (December 22, 2002). "Mary Patterson, Photojournalist and Philanthropist, 97, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
  21. ^ "Jefferson Patterson, 86; Served as an Ambassador". The New York Times. November 14, 1977. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
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