Diamond Match Company

In the early 1850s, Edward Tatnall of Wilmington, Delaware was given an English recipe for making matches by a business acquaintance, William R. Smith.

In 1853, Tatnall attempted to turn the recipe into a business at Market Street Bridge over Brandywine Creek in Wilmington.

[1] The first matches ignited with the slightest friction, a problem Tatnall solved by reducing the phosphorus content by 25 percent.

In the next few years, Tatnall was joined by a young Englishman, Henry Coughtrey, who was an experienced match maker, and who changed his name to Courtney.

During a business depression in 1857, Tatnall closed his plant, but Courtney continued to experiment with improvements to the safety and quality of his own matches.

In 1872, they bought McGiugan & Daily of Philadelphia, and made contracts with Joseph Loehy of New York City and Charles Busch of Trenton, New Jersey.

Following the Panic of 1893, Barber moved the Diamond Match Company factory in Akron to the adjacent town of his own creation, Barberton.

[6] The Diamond Match Company operated plants at Barberton, Ohio; Wilmington, Delaware (now located in the East Brandywine Historic District);[7] Barber, California[8][9][10] (now a neighborhood in south Chico, California); Springfield, Massachusetts; Oshkosh, Wisconsin; Oswego, New York, and Cloquet, Minnesota.

[citation needed] The Diamond Match Company built a wood processing mill in 1902 at Stirling City, California.

A 42-mile (68 km) standard gauge railroad was built from Stirling City to their manufacturing plant in Chico for operation by Southern Pacific; and Diamond Match Company also built and operated metre-gauge railway branches to bring logs into Stirling City from surrounding forests.

[16][17] Jefferson Smurfit and Clark Enterprises acquired Diamond's packaging, container, paper board, and graphic arts divisions.