"Lucifers"

Over the past few years, I’ve researched and recreated a number of labels for foodstuffs that were existent in the American Civil War. In my numerous forays into researching them, I would occasionally get..."side-tracked". "Lucifers" is a term that I have heard (and subsequently, used) from almost the beginning of my living history participation.

In 1829, Scots inventor Sir Isaac Holden invented an improved version of Walker's match and demonstrated it to his class at Castle Academy in Reading, Berkshire. Holden did not patent his invention and claimed that one of his pupils wrote to his father Samuel Jones, a chemist in London who commercialized his process A version of Holden's match was patented by Samuel Jones, and these were sold as “lucifer matches.” These early matches had a number of problems - an initial violent reaction, an unsteady flame and unpleasant odor and fumes.

The term "lucifer" persisted as slang in the 20th century. Lucifers were however quickly replaced after 1830 by matches made according to the process devised by Frenchman Charles Sauria who substituted the antimony sulfide with white phosphorus. These new phosphorus matches had to be kept in airtight metal boxes but became popular. In England, these phosphorus matches were called "Congreves" after Sir William Congreve while they went by the name of “loco foco” in the United States. The earliest American patent for the phosphorus friction match was granted in 1836 to Alonzo Dwight Phillips of Springfield, Massachusetts.

Ohio Columbus Barber was the second son of George and Eliza Barber. George Barber was a versatile Yankee peddler/cooper/hotel keeper who immigrated to the Connecticut Western Reserve in 1826. He prospered, married, and settled in Middlebury, a thriving village later annexed to Akron.

A curious tinkerer with a scientific bent, George Barber acquired tools and equipment for the hand manufacture of matches in 1845. As the venture prospered, his young sons would sell the product door to door in hand baskets. The Barber family and their helpers boosted productivity. Soon the factory relocated to a former blacksmith shop and continued to expand first using water power from the little Cuyahoga and later, after moving to Akron, steam power with water taken from the Ohio Canal.

The productivity expanded beyond the needs of the local market. In 1857, Ohio Columbus Barber became the company salesman, meeting the canal boats and distributing the matches to country stores by horse and wagon. Business was conducted largely by barter. He became factory manager at age 20. In 1862, O.C. Barber assumed control of the entire business and, in 1864, formed the Barber Match Company.

The Barber Match Company grew quickly, becoming the largest match producer in the United States. In 1881, it united together with several other match producers to create the Diamond Match Company. The business was headquartered in Akron, Ohio. The Diamond Match Company took its name from the shape of the match's head that the company produced. Barber served as the company's first vice-president and became president in 1888. While serving as president, Barber moved the Diamond Match Company's manufacturing operations from Akron, Ohio, to Barberton, Ohio, a community built in the early 1890s exclusively to house some of Barber's manufacturing companies. By the early 1900s, the Diamond Match Company produced eighty-five percent of the matches in the United States. It had plants in the United States, Europe, and South America.

References -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match

Barberton Historical Society, https://www.annadeanfarm.com/ocbarber.htm

Ohio History Central, https://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Barber_Match_Company