Frank Seiberling

Franklin Augustus “Frank” Seiberling (October 6, 1859 – August 11, 1955), also known as F.A. Seiberling, was an American innovator and entrepreneur best known for co-founding the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1898 and the Seiberling Rubber Company in 1921. He also built Stan Hywet Hall, a Tudor Revival mansion, now a National Historic Landmark and historic house museum in Akron, Ohio. Biography Career Son of a German American entrepreneur from Ohio, Seiberling spent two years attending Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, before joining the J.F. Seiberling Company, his father's farm machinery manufacturing business, working there as secretary and treasurer. His father, John Seiberling, founder of that Akron, Ohio, company, invented one of the first reaping machines. While working for the company, Seiberling invented a twine binder that tied grain bundles with a bow knot. Many businesses failed in the panics of the 1890s, including the street railway company owned by Seiberling's father. In 1898, Seiberling was jobless, nearing forty years old, with a wife and three children. He learned of the availability of an old strawboard factory in East Akron, which he purchased, together with the it stood on, for $13,500. He borrowed $3,500 for a down payment from a brother-in-law, Lucius C. Miles. In partnership with his brother C.W. Seiberling, he decided to open a rubber company, picked a name, and was selling stock. The company would be named for Charles Goodyear, the discoverer of vulcanization, who had died penniless almost forty years before.