Diamond Match Co. once located here

#Middlebury

This Diamond Match Co. box can be seen at the Middlebury Historical Society. It recently joined the collection there. (Robert Rafford photos)

By DR. ROBERT L. RAFFORD

Middlebury is matchless in many ways. Our hills embellish a rolling and picturesque landscape; Lake Quassapaug lends its beauty and provides great fun; brooks and buildings, trails and flowers all delight our eyes. But Middlebury cannot be said to have been matchless in 1901, for that was the year the Diamond Match Co. of Illinois came to town.

The sides and bottom of the Diamond Match Co. box were decorated with scenery.

Matches were in increasingly greater demand as the 1800s progressed, and many companies competed for the market share. In 1880, a man named Ohio Columbus (“O. C.”) Barber (1841-1920), who had bought and combined several match companies, formed the Diamond Match Co., named after one of the nicknames for the state of Delaware, where much of its manufacturing activity took place. By 1881, Barber, who hailed from Middlebury (Ohio, that is, near Akron), controlled 85 percent of the match market.

Middlebury’s land records show the Diamond Match Co. bought about 60 acres of land in the southwest corner of Lake Quassapaug, straddling the towns of Middlebury, Woodbury and Southbury. That is where Eight Mile Brook originates from an outlet at the lake and flows south into Kelley Pond, continuing into Southford (a name that combines the names of the towns of Southbury and Oxford) and down to the Housatonic River. Brooks and streams were vital to manufacturing up until the early 1900s, and Middlebury and surrounding towns abounded in them. Mills could be partially run by the power of the water, and a paper mill was thus established in Southford.

Middlebury played a crucial role in establishing the Diamond Match Co. in this area, for purchasing the land surrounding the outlet of Lake Quassapaug allowed the company to secure enough power to run its machinery. The deed stated the purchase was for “the purpose of increasing the height of water in the reservoir,” so the height of the entire lake was eventually raised. In 1905 the company sold a quarter-acre of its land to make way for the new trolley line, completed in 1908, which passed through that area of town on its way to Woodbury.

Land, factory buildings and machinery in Southbury and Oxford were purchased from the Southford Paper Company, begun about 1881 from the purchase of the Southford Manufacturing Company. The Southford companies had been formed by Captain Alfred Wells (c. 1834-1886) and Luther Chapin White (1821-1883) who formed the firm of White & Wells; together they developed paper box companies in Waterbury, Naugatuck and Bridgeport. The Diamond Match Company thus used the manufacturing plant already in place and manufactured paper to make the boxes and matchbooks for their matches, although the matches themselves were never produced there.

The Diamond Match Co. spent $30,000 after its 1901 purchase to equip the plants with the most modern paper-making machinery, and money was spent to upgrade local roads and sewers near the factory. By 1902 the company had turned out over 100 tons of paper at the factory. Coal power was also used to run the plant, and more than 30 cars of coal were unloaded in 1903. That year, a factory worker, Samuel Warner, was fatally injured by a revolving belt, and the factory closed for half a day to allow employees to attend his funeral.

In 1917 the company closed for two months to make necessary repairs. It was seen as a fine place to work, and employees each had $1,000 insurance policies and received a Christmas bonus every year. The company even had a baseball team which, in June 1914, beat the Sandy Hooks of Newtown 14 to 1.

Six years later, in February 1923, much of the plant, which had been closed for the preceding six months, was destroyed by a fire with an estimated loss of $100,000. While the company reportedly continued to make boxes after the fire, the property was sold to the Ansonia Water Company in December 1926, thus ending the company’s presence in this area. Beautiful Southford Falls State Park in Southbury and Oxford was the company’s home for a short 22 years.

Bob Rafford is the Middlebury Historical Society president and Middlebury’s municipal historian. To join or contact the society, visit MiddleburyHistoricalSociety.org or call Bob at 203-206-4717.