Harvey S. Firestone

Harvey Samuel Firestone Sr. was born on December 20, 1868, in Columbiana, Ohio, and grew up on a farm his grandfather had built. The family name was originally Feuerstein—German for flint or firestone—and his paternal ancestor, Nicholas Feuerstein, had emigrated from Alsace in 1752. Firestone was the second of three sons born to Benjamin and Catherine Firestone; Benjamin also had two children from an earlier marriage. In 1983, the original farm was taken apart and moved to Greenfield Village, a historical site in Michigan founded by Henry Ford.

On November 20, 1895, Firestone married Idabelle Smith. They had seven children. Among their notable great-grandchildren are Andrew Firestone, Nick Firestone, and William Clay Ford Jr.

After finishing high school in Columbiana, Firestone worked for the Columbus Buggy Company in Columbus, Ohio. In 1890, he started his own business making rubber tires for carriages. Ten years later, in 1900, he founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, which became one of the first global manufacturers of automobile tires. In 1926, he published a book, *Men and Rubber: The Story of Business*, co-written with Samuel Crowther.

While running his company, Firestone arranged a deal with Liberia to lease more than one million acres of land—over 10 percent of the country’s fertile land—for a rubber plantation, the largest in the world. The lease was set to last 99 years. During this time, the Liberian government forced indigenous villagers to work on the plantation, though investigators from the League of Nations found no evidence that Firestone itself “consciously employs labor which has been forcibly impressed.” A company town called Harbel was created on the plantation, named after Firestone and his wife. The incident led his son, Harvey S. Firestone Jr., to run a public relations campaign that portrayed the company as providing healthcare, jobs, and financial benefits to the region. That image lasted for decades, even as the company helped Liberian government officials—including dictator William V.S. Tubman, with whom Firestone had close ties—own rubber plantations themselves. Firestone executives later compared the plantation to “an old Southern plantation,” with poorly paid workers living in small, one-room dwellings without electricity, running water, or kitchens, relying on outhouses and communal kitchens. Workers’ wives and children were often employed due to labor shortages.

Firestone died of coronary thrombosis at Harbel Villa, his beachfront estate in Miami Beach, Florida. He was 69 years old.

Along with Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, Firestone was considered one of the three leading figures in American industry at the time. They often worked and vacationed together, calling themselves the Vagabonds, sometimes joined by naturalist John Burroughs and Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover.

Princeton University’s main library is named Firestone Library in his honor; it is among the largest university libraries in the world. On August 3, 1950, the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial—a large sculpture ensemble by James Earle Fraser and Donald De Lue—was dedicated at the old Firestone Tire and Rubber Company headquarters in Akron, Ohio, and now stands at the Bridgestone Americas Technology Center. Firestone was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1974. Firestone High School in Akron, Ohio, is named for him, as is Harvey S. Firestone Park in Columbiana, Ohio. The Links at Firestone Farms, a golf course that opened in 2003, sits on the site of the former family homestead. He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2013.