Product Details
Goodyear's Metallic Rubber Shoe Company
Certificate TypeCapital StockDate IssuedJanuary 19, 1884CanceledYesPrinterArthur & Burnet of New YorkSignaturesHand signedApproximate Size9 1/2" (w) by 6" (h)Additional DetailsNA
Historical Context
The Goodyear's Metallic Rubber Shoe Company was established in Naugatuck, Connecticut in 1843. The company was originally founded as Samuel J. Lewis & Company.
In 1833, Charles Goodyear, was a bankrupt hardware merchant of Philadelphia. Goodyear read about a new product and was greatly interested therein. Born in New Haven, the son of a Connecticut manufacturer, he had acquired by inheritance and by association a very considerable inventive ability. He had been in partnership with his father, conducting a branch store in Philadelphia for the sale of their Connecticut-made hardware; but owing to an over-extension of credits the firm had become insolvent, and Goodyear, then a young man but a trifle past thirty, found himself out of business and out of health, with a large load of debt upon his shoulders. He thought he saw in this new product, then being put upon the market, an opportunity to retrieve the family fortunes. Accordingly, on his next visit to New York City he called at the office of the Roxbury Rubber Company and examined some of their goods, and particularly their life-preservers. Thereafter, the history of the rubber industry in the United States is little else than the personal history of Charles Goodyear.
Two years after visiting New York, in 1840, Goodyear was able to interest parties in his new system of vulcanization. In that year he secured the assistance of two New York capitalists and built a factory in Springfield, Massachusetts. Four years later, he took out a patent for preparing rubber by the process of vulcanization, and began to sell licenses for the manufacture of various articles under this patent. The license to manufacture rubber boots and shoes was sold to Leverette Candee, of New Haven, the founder of L. Candee & Co. The license to manufacture rubber gloves he granted to the Goodyear's India-Rubber Glove Manufacturing Company, of Naugatuck, Connecticut. The license to manufacture vulcanized rubber shoes went to the Goodyear's Metallic Rubber Shoe Company and L. Candee & Company of New Haven.
1892, when the United States Rubber Company purchased nearly all of the large rubber footwear interests in the United States (including this company,) forming the Rubber Trust.
The company later manufactured leather shoes as well.
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