Harvey S. Firestone

Harvey Samuel Firestone Sr. was born on December 20, 1868, in Columbiana, Ohio, and died on February 7, 1938, at his home in Miami Beach, Florida. He built the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, a business that became one of the earliest worldwide producers of automobile tires. Firestone grew up on a farm originally built by his grandfather; the family name had been Feuerstein, German for flint or firestone, and his paternal ancestor Nicholas Feuerstein came from Alsace in 1752, settling in Pennsylvania. He was the second of three sons born to Benjamin and Catherine Firestone, with Benjamin also having a son and daughter from a prior marriage. In 1983, the original farm was taken apart and moved to Greenfield Village, a historical site in Michigan started by Henry Ford, where it now sits within a larger outdoor museum.

Firestone married Idabelle Smith on November 20, 1895, and the couple had seven children. Among their notable great-grandchildren are Andrew Firestone, Nick Firestone, and William Clay Ford Jr., who is the son of Henry Ford’s grandson and Harvey and Idabelle’s granddaughter Martha.

After finishing Columbiana High School, Firestone worked at the Columbus Buggy Company in Columbus, Ohio. In 1896, he left to briefly partner in a tire business in Chicago, and in 1900 he founded the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. He later published a book, *Men and Rubber: The Story of Business*, written with Samuel Crowther in 1926.

While leading his company, Firestone arranged a deal with Liberia to lease more than 1 million acres of land—over 10% of the country’s fertile land—for a rubber plantation, the largest in the world, under a 99-year agreement. During this period, 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.” The company town of Harbel was created for the plantation, its name combining Firestone and his wife Idabelle. This situation led Firestone’s son, Harvey S. Firestone Jr., to run a public relations campaign that portrayed the company as providing healthcare, jobs, and financial improvement to the region. That image lasted for decades, even as the company helped Liberian government officials—including President William V.S.