Diamond Match Company

The Diamond Match Company is a brand of matches and toothpicks, and formerly other wood products and plastic cutlery, that has its roots in a business started in 1853 by Edward Tatnall in Wilmington, Delaware. Ownership passed to William H. Swift and Henry Courtney who operated under the name Swift & Courtney and marketed their product as Diamond State Parlor Matches.

Experiencing a boost in business during the American Civil War, Swift & Courtney would acquire other match manufacturers to become the largest match company in the United States. Swift & Courtney was acquired by O. C. Barber in 1880 who rebranded the company Diamond in 1881. Under Barber's ownership, the company would play a major role in developing the city of Barberton, Ohio and spawn the Diamond Rubber Company.

Throughout the twentieth century, Diamond would expand into the forestry business and manufacture other wood and paper products including cotton swabs, ice cream sticks, toothpicks, paper plates, and playing cards. Most of these businesses were divested following the company's 1982 acquisition by James Goldsmith. The match business would continue under the name Diamond Match Company and has been owned by Royal Oak Enterprises since 2017.

In the early 1850s, Edward Tatnall of Wilmington, Delaware was given an English recipe for making matches by a business acquaintance, William R. Smith. In 1853, Tatnall attempted to turn the recipe into a business at Market Street Bridge over Brandywine Creek in Wilmington. The first matches ignited with the slightest friction, a problem Tatnall solved by reducing the phosphorus content by 25 percent.

In the next few years, Tatnall was joined by a young Englishman, Henry Coughtrey, who was an experienced match maker, and who changed his name to Courtney. During a business depression in 1857, Tatnall closed his plant, but Courtney continued to experiment with improvements to the safety and quality of his own matches. In 1860, William H. Swift joined Tatnall’s firm to provide clerical and financial services. Though Swift saw potential in Courtney’s innovations, Tatnall felt he had spent enough on the match business and turned the business over to Courtney and Swift for nothing. In 1861, the two of them created the Swift & Courtney Company. They called their new matches Diamond State Parlor Matches, using one of the popular nicknames for the state of Delaware.

Demand during the Civil War created a large and growing market for Swift & Courtney matches. In order to meet an expanding need for production even after the Civil War, the company merged with Beecher & Sons of New Haven, Connecticut in 1870 to create the Swift & Courtney & Beecher Company. Incorporated in Connecticut, manufacturing remained in Wilmington, Delaware. Later in 1870, the company purchased the match business of Thomas Allen & Company of St. Louis, Missouri. In 1872, they bought McGiugan & Daily of Philadelphia, and made contracts with Joseph Loehy of New York City and Charles Busch of Trenton, New Jersey.

In 1880, everything was sold to the Barber Match Company of Akron, Ohio, founded by O.C. Barber. Barber re-named the company after the established trade name of its product, creating the Diamond Match Company. Following the Panic of 1893, Barber moved the Diamond Match Company factory in Akron to the adjacent town of his own creation, Barberton. He turned the abandoned Akron match factory into the Diamond Rubber Company factory.

The Diamond Match Company was the largest manufacturer of matches in the United States in the late nineteenth century.