Ohio Columbus Barber (called O.C.) was born the second son of George and Eliza Barber in Middlebury, a small Ohio village later annexed by
Akron. His father used to be a barrel maker from Connecticut but started producing matching when the family relocated to Akron. He made matches by hand, which his sons sold door to door. O.C. first received a common school education, and at age 15 began working for his father. At age 16, O.C. Barber became the company salesman. At 20, he was a partner in the business, and by 21 the general manager. Barber was long a leader in his own home town, Akron. He was, for many years, president of the First National Bank of Akron, and when it was consolidated with the Second National Bank under the name of the First-Second National Bank he was unanimously elected to the presidency of the combined institutions. The factory produced 250 million matches each day. In 1889, Barber founded and organized the American Straw Board Company. He was one of the early manufacturers of rubber products, and organized and managed the Diamond Rubber Company, which he acquired from the Sherbondy brothers. He ran the company, which focused on bicycle and automobile tires, up to the time of its acquisition by the
B. F. Goodrich Company in 1912. Diamond Match Company was also reorganized on February 13, 1889. The sewer-pipe and steel-tube industry next engaged his attention, and he became a western pioneer in this line of endeavor. He founded the Stirling Boiler Company which was merged with the
Babcock & Wilcox Boiler Manufacturing Company of Barberton and
Bayonne, New Jersey, the concern thus becoming the largest manufacturer of steel boilers in the world. For a number of years, they constructed four-fifths of the product used by the
United States Navy. Barber and his family moved into the mansion in October 1910. It stood until 1965, when it was demolished. In addition, Barber had 35 structures built as part of his experimental, scientific Anna Dean Farm, which covered . He named it after his daughter Anna and her husband, Dr. Arthur Dean Bevan. These were also in the French Renaissance Revival style, as he believed farm buildings should be both beautiful and functional. He intended to have a farm that operated as efficiently as industry. For education, he opened the grounds to the public weekly on Sundays. Many of his facilities were the largest in the world at the time, such as the greenhouses, covering and heated by the Heating House; Barn #3, long, wide and three stories high, the largest barn in the world when constructed in 1912, It was divided and redeveloped. ==Family==