Goodyear Family Papers

CHARLES GOODYEAR, 1833-1896

The only papers of the rubber-manufacturing family are one letter from Charles Goodyear, Jr., and one from the treasurer of the Goodyear India Rubber Glove M'f'g Co.

EDWARD BASSETT GOODYEAR, 1840-1899

Edward B. Goodyear was a son of Chauncey and Esther M. (Bassett) Goodyear, a brother of Watson A. Goodyear, and probably a great-grandson of Stephen Goodyear. He fought in the Civil War, lived briefly in Meriden, worked for a supplier of telegraphic equipment in Chicago, and returned to Connecticut in 1874, settling permanently in Naugatuck. His papers in this collection are autobiographical notes, letters from friends and family, and copybooks made by his children, Clinton, Esther, and Frank. These items were purchased from Whitlock's in 1940 and 1945.

Ellsworth D.S. Goodyear and F. Wilbur Goodyear are represented in this collection mainly by diaries related to their service in the Civil War. For Ellsworth Goodyear there is also some postwar material: record books, speeches, and almanacs with interleaved records of the weather. These papers were given to Yale University Library by Mrs. Joseph H. Townsend in 1943.

STEPHEN GOODYEAR, 1729-1803

Stephen Goodyear was deacon and treasurer of the Mt. Carmel Congregational Church and captain of the 15th (Mt. Carmel) company of the 2nd (Col. Joseph Thompson's) regiment of the Connecticut infantry (militia). He is represented in this collection by a photostatic copy of a daybook spanning from 1755 to 1804. It contains personal entries and church and military records. This volume was given to Yale University Library by Clarence W. Bronson in 1945, having been copied from the original by the Connecticut State Library in 1932.

WATSON ANDREWS GOODYEAR, 1839-1891

Sheffield Scientific School, 1863

Watson Andrews Goodyear, the son of Chauncey Good-year, Jr., was born in Hamden, New Haven County, Conn. He was employed immediately after graduation in the translation of a portion of Bodemann's Anleitung zur Probierkunst, and in the spring of 1865 he and Mr. Theodore A. Blake went to California, in a partnership as Civil and Mining Engineers which was not dissolved until the spring of 1875. In the meantime he did much other, independent and special work in the line of his profession He was employed, for instance, for some months in 1866-1867 on a topographical Goodyear Family Papers (MS 0245) - 2 survey in the vicinity of the Cliff House, San Francisco. In April, 1870, he entered the service of the Geological survey of California, under Professor J. D. Whitney, and was actively employed until the close of the season of 1873, when that Survey was stopped. Most of his work in this connection has appeared in the publications of the Survey. At a later date he was employed in the present State Survey of California. The fine collection of specimens of rocks made by him in these years now forms the principal part of the collection belonging to the University of California. In 1877 he published in San Francisco a volume on the Coal Mines of the Western Coast of the United States. In 1877 he returned to Connecticut, but soon went back again to California, and in the fall of 1879 went to the Republic of Salvador as State Geologist. While there he had the opportunity of observing a remarkable series of earthquakes, is detailed account of which he published at Panama in 1880. In the spring of 1881 he returned from San Salvador, and he remained in the vicinity of New Haven until 1885 or 1886, when he resumed the practice of his profession in California. He was subsequently employed as geologist of the State Mineralogical Bureau. He died in San Francisco on April 10, 1891, at the age of 52.

Yale Obituary Record, 1890-1900.

Watson A. Goodyear was a brother of Edward B. Goodyear and probably a great-grandson of Stephen Goodyear. His papers in this collection are reports and financial records related to his work as a geologist. The reports were purchased from Whitlock's in 1940.