Ashland Memories: The people of Faultless Rubber Company
Faultless Rubber Company was one of the major businesses that powered much of Ashland’s development in the 20th century. I present here two quite different stories of the men who played roles in that company: one whose biography is quite familiar in the area, and another family whose story is less known.
Thomas W. Miller became one of the leading men of Ashland, but he was born in Summit county in 1875. The son of a blacksmith/carriage maker, he attended public schools and taught school at age sixteen. He went on to business college at Akron.
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At the tender age of 21, he and created the Faultless Manufacturing Company, which reorganized as the Faultless Rubber Company in Akron in 1900.
In 1903, Miller partnered with Horace Camp, and in 1907 they moved the company to Ashland. Camp then retired due to ill health, and Miller became President. By 1915, Faultless had four hundred workers and was flourishing in Ashland.
Around this time, a number of European immigrants came to Ashland to work in the factories as well as on the railroads. Enough immigrants from Austria-Hungary worked at the Faultless Rubber Company that by 1914 there was a translator on the payroll.
Peter Feaux de la Croix came to the United States in 1912. In addition to English, he spoke Italian, German, French, Spanish, and Portugese. He and his wife lived on Arthur Street while he worked as translator and foreign correspondent for Faultless.
His father was a French nobleman, the son of the Duke of Sedan, who fled revolutionary France in 1793.
Peter Feaux de la Croix was born in Frankfurt about 1848 and his obituary chronicles a full life before he came to America. He served as a lieutenant in the German artillery during the Franco-Prussian war. He built railroads and was the editor of the Genoa Association in Switzerland. He was the author of several books, including a “large encyclopedia.”
Peter married Elizabeth Hoster in Holland in 1876, and they had three children. One son, Felix, remained in Germany where he lost a leg during World War I. Their daughter Josephine accompanied them to the United States, but was widowed during the Great War after her husband returned to fight for Germany.
Their son, Emil, seems to have been first in the family to arrive in the United States. He was a chemist by occupation, and likely was employed by the Faultless Rubber Company. He later worked for rubber companies elsewhere.
Emil filed his “first papers,” indicating his intention to become a citizen, at the Ashland County courthouse in June of 1914. This filing revealed that he was born in 1884 at Frankfort, Germany, and in August of 1910 he boarded the ship, “Niew Amsterdam,” and sailed to the port of New York. He arrived in Ohio that September.
On March 4, 1911, an Ashland Justice of the Peace married Emil and Miss Victoria Michael, who was also born in Germany.
In 1916, again in Ashland’s courthouse, Emil Feaux de la Croix filed his petition for citizenship. The affidavit of two witnesses affirmed that he had lived here for five years. On Sept. 5, 1917 he signed an oath in which he renounced his allegiance to Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany and became an American.
This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Ashland Memories: Miller created Faultless Manufacturing at age 21
