| In 1887 Seiberling, who had manufactured everything from twine to plate glass during his residence in Akron, established the Kokomo Strawboard Company, which employed approximately seventy-five people to take ordinary straw and produce shoe boxes. Six months later, Seiberling sold his company (at a profit) to the American Strawboard Company. Despite the sale, Seiberling remained in business in Kokomo, opening the Diamond Plate Glass Company. Although the one-time Ohio industrialist's Kokomo factories were impressive, he is best remembered for a more personal project--his family's home, which became known as the Seiberling Mansion. The structure, a mixture of Neo-Jacobean and Romanesque Revival styles built at a cost of $50,000, is today occupied by the Howard County Historical Society, which has painstakingly restored the mansion for |
