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1909 – c.1925
Founded: 1909, Fort Wayne. The Immigrant Entrepreneurship biography states that in 1909 Theodore F. Thieme invited his brother John to help him form the Thieme Brothers Company, a Wayne Knitting Mills subsidiary dedicated to silk hosiery. The timing and the plant are corroborated by a contemporaneous newspaper report: the Fort Wayne News and Sentinel of 20 October 1909 (p.10, via ACGSI) reports the new silk mill building on Knitters Avenue completed and being equipped — six large machines installed, more en route, in operation by 1 November, employing at least 200 men and women in addition to the Wayne Knitting force, its high-grade silk hose and stockings to be handled by Wayne Knitting Mills salesmen. Flag: the 1909 newspaper report does not name Thieme Brothers in the text in hand; it corroborates a Wayne Knitting silk operation starting in autumn 1909, and the subsidiary's name and formation rest on the biography (itself based on Thieme's papers and Lockridge, 1942).
Founders: Theodore F. Thieme and his brother John A. Thieme (John Andrew, born 1858) — (biography). John had left his tailoring partnership with brother Gottlieb to take a position at Wayne Knitting Mills c.1906, and Theodore invited him into the silk venture from there. Conflation warning, printed with the entry: the name "Thieme Brothers" also belongs to two other family firms — the father's generation's J.G. Thieme and Bro. clothing business and Gottlieb and John's tailoring firm Thieme Bros. Neither is this company; any account merging the 1909 silk-hosiery subsidiary with the brothers' tailoring firm is not supported on the evidence in hand.
What it did: Manufactured high-grade silk hosiery — the high-end line Wayne Knitting Mills (entry 29) branched into as American demand for silk stockings grew. Its plant was the new fireproof silk mill building of 1909: three stories and a basement, iron, concrete and brick, on the west side of Knitters (Growth) Avenue opposite the main Wayne Knitting factory (1909 newspaper).
Course: A profitable subsidiary: it contributed $65,000 in profits in 1919 and $100,000 in 1920 to Wayne Knit's overall profits (biography) — the only financial figures in hand, carried as that source gives them. No separate employment, capital or sales figures for the firm were found.
Fate: Excluded from the 1923 Munsingwear sale; reorganised as an independent company; its Fort Wayne branch sold c.1925, with the buyer not established. When the Wayne Knitting Mills board sold that company to Munsingwear in 1923, Thieme Brothers Hosiery was not included; it remained under Theodore and John, Theodore reorganised it as an independent company with himself as president and general manager (biography; entry 29 carries the sale itself). Theodore then completed a West Coast expansion he had begun with a Los Angeles land purchase in 1921: the Los Angeles branch, opened 1923 and named Theme Brothers Hosiery — the "i" deliberately dropped to distinguish it from the Fort Wayne original — was staffed by former Wayne Knitting department heads and managed by John. Two years later (c.1925) Theodore "took advantage of a favorable opportunity" and sold the Fort Wayne branch of Thieme Brothers; the buyer is not named in any source in hand. In 1925 Theodore withdrew from all business activity after thirty-two years in hosiery and entrusted the Theme Brothers company to John. The Los Angeles company's course after 1925 is not established on the sources in hand — no closure, sale or later listing was found in the sources consulted, and none is invented.
Sources:
- Immigrant Entrepreneurship (German Historical Institute), "Theodore Frederick Thieme" (John A. Thieme joins Wayne Knitting c.1906; 1909 formation of the Thieme Brothers Company as the silk subsidiary; profits $65,000 in 1919 and $100,000 in 1920; exclusion from the 1923 Munsingwear sale; reorganisation as an independent company; Los Angeles land 1921, Theme Brothers opened 1923, John as manager; Fort Wayne branch sold two years later; Theodore's 1925 withdrawal, Theme Bros. entrusted to John) — https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/theodore-frederick-thieme/
- Fort Wayne News and Sentinel, 20 Oct 1909, p.10, via ACGSI (contemporary: new silk mill building on Knitters Avenue completed, machines installing, operation by 1 November, at least 200 additional employees, high-grade silk hose handled by Wayne Knitting Mills salesmen) — https://www.acgsi.org/genweb/fort-wayne/wayne-knitting-mills-fort-wayne-indiana.html
- News-Sentinel Cityscapes, Kevin Leininger, "Fort Wayne Knitters," 14 Nov 1982 (Wayne Knit silk hose context; the 1923 Munsingwear sale from which Thieme Brothers was excluded) — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/scapes30.php