Wayne Knitting Mills

1891 – 1960

Founded: Spring 1891, Fort Wayne. The Immigrant Entrepreneurship biography (German Historical Institute, based on Thieme's own papers and Lockridge's 1942 biography), the History Center, ACGSI and the News-Sentinel Cityscapes account all agree on 1891, and the contemporaneous Fort Wayne City Directory 1891–92 (R. L. Polk & Co., p. 589, via ACGSI) lists "Wayne Knitting Mills, n e cor E Main and Clinton" under Knitting Works — a directory listing proving the firm existed at Main and Clinton in 1891–92. The biography gives the mechanics: starting capital stock of $30,000, funding from Old National Bank of Fort Wayne and unnamed local citizens, set up in spring 1891, production begun that summer in a small rented building with twenty-five German-immigrant knitters and finishers and two to three machines; first products turned out in 1892. Conflict flagged, not followed: two ACGSI / ARCH passages say the Growth Avenue site was "started by Theodore F. Thieme as Thieme Brothers Knitting Mills circa 1875" and "incorporated as Wayne Knitting Mills in 1891." The c.1875 claim is not supported — Thieme was 18 in 1875, was then training / working as a druggist, and the documented Thieme Brothers firms are his father's and brothers' tailoring business and the 1909 silk subsidiary (below); no 1875 knitting mill is documented, and none is printed here.

Founder: Theodore Frederick Thieme (born 7 February 1857, Fort Wayne, son of Saxon immigrants Frederick John and Clara Thieme; died 11 August 1949) — (Immigrant Entrepreneurship biography; Indiana Magazine of History, Nancy Brown, March 2016). A Fort Wayne druggist (T. F. Thieme drug store, Wayne and Calhoun) who sold his drug-store interest after the McKinley Tariff of 1890, toured the Chemnitz hosiery district in Saxony in 1890 — travelling incognito as "Herr Gross" to get past German makers' fears of American competition — and bought German full-fashioned machines and recruited Chemnitz knitters for Fort Wayne.

What it did: Manufactured full-fashioned hosiery — stockings knitted to the contours of the leg, not seamless tubes — for men, women and children under the "Wayne Knit" brand, slogan "American Made for American Trade." Children's hosiery was made from 1898 by the separate United Knitting Mills (brother Frederick Thieme) under the "Pony Stockings" trademark, later bought in by Theodore; silk hosiery from 1909 by the Thieme Brothers Company subsidiary. In World War I the factory produced 50,000 standard-issue woollen army socks (History Center).

Course: After a year in rented quarters at Main and Clinton the mill set up permanently at West Main Street and Growth Avenue — "Knitters Avenue" — operating there 1892–1960 (News-Sentinel). Capital rose $25,000 in 1896 and to $250,000 in the late 1890s with New York silk-importer investment and a New York office and stockroom (biography). At the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair its exhibit, with a working full-fashioned machine, took a grand prize / top honours for hosiery (biography; News-Sentinel). Size figures conflict by date and are not merged: about 1,100 workers by 1905 and "largest maker of knitted hosiery in the world" (ACGSI / neighbourhood account); $1 million capital stock by 1908 (News-Sentinel); branch plants at Garrett and Roanoke, Indiana, c.1906, about sixty women each (biography); about 2,500 workers at its height, one of Fort Wayne's largest employers of women, with an extensive welfare-capitalism programme — profit sharing, group insurance, clubhouse, dormitories for women workers, the "Knittingales" chorus (biography; History Center). World War I cut off German dyes, needles and machinery and the mill accumulated undyed stock for months (Thieme, 1918 company newsletter, quoted in the biography).

Fate: Sold to Munsingwear, 1923; Fort Wayne mill closed 1960, with the 1923 sale told two ways and both carried. Thieme considered a sale to the Munsingwear Corporation of Minneapolis in 1922 and broke off negotiations (price "entirely too low"; unfair to trade, employees, stockholders and the city — his own account). While he was in Florida, company officials Samuel Foster and Henry Miller assembled stockholder support and the board sold the company to Munsingwear without him; Thieme's farewell message of 18 June 1923 calls it a secret conspiracy by an "ambitious minority," Foster accused Thieme of misappropriation — charges auditors later cleared — and lawsuits followed (biography, from Thieme's 1924 pamphlet How and Why the Wayne Knitting Mills was sold to the Munsingwear Corporation, an interested-party source, flagged as such; News-Sentinel / historian John Ankenbruck give the same core facts: Foster and others assembled 80 percent of the stock and made the sale without Thieme's consent). Thieme Brothers Hosiery was not in the sale; Thieme ran it independently until his full retirement in 1925. The Fort Wayne mill ran on as Wayne Knit, later under the Munsingwear name, declined as silk gave way to synthetics, and closed in 1960, operations transferred to Humboldt, Tennessee (News-Sentinel; History Center account agrees on 1960 and Tennessee). The Growth Avenue complex survives — later Ward Corporation / Wayne Warehouse use (ACGSI).

Sources:

1. Immigrant Entrepreneurship (German Historical Institute), "Theodore Frederick Thieme" (1890 Chemnitz trip; founded the following year; $30,000 capital; spring 1891 set-up; 1892 first products; capital increases; 1904 prize; Garrett/Roanoke branches; WWI supply cutoff; 1922–23 Munsingwear sale and 18 June 1923 farewell; Thieme Brothers exclusion) — https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/theodore-frederick-thieme/
2. Nancy Brown, "Challenging Economic Borders: Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Chemnitz, Germany," Indiana Magazine of History 112 (March 2016) (McKinley Tariff motive; Chemnitz contract labour; contemporary Fort Wayne newspaper citations, incl. Fort Wayne Daily Gazette and Sentinel, 21 April 1891) — https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/imh/article/download/24710/30732/58137
3. News-Sentinel Cityscapes, Kevin Leininger, "Fort Wayne Knitters," 14 Nov 1982 (1891 founding; year at Main and Clinton, then Main and Growth; 1904 St. Louis honours; $1M capital by 1908; 1923 Foster / 80-percent-stock sale account; closed 1960, operations to Humboldt, Tenn.) — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/scapes30.php
4. ACGSI / Allen INGenWeb, Wayne Knitting Mills (1891–92 Polk directory listing, p. 589; c.1875 Thieme Brothers claim, flagged above; History Center 20 Apr 2023 account: established 1891, 50,000 WWI army socks, 1923 sale, closed 1960, operations to Tennessee; ACPL Wayne Knitting Mills collection) — https://www.acgsi.org/genweb/fort-wayne/wayne-knitting-mills-allen-county-indiana.html
5. History Center virtual exhibit, Wayne Knitting Mills statue, object 95.35.1 (established 1891 by Theodore F. Thieme to manufacture "full-fashioned hosiery"; large employer of young women; WWI socks) — https://www.fwhistorycenter.org/virtual-exhibits/vex18/0EF2149A-7CF7-47FC-9BA9-253211406770.htm