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Founder of Wayne Knitting Mills · Hosiery
On the record
Theodore Frederick Thieme was born 7 February 1857 in Fort Wayne, the son of Saxon immigrants Frederick John and Clara (Weitzman) Thieme, the second of ten children. He began as a Fort Wayne drugstore owner. When the McKinley Tariff of 1890 changed the economics of hosiery, he sold his share of the drugstore, traveled to Chemnitz, Saxony — the center of the German knitting trade — and in 1891 founded the Wayne Knitting Mills in Fort Wayne, importing German machinery and whole families of skilled German knitters. Under the slogan "American Made for American Trade" the mill produced the nation's first line of fashion hosiery, took top honors at the St. Louis exposition of 1904, and grew to some 2,500 employees, one of the city's largest workforces and one of its largest employers of women, with profit sharing, group insurance, a clubhouse, and dormitories. In 1898 he also partnered with his brother Frederick in children's hosiery. He agreed in 1923 to sell the mill to Munsingwear, then changed his mind, and the sale and litigation that followed are part of the city's business record; the mill was eventually sold to Munsingwear and closed in Fort Wayne in 1960. He died 11 August 1949. His biography, Theodore F. Thieme, a Man and His Times, by Ross F. Lockridge, appeared in 1942.
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- § 06 — people of the record
- § 05 — business
Sources: Immigrant Entrepreneurship, German Historical Institute; Brown, "Challenging Economic Borders," Indiana Magazine of History 112 (2016); News-Sentinel, Cityscapes (14 November 1982).