Philip Goldsmith

Philip Goldsmith was an Austrian immigrant to the United States in 1861. In 1869 He and his wife moved to Covington KY., just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, OH. In Covington he opened the city’s first 25-cent store. He bought toy dolls from Wolf Fletcher, owner of a small manufacturing and repair shop in Covington. In 1875 Goldsmith closed his business and became partners with Fletcher in his manufacturing operation. During slack times after Christmas Fletcher was in the habit of hand making baseballs from left over materials to make ends meet. They patented a baseball winding machine in 1876 and began to expand their sporting goods business.

Their partnership ended in 1878 with each starting their own competing businesses just blocks apart. Goldsmith continued to make toy dolls, baseballs and other athletic goods and became highly successful. His business went through a few name changes and locations in Covington, but were known as P.Goldsmith & Co. by 1890. Philip’s sons, Oscar and Alfred became partners in the business in 1893 and a year later Philip met an untimely death by drowning . The sons carried on with the sporting goods side of the business and eliminated the toy doll manufacturing. Alfred soon sold his partnership interest to another brother, Edgar. Their youngest brother, Hugo became a partner in 1906. The business name was changed to P. Goldsmith's Sons Co. and they moved to a larger facility across the river in Cincinnati.

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The Goldsmith Company had a long history producing sporting goods and were certainly going strong in the 1890s when Hugo Goldsnith joined his three older brothers in the business. (He was responsible for, among other things, the laceless basketball). When the Baseball Magazine visited the plant in 1915, there were 200 workers in the factory making baseballs, footballs and athletics gear with 500 more working from home.

The “P” in “P Goldsmith” was Philip Goldsmith who started the business as a doll-maker then added baseballs to the output. He drowned while on holiday in 1894 and his sons took over the business dropping the doll-making side.

They began making golf clubs in the 1920s and continued with them into the steel-shafted era.