A Dayton Family Built Around Moving What Others Could Not
For generations, the Muth name has been connected with Dayton, Ohio, and with a very particular kind of work: moving, lifting, setting, and rigging the heavy and difficult things that helped build the city.
The story of the Dayton Muth family is inseparable from the history of Muth Brothers, a family business remembered in Dayton as a machinery-moving and rigging company. Family accounts preserved in later obituaries place the founding of Muth Brothers in 1871, making it a remarkably early Dayton enterprise and one that remained associated with the Muth family for generations. Robert Edward Muth, who was one of the company’s later owners and operators, was described in his 2017 obituary as having been part of Muth Brothers, a business founded in 1871.
The connection between the business and the family reaches back to Peter Muth, identified in the obituary of Jerome E. “Jed” Muth as the founder of Muth Brothers. Peter was also the builder of the family’s home at 101 La Belle Street in Dayton’s historic St. Anne’s Hill neighborhood.
That house, completed in 1905, still stands today. Preservation Dayton describes 101 La Belle as a Queen Anne residence built by the Muth Brothers, who owned a moving and rigging company. The St. Anne’s Hill Historic District has preserved the story of the Muth brothers and their home as part of Dayton’s neighborhood history.
The Muth family’s connection to La Belle Street was more than residential. Historical research by the St. Anne’s Hill Historic District found that the Muth Brothers operated a rigging business from the neighborhood, and an 1918 Sanborn insurance map showed a warehouse on La Belle Street only a short distance from the family home. In an era when people commonly lived close to their businesses, the Muth family was literally building its home and its livelihood in the same Dayton neighborhood.
From Local Movers to Dayton’s Heavy Industry
As Dayton grew from a nineteenth-century manufacturing city into one of America’s important industrial centers, the work of the Muth Brothers grew with it.
The company’s specialty was not simply transportation. Muth Brothers handled machinery moving and rigging — the highly specialized work required to move and position heavy industrial equipment. That meant working with factories, manufacturers, machinery, structures, and other loads that ordinary movers could never handle.
The company’s reputation reached well beyond the neighborhood.
One especially significant piece of evidence comes from the archives of the Dayton Metro Library. On October 2, 1936, Walter F. Muth, identified in the historical-society records as the president of Muth Brothers, Inc., submitted a proposal to move Newcom Tavern, Dayton’s oldest surviving building, from its then-current location to a new site near Patterson Boulevard. The estimated cost of the move was $3,633.
The Newcom Tavern project is an extraordinary example of the kind of work the Muth family was trusted to perform. Rather than merely moving equipment inside a factory, Muth Brothers was being considered for moving one of Dayton’s most important historic structures.
The family’s involvement in Dayton’s history continued into the era of World War II.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dayton began installing an extensive network of civil-defense warning sirens. Historical research preserved by the St. Anne’s Hill Historic District records that in 1943, the heavy sirens were mounted by Muth Brothers, riggers, working with Dayton’s Council for Defense. The work included erecting towers and installing the heavy warning equipment.
In other words, the family’s work was not merely commercial. During one of the most important periods in American history, Muth Brothers’ specialized skills were used in Dayton’s civil-defense preparations.
The Muth Name and Dayton’s Landmarks
The Muth family’s work became connected with some of Dayton’s best-known institutions and industrial companies.
Jerome E. “Jed” Muth, who grew up in the family’s La Belle Street home and later became president of the company, recalled some of the firm’s memorable projects. His obituary specifically mentions work at Carillon Historical Park, including erecting the Deeds Carillon bells, as well as work for Esther Price and major Dayton-area industrial employers including Inland Steel, NCR, and Delco-Moraine.
The Deeds Carillon connection is particularly fitting. The Deeds Carillon has become one of Dayton’s most recognizable landmarks, and the fact that Muth Brothers was involved in erecting its bells illustrates the specialized nature of the family’s work: moving and positioning objects of enormous size and weight with the precision necessary to place them exactly where they belonged.
The company also became closely intertwined with the industrial economy of twentieth-century Dayton.
One account from a longtime Dayton-area worker, recalling the decline of the city’s GM plants, described Muth Brothers as the company that performed much of the machinery rigging inside those plants. That recollection also reflects how heavily the firm’s fortunes were tied to Dayton’s manufacturing economy.
A Family Business Across Generations
What makes the Muth story unusual is not simply the age of the business. It is the number of generations that remained personally connected to it.
Peter Muth founded the enterprise. Later generations continued the work, operated the company, and carried the Muth name into a changing industrial world.
By the twentieth century, the business appeared publicly as Muth Brothers, Inc. A Dayton Metro Library historical document from 1936 identifies Walter F. Muth as its president.
Later, the company was known as Muth Brothers Riggers and Movers, and eventually as Muth Rigging. By 1990, federal court records identified the business as Muth Rigging Co., Inc., confirming that the Muth name remained attached to the rigging operation well into the modern industrial era.
Thomas L. Muth was another important member of that later generation. His 2019 obituary states that he spent his career with Muth Brothers Riggers and Movers and ultimately served as the company’s president.
Robert Edward “Bob” Muth was likewise one of the owners and operators of Muth Brothers. His 2017 obituary describes him as having been one of the owners/operators of the company founded in 1871.
Jerome “Jed” Muth’s story provides perhaps the clearest picture of what it meant for the family to grow up inside the business. Born in 1929, he grew up in the historic La Belle Street home his great-grandfather Peter had built. He worked for the family company first as a young man and eventually became its president.
That is more than a business history. It is a family tradition passed directly from one generation to another.
From La Belle Street to the Industrial Dayton
The landscape around the Muth family changed dramatically over the decades.
The quiet neighborhood where the original Muth brothers lived in the early twentieth century was eventually surrounded by a much larger industrial Dayton. The company’s operations moved beyond its original neighborhood setting, and its work became increasingly associated with large manufacturing facilities and industrial machinery.
At one point, the company’s heavy yard was located at 613 East Second Street in Dayton, a location later identified in environmental documentation as the site of the Muth Brothers Heavy Yard.
That location is a reminder of how dramatically the family business had grown from the small neighborhood operation remembered by the Muth family home on La Belle Street.
The company became part of the machinery that made Dayton a manufacturing center — moving the machines that made the products, supporting the plants that employed thousands of Dayton-area workers, and helping install or relocate equipment throughout the region.
And then Dayton itself began to change.
Manufacturing declined. Major industrial facilities closed or downsized. The traditional machinery-moving market that had supported generations of the Muth family became increasingly difficult to sustain.
The old Muth Brothers property in Dayton’s Webster Station neighborhood eventually became part of a larger redevelopment effort. Dayton Daily News reported that the former Muth Brothers Inc. building was among the industrial properties slated for demolition as the area was redeveloped.
The buildings could be demolished.
The history could not.
More Than a Business Name
The Muth Brothers story is ultimately a story about people.
It is the story of a family that stayed connected to the same craft for generations. It is a story about Dayton’s industrial history told from the perspective of the people who physically moved the machines that powered that history.
It is also a story about family identity.
The Muth name appeared on company documents, city directories, industrial properties, historic projects, and the front door of the family’s home on La Belle Street. The family became part of the physical fabric of Dayton, and the work of the Muth Brothers became part of the city’s industrial memory.
The original 101 La Belle Street home remains an especially meaningful symbol of that legacy. Preservation Dayton continues to identify the house as a historic Queen Anne residence built by the Muth Brothers, while the St. Anne’s Hill Historic District remembers the family as owners of a moving and rigging company whose business began in the neighborhood.
The Story Continues
The Muth story did not end when the old Muth Brothers and Muth Rigging operations disappeared.
Today, a new generation is bringing the Muth Brothers name back into the world of business.
Cory Muth has recently started a new Muth Brothers company, carrying the family name into a new generation. The new company represents something larger than simply reusing an old name. It is a continuation of the entrepreneurial spirit that began with Peter Muth and the original Muth Brothers more than a century ago.
The exact form of the new enterprise may be different from the machinery-moving company that once operated in Dayton, but the principle is familiar: build something with the family name, work hard, earn a reputation, and leave something behind for the next generation.
That is the real legacy of the Muth family.
From Peter Muth and the beginning of Muth Brothers in the nineteenth century, to Walter F. Muth and the company’s historic work in the 1930s, to the wartime rigging projects of the 1940s, to the machinery moves and industrial projects of the postwar era, to later presidents such as Jerome “Jed” Muth and Thomas L. Muth, the family repeatedly adapted while keeping the name alive.
Today, the next chapter is being written.
The buildings, factories, machinery, and businesses that once defined Dayton have changed. Generations have come and gone. The original company is part of history now.
But the Muth name remains.
And so does the idea behind it:
Build something worth passing on.