Barberton is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States. The population was 25,191 at the 2020 census. Located directly southwest of Akron, it is a suburb of the Akron metropolitan area.

Barberton was founded in 1891 by industrialist O.C. Barber, who planned the town according to his vision of industry, progress and community. In 1894 he moved the manufacturing operations of the Diamond Match Company, which he formed from a blend of 11 companies, from Akron to Barberton. He soon was producing 250 million matches a day. In the valley handing out parallel to the Tuscarawas River and the Ohio & Erie Canal, he oversaw the construction of factories, residential neighborhoods and a compact trailer downtown. In the middle of the further city was Lake Anna, named after Barber’s abandoned daughter, Anna Laura Barber.

Barberton became known as the “Magic City” because of its short population addition during its formative industrial years, at a grow old of waves of immigration from eastern and southern Europe. In 1891, when Barberton was incorporated, the scattered farms that had originally characterized the landscape were transformed into a fledgling city of 1,800. When an Akron Beacon Journal reporter revisited Barberton in 1893, he noted that before 1891, it had grown so quickly that it appeared to have grown by magic (hence its nickname). Many other immigrants were attracted to its industrial jobs, which provided a passageway to assimilation.

In 1908 upon a high hill upon the east side of town, Barber began construction of an experimental farm and estate, which he called Anna-Dean Farm. It included his 52-room, French Renaissance Revival-style mansion, completed in 1909, and lush gardens, dozens of barns and other structures in the similar style, and greenhouses. Barber built 35 structures for the Anna-Dean Farm, all in the French Renaissance Revival style. The farm covered 3500 acres. Believing gardening could be as efficient as an industry, Barber expected the farm to be the basis of an agricultural college, but he did not pure its financing previously his death. He willed the farm to Western Reserve University (now Case Western Reserve University). It forward-thinking sold much of the property.