When Charles was seven his father moved to Naugatuck and manufactured the first pearl buttons made in America; during the War of 1812 the Goodyear factory supplied metal buttons to the Government.
Charles, a studious, serious boy, was the close companion of his father.
His deeply religious nature manifested itself early, and he joined the Congregational Church when he was sixteen.

It was at first his intention to enter the ministry, which seemed to him to offer the most useful career of service, but, changing his mind, he went to Philadelphia to learn the hardware business and on coming of age was admitted to partnership in a firm established there by his father.

The firm prospered for a time, but an injudicious extension of credit led to its suspension.

So it happened that Goodyear in 1834, when he became interested in rubber, was an insolvent debtor, liable, under the laws of the time, to imprisonment.

Soon afterward, indeed, he was lodged in the Debtor's Prison in Philadelphia.
It would seem an inauspicious hour to begin a search which might lead him on in poverty for years and end nowhere.