The story
Mueller Water Products was incorporated as a standalone business on September 22, 2005, but the company traces the history of its business units, subsidiaries and brands back as far as 1857, when the forerunner to Mueller Co. was founded by Hieronymus Mueller in Decatur, Illinois. Providence Steam and Gas Pipe became General Fire Extinguisher Co. in 1892 after merging with several sprinkler manufacturers, and was later renamed Grinnell Co. in 1919, after the company's president, Frederick Grinnell. In 1899, 12 companies incorporated as United States Cast Iron Pipe and Foundry Company, which would later be known as U.S. Pipe after dropping "cast iron" from the company name in 1929. Grinnell Co. became known as Anvil International in 2000.
Jim Walter Corporation acquired U.S. Pipe in 1969, and in 2005, it acquired Mueller Co. and Anvil International. The three businesses were combined to form Mueller Water Products. The combined entity was then spun off as the publicly held Mueller Water Products, Inc. in 2006, moving its headquarters from the company's birthplace of Decatur, Illinois, to Atlanta, Georgia. Initially, MWP operated with three business units—Mueller Co., Anvil International, and U.S. Pipe. However, in 2012 Mueller Water Products divested U.S. Pipe to Wynnchurch Capital, Ltd., retaining only the valve and hydrant division, which now operates under the Mueller Co. business unit. Early in 2017 Mueller Water Products sold its Anvil International division to One Equity Partners and also completed the acquisition of Singer Valve, a manufacturer of automatic control valves.
From Wikipedia’s article on Mueller Water Products, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7