MARVIN F. SCAIFE

MARVIN F. SCAIFE
1856 – 1921

Marvin Frisbee Scaife was born in 1856, the son of William Borrett Scaife (Sept 5, 1812-April 2, 1876) and Mary Frisbee; they were married Dec. 23, 1834.

He became associated with Associated with W. B. Scaife and Sons, a producer of iron products. In 1834 his father had organized the William B. Scaife Company and by the age of 26 he was its sole proprietor. Among other things he invented and produced the prevalent style of Victorian era kitchen range.

Marvin Scaife came from a large family. In addition to his mother Mary, at home in Allegheny in 1880 were four sisters, Cora R (age 40), Mary R (age 37), Alice L (age 34)and Lois E (age 27), as well as brother Walter Bell Scaife (age 21) who was at that time a law student. Also among his siblings but no longer at home: Oliver Perry Scaife (1837-1903), Charles Cook Scaife (born in 1845-1915), William Lucian Scaife (born in 1854; became chairman of the Scaife foundry) and Lauirson L. Scaife (-1926; an attorney of Boston Mass.).

Marvin Scaife graduated from Pittsburgh High School in 1875.

With his brothers, Marvin continued the Scaife family business into its third generation, Jeffrey Scaife having founded it in 1802. In 1888 Marvin was listed along with brothers Oliver and Charles as partners in the business, located at 119 First Avenue, providing structural iron work, roofing, etc.

Marvin F. Scaife married Jennie M Boyle they lived at 3063 Amberson Place in Shadyside in 1920.

Marvin Scaife was a member of the Duquesne Club. He served as vice chairman of the Reception Committee for the Pittsburgh sesqui-centennial celebration, July 4, September 27-October 3, November 25, 1908. He was active in the Western Pennsylvania Humane Society and served as a director of the Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce in 1918-1920.

* * *

Of course now the Scaife and Mellon families are linked through the marriage of Sarah Cordelia Mellon - daughter of Richard B. Mellon and niece of SFF&HC member Andrew W. Mellon - and Alan Magee Scaife (1900-1958)* - the grandson of Marvin Scaife's brother Charles Cook Scaife (his parents were James Verner Scaife and Mary Magee). They had two children Cordelia Scaife (May) and Richard Mellon Scaife (owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review). During World War II, while Richard and Cordelia's father, Alan Scaife, served in Europe in the OSS, as temporary head of the OSS Secret Intelligence Branch in London, the Scaife family lived in Washington. (Note that SFF&HC member John G A Leishman's grandson Henry B. Hyde was also an OSS officer.)

*August 4, 1958... Died. Alan Magee Scaife, 58, Pittsburgh industrialist and serviceman in both world wars, board chairman of Scaife Co., president of the board of trustees of the University of Pittsburgh, fellow of Yale University's Yale Corporation; of a myocardial infarction; in Pittsburgh. Marrying Sarah Mellon of the banking Mellon family, Scaife stayed with his family firm, became a vice president of T. Mellon & Sons, and member of a dozen big corporate boards, was one of the civic leaders who helped carry out the postwar redevelopment of the city's famed Golden Triangle. He wrote the book: Scaife Company, 1802-1952, oldest manufacturing firm west of the Alleghenies; father to son for five generations. 1952.

CHRISTIAN BERNARD SHEA

CHRISTIAN BERNARD SHEA
1835 - 1900

Christian Bernard Shea was the brother-in-law of and founding partner with Joseph Horne of The Joseph Horne Company (along with Major and A. P. Burchfield).

C Bernard Shea was a very dignified looking fellow, with a full moustache and mutton chop sideburns which he kept neatly trimmed He was involved with both halves of the family business, retail (Joseph Horne Co. Department Store) and wholesale (Pittsburgh Dry Goods Company). Their family belonged to the Episcopal Church.

Christian Bernard Shea (1835-1900) married Elizabeth Galway (1837-? before 1895); in 1880 they lived in Allegheny and Elizabeth’s sister Mary Galway lived with them:

Their children include:

- Joseph Bernard Shea (June 2, 1863-January 7, 1930) who married Clara Bell Morgan.

Their son was Christian Bernard Shea Princeton class of 1916, who married (1) Miriam McDonald (2) Irene Ciemnolonski of Duquesne, Pa., the daughter of Julius and Catherine Nowaczynski Ciemnolonski. A nurse by training, Mrs. Shea was a major contributor to the new Hillman Cancer wing at Shadyside Hospital. Also, in 2000, Mrs. Irene Shea gave a $4 million gift to create the magnificent new Princeton Boathouse in hher husband's memory: The C. Bernard Shea Rowing Center. As the Princeton athletic department reported at that time:

"We are deeply grateful to Mrs. Shea for this generous gift," said Princeton President Harold T. Shapiro. "Bernard Shea was himself an enthusiastic oarsman at Princeton, and generations of Princeton rowers will remember him and benefit from this tribute to his memory." When boating sports began at Princeton, the team practiced on the nearby Delaware and Raritan Canal - a difficult process since the canal still had a steady stream of commercial traffic. It was not until 1906 that Andrew Carnegie, from the Sheas' hometown of Pittsburgh, funded the construction of a dam, creating what is now called Carnegie Lake. Having the lake for both practices and competitions greatly strengthened the University's rowing program, which grew continuously in strength and variety.

Lightweight crew was introduced in 1922, women came on board in 1972 and women's lightweight crew was added in the fall of 1997.

"I have wonderful memories of returning to campus with my husband in the 1950s to watch the crew races," said Mrs. Shea, "and it is especially meaningful to me to help the many students who love rowing and Princeton, just as my husband did."

Mr. Shea, who died in 1961, served with the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps during World War I and was vice president and director of the Joseph Horne Co. of Pittsburgh. A member of the Graduate Council of Princeton University, he was a director and trustee of many charitable institutions, including Shadyside Hospital of Pittsburgh and the Fairview Hospital of Great Barrington, Mass. (Princeton Athletic Communications; Release: 06/18/2006)

Mrs. Shea has also made a wonderful contribution to young people's education through the Irene C. Shea Endowed Scholarship Fund.

- George Shea (1866-)

C B Shea was 54 at the time of the Johnstown Flood.

DURBIN HORNE

DURBIN HORNE
July 15, 1854 – 1916

Durbin Horne was the son of department store magnate Joseph Horne, whose dry goods business expanded to the point that it became the most fashionable of the seven large department stores in Pittsburgh by the late 1800s. It was the preeminent department store throughout the following century. Its demise at the end of the twentieth century is lamented by most Pittsburgh natives, and its Christmas window displays and Christmas tree will long live in Pittsburghers hearts.

Abby Mendelshon has an outstanding biography of Joseph Horne at this site:

http://www.alleghenycemetery.com/noteables/noteable_horne.htm
The outlines are these: Joseph Horne was born in Bedford County PA in January 1826, the son of Henry Horne, who had served in the Continental Army, Henry intended his son to be a physician. Joseph had other plans, moved west to Pittsburgh and found his first job in the retail trade with Christian Yeager, the father of SFF&HC member H. C. Yeager. Soon, Joseph moved to the F.H. Eaton store, and first became a partner and then bought out he business in 1849, and renamed it The Joseph Horne Company, a name it would bear for more than 130 years. Horne was 23. He joined forces with Messrs. Shea and Burchfield, whose distinguished families intermarried and entered the business, and brought a hauteur to his emporium that has never been equaled in Pittsburgh. In 1881 the firm built their new building designed by Charles Tattersall Ingham at Wood and Liberty. In 1891, at age 65, he sold the wholesale side to the Pittsburgh Dry Goods Company.

Joseph Horne married twice: (1) Mary Elizabeth Shea and (2) Emma Galway, he sired numerous children, some of whom, like son Durbin, born in 1854, followed his father into the business. Joseph Horne died in 1892.

* * *

Durbin Horne, son of Joseph and Mary Elizabeth Shea Horne, born in Pittsburgh PA, on July 15, 1854. He attende Pittsburgh public schools, the Newell Institute and Yale. After graduating from Yale in 1876, he returned to Pittsburgh and by 1882 was a partner in the firm.

On June 1, 1889, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported tht Durbin Horne was off to Johnstown and quite anxious as three of his family members were in the disaster zone.

Durbin Horne became the second Horne to preside over the business; he became president of The Joseph Horne Company in 1901. He was a trustee of Alleghenny Cemetery (elected 1896) and manager of the same 1904-1909. Pargtner of The Joseph Horne Company and S F F & H C member Christian Barnard Shea and his wife Eliszabeth Galway Shea were Durbin Horne’s aunt and uncle.

Durbin Horne retired in 1915 and died in 1916. He was succeeded, in 1946, by his son Joseph, the last Joseph Horne to head the company, which he did until his passing, unmarried and childless, two years later.)

In Durbin Horne married Mary T. Andrews the daughter of A. H. Anderws of Cincinnati, Ohio (?-1923).

Their sole surviving child:

Joseph Horne (1889-1948); did not marry. He was a graduate of Yale and an active member of Christ Episcopal Church, in the East End.

The Durbin Horne family home, called "The Gables," 7408 Penn Avenue, is located in Point Breeze; the three-story brick mansion designed by Charles Tattersall Ingham is now home to the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

ROBERT PITCAIRN

Robert Pitcairn
May 6, 1836 - 1909

Robert Pitcairn – like his boyhood friend Andrew Carnegie – was a Scottish immigrant who rose from messenger boy to a position of prestige and power. But their similarities end there.

Robert Pitcairn was born in 1836 in Johnstone, near Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, the son of John and Agnes Pitcairn. With his parents he immigrated to Pittsburgh and settled there. The Pitcairns and Carnegies were friends in Scotland and came to America on the same sailing vessel.

As with Andrew Carnegie, he began his business life as a messenger boy—they worked together for the Atlantic and Ohio Telegraph Company. In 1853, Carnegie helped Pitcairn obtain his first job for the Pennsylvania Railroad as ticket agent at the Mountain House at Hollidaysburg, from there he was transferred to Altoona. And when Carnegie left the PRR, Pitcairn replaced him as head of Pittsburgh operations, there. He was general agent and superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Unlike Carnegie, however, Robert Pitcairn was a deeply religious man and he lived his Scots-Presbyterian beliefs as a founder, long time member and leader of the Shadyside Presbyterian Church.

Before the congregation built its current building, for many years, Pitcairn served as its choir director. Stop and let that sink in a moment. A leading businessman of the city (and country) serving as a choir director of his local congregation. How many of today’s famous business leaders, Fortune 500 and so forth, can say that they do something of similar commitment to their church out of a compelling desire to do so?

It would be a fascinating study for some historian to do a book long exploration of the relationship between Pitcairn and Carnegie and to ask the hard question of which man was truly the more successful in the things that really matter.

Carnegie had no interest in the Christian faith other than to take pot shots at it and insist that it was passé. Carnegie's self-promoting writings and speeches are full of screeds about Christianity—Carnegie thought himself wiser than the wisdom of the ages.

Robert Pitcairn, on the other hand, was personally devout and his faith convictions were born out in the way that he lived every week. Pitcairn did not worship out of convention or show, but rather was involved in the life of his congregation both to give and to learn. The records of the Shadyside Presbyterian Church and the long term memory of its members are quite clear about this, and Pitcairn and his descendants established a foundation at Shadyside for the long term well being of the church and community, called the Pictairn-Crabbe Foundation. Trustees of the church are also directors of the Pitcairn-Crabbe Foundation, which oversees the grant-making decisions of this charitable foundation.

In addition to his association with the Pennsylvanian railroad, Pitcairn was a director and vice president of the American Surety Company and held the same offices for the Fidelity Trust and Title Company. He was a director of the Masonic Bank, Citizen’s Bank, First National Bank of Greensburg, and the Western Pennsylvania Exposition. He was also a friend and financial backer of George Westinghouse.

He inspired appreciation and respect and a level of fondness that is worth noting. Pitcairn's business associates called him "Uncle Robert", he was known all along the railroad lines as "RP", Andy Carnegie called him Bob.

In 1880, Pitcairn ordered construction of a rail yard along Turtle Creek near Pittsburgh that would become the largest rail yard in the world. The borough of Pitcairn, PA, located adjacent to the yard, was named in his honor. Originally part of Versailles Township, it is named for Robert Pitcairn, a former superintendent of the Pittsburgh division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Robert Pitcairn was instrumental in locating switching yards, an engine roundhouse and car repair shops in the area in the 1880s near what was known as Wall Station. With the expansion of the rail yards, several plans of lots were laid out to accommodate railroad workers. As the village grew, it was given the name Walurba, meaning a suburb of Wall. In 1893, residents decided they wanted to form their own community, separate from what were then Patton Township and Wall. The petition was approved the following year and in 1897 Walurba Station was changed to Pitcairn. The depot is now a municipal parking lot and the railroad yards are gone. Pitcairn has the distinction of being the only municipality in Allegheny County to provide its own electric and cable television service. In March of 1899, a right-of -way was granted to the Turtle Creek Valley Electric Company, later Duquesne Light Company, to erect a pole line to provide electricity for homes. In January 1902, council enacted an ordinance to float a $20,000 Bond Issue to erect a light plant and distribution system. In the fall, a drive began to sign up customers for electricity when the plant would be ready for operation. As an inducement to applicants, a free light was granted for the front porch of each home, which of course also improved street lighting. In 1936 and 1937, at the height of the Great Depression, the municipality sent residents an electric bill marked 'Paid in Full' as a Christmas present. The borough still redistributes electricity to its residents and provides its own cable television service. (Source: Borough of Pitcairn website)

Pitcairn’s pre-Flood concern about the condition of the dam at Lake Connemaugh was well recorded. Indeed he had asked his friend Joseph P Wilson, the superintendent of the Cambria Mine at South Fork, to keep a watchful eye on conditions at the dam and to let him know if there were any problems or concerns. It is well documented that Wilson did send a warning telegram from South Fork via Johnstown to Robert Pitcairn at Pittsburgh that the dam was about to fail. The telegraph handset from South Fork is on display at the Unger Farm which is now the main building of the Johnstown Flood Memorial. The post-Flood testimony of both Pitcairn and Wilson can be read on their website.

Read Robert Pitcairn’s entire statement:

http://www.nps.gov/archive/jofl/robpitca.htm

Joseph P. Wilson’s statement:

http://www.nps.gov/archive/jofl/wilson.htm

Robert Pitcairn’s response to the Johnstown Flood is also well worth noting. In spite of (and one could argue as a corrective to) the vow of silence of the SFF& HC members in reaction to the Flood, and as head of the Pittsburgh Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Pitcairn knew he was in a position to do something and do something he did.

Pitcairn assembled a Relief Train that was the first to head from Pittsburgh to Johnstown with the people and resources needed to respond to the disaster. McCullough gives an outstanding account of it in his book. As Robert Pitcairn said…

“The whole Pennsylvania Railroad was put at the disposal of the public to the detriment of their prompt repairing and re-establishing their own lines. In fact, the public had full possession of the Pennsylvania Railroad line west of Johnstown, and the committee acted with myself in the relief of the people.”

This is a far cry from the SFF&HC members who hid behind the stony silent facades of their East End mansions and speaks volumes about the true character of Robert Pitcairn who was one of the real heroes during that sad time. In contrast, Andrew Carnegie did not show up in Johnstown until the mess was cleaned up, the bodies were all buried and the sun was brightly shining again, to dedicate his new library, which replaced the one that South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club member and Johnstown resident Cyrus Elder had built for the city, and which had been destroyed by the Flood. These are simply the facts of the matter and they show the contrasting elements of both men’s character vividly.

On July 26, 1856, Robert Pitcairn married Elizabeth Erb Riggs (1841 - ) of Altoona. Their home was at the corner of Ellsworth and Amberson Avenues in Shadyside.

Their children:

Agnes Laurene Pitcairn (1857) married Omar S. Decker (Nov. 22, 1856-). They lived at 517 Amberson Avenue in Shadyside. Their children:

- Omar Scott Decker () his daughter:

- Dolly Decker

Susan Blanche Pitcairn (1868) Married Victor Lee Crabbe on Dec. 2, 1897. Their home was Cairncarque on Ellsworth Avenue in Pittsburgh’s East End. Their children include:

- Elizabeth Pitcairn Crabbe ()

- Susan Lee Crabbe ( - 1939) Married Mr. Hunt. The remainder of the Pitcairn fortune was left to granddaughter Susan Lee Hunt. In her Last Will and Testament dated May 20, 1939, the late Susan Lee Hunt created the Pitcairn-Crabbe Foundation to perpetuate the memory of her mother, Susan Pitcairn-Crabbe, and her grandparents, Robert and Elizabeth E. Pitcairn. And on December 23, 1940, the Pitcairn-Crabbe Foundation was incorporated as a nonprofit corporation by order of the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

Lillian Pitcairn (1859); as a child she went by "Lydia". Married Charles Lewis Taylor (April 3, 1857 - February 3, 1922; who was a Carnegie Steel executive and retired in 1901 upon the sale of the company to become U S Steel), on October 31, 1883. The Taylor family lived at 5533 Ellsworth Avenue. Their children:

- Lillian Taylor (); Married (1) Russell L. McIntosh of Westfield NJ, (2) Albert Edward Savage. Russell L. McIntosh was a leading citizen of Westfield. He served Westfield's vice-chairman of the Liberty Loan program during W W I. Lillian Taylor McIntosh served as a volunteer nurse duing the influenza epidemic.

Robert Pitcairn, Jr. (October 2, 1874 - ); graduated from Princeton in 1897; married Marion McLean Sellers in Pittsburgh, Nov 4, 1903 . She was the daughter of Jennie P. McLean and stepdaughter of H D W English; this family was related to the Leishman family. They moved to Pasadena CA.;he was on the board of Pasadena hospital.

For several winter seasons the Pitcarins vacationed at Greens Hotel in Pasadena California. In 1906 Mr. and Mrs. Robert Pitcairn Jr. built a house in Pasadena California designed by the outstanding architectural firm Greene and Greene: The Pitcairn house would combine the entire lexicon of their mature design elements: a shingled exterior; a roof pitch of three feet, ten inches in twelve feet; major interior and exterior timbers; deeply overhanging eaves; exposed rafters, purlins, and beams that project significantly beyond the eaves; “Malthoid” roofing that integrates the roof with the rain gutters; an up-swept “lift” in the ends of the ridge beam; basement ventilation made of Chinese blocks of green-glazed terra-cotta; and casement windows. Most important were the terraces and sleeping porches that extend the outdoor living space on the upper level. They adapted Japanese construction themes to Pasadena’s regional conditions and their own aesthetic sense. They used keyed scarf joints to decoratively join and strengthen in-line long timbers and used wedges to fix rails to posts for the first time in their designs. They also pioneered the artistic use of wrought-iron straps to bundle posts and corbels. This was the first time all of these design elements came together in one house. The presentation drawings for the house show an American Indian Navajo theme in the lead glass designs, but these designs were abandoned during construction in favor of plain glass.

HENRY CLAY FRICK

Henry Clay Frick
December 19, 1848 – December 2, 1919

“The King of Coke” and the creator of what is now the Frick Collection in New York, Henry Clay Frick was the sometime partner and sometime adversary of Andrew Carnegie and the lifelong friend of Andrew W. Mellon.

There is a good book about Frick by his great-granddaughter Martha Frick Symington Sanger (Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait) that tells most of the story well. Some of her grandfather’s business machinations, however, are downplayed to place him in a more favorable light than the facts might warrant, especially his role in ousting SFF&HC member John G A Leishman from the chairmanship of Carnegie Steel and his similar role in the Equitable Insurance Scandal, in which James Hazen Hyde (Leishman's future son-in-law) was similarly treated.

It is fair to say that Frick was a genius at making money. It is also fair to say that his interpersonal skills were not of the first calibre, especially those beyond his immediate family. He was good at networking with others to bring about hoped-for business outcomes. He did not bother making or maintianing congenial relationships with people unless it would benefit his own goals and projects.

Henry Clay Frick was born in a modest little springhouse on the grounds of his maternal grandfather’s estate in West Overton, Pennsylvania. The house remains as do all of the other signs of Grandfather Abraham S. Overholt’s successful whiskey brewery business, and can be visited by the intrepid tourist. See this website for more information...

http://www.westovertonmuseum.org/

A Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite, Abraham S. Overholt had come from the area around Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, westward, and had Americanized his Oberholtzer surname. His daughter Elizabeth married John Frick.

The John and Elizabeth Overholt Frick family was impoverished and the contrast between their humble lives in the shadow of Grandfather Overholt’s prosperity played on the impressionable “Clay”. He vowed that he would be a millionaire by the time that he was thirty and he in fact reached that goal.

Frick did so by ingratiating himself to the Pittsburgh elite of the day. He was for a time a clerk in a retail establishment, where he waited upon the well-to-do ladies of the city, and did so in such a way that he endeared himself to them. He went to Andy Mellon, whom he had befriended, for a loan of $20,000 to buy up some of the coke ovens in the Connellsville area. Andy took the idea to his father Judge Thomas and together they agreed to make the loan event though the fellow had no collateral.

As Frick’s fortunes improved he lived at the Monongahela House in Pittsburgh. Some of his future South Fork club memebers were also guests at or had buisness connnections with this hotel.

On December 15, 1881 Henry Clay Frick married Adelaide Howard Childs (1859 - 1931) in one of the notable weddings of the season...

For a portrait of Adelaide, scroll down to the last painting on this web page:

http://www.frickart.com/programs/exhibitions/detail/76.html

H C and Adelaide went to New York City as the first stop on their honneymoon and spent it visiting Andrew Carnegie at his hotel there (every bride’s dream, isn’t it?), and clinching the deal that brought Frick Coke under the wing of Carnegie Brothers and Frick under Carnegie’s watchful eye, if not thumb. This partnership ensured that Carnegie's steel mills had an adequate supply of (presumably reduced priced) coke. As a result of this agreement Frick eventually became chairman of the Carnegie Steel company. Cantankerous old Mrs. Carnegie felt there was not much in it for the Carnegie interests and told her still-bachelor son so. What poor sweet Adelaide thought of all of this remains unrecorded but we can guess.

It was Frick who formed the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and began gathering its charter members. His share in the enterprise is sometimes minimized and it ought not to be. The first members were his especial friends and some were relatives connected through the huge and prolific Childs family.

H C Frick and Andrew Carnegie were both aggressive business competitors. It may have been inevitable that their partnership could not last.

The Fricks had four children but two died in infancy...

Childs Frick (1883-1965) all of the Frick family descend through him; he married Frances Shoemaker Dixon (1892-1953).

Martha Frick (1885-1891); baby Martha ingested a pin and died from compliactions of infection.

Helen Clay Frick (1888-1984) Miss Frick lived to be 95 and never married (see below)

Henry Clay Frick, Jr. (1892-1892)

Adelaide Childs Frick lapsed into chronic ill health and depression after the death her daughter Martha in 1891 and infant son H C Frick Jr. in the summer of 1892.

The Frick family moved to New York City in 1905.

The Flood, the death of little Martha, the Homestead Strike and the assassination attempt by Alexander Berkman (foiled by John G A Leishman, see the separate posting called “The Man Who Saved H C Frick”) all took their toll on Henry Clay Frick, a man who assumed that the millions he had vowed to make would somehow make him immune from life’s share of troubles. Bested by Carnegie in a much publicized lawsuit (which Carnegie claimed paid for his beloved Skibo Castle) Frick did as others had don and left for Manhattan with summers in Mount Desert Maine, thereafter. The family kept Clayton but returned to only for visits until Miss Helen Frick made her home there in her later years.

Frick was one of a number of South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club members who abandoned Pittsburgh as soon as they could, following the flood. More so than some, Frick kept his hand in Pittsburgh, and there are many architectural monuments that remind the 21st Century visitor of Frick’s presence. In addition to the Frick Building (built to cast a shadow on the Carnegie Building) which was designed by the leading architect of the day, Chicagoan Daniel Burnham, and togged out with a John Lafarge stained glass window of “Fortune at Her Wheel”, there are also the Union Trust Building, the William Penn Hotel and not one but two Frick Art Galleries. One is in the Oakland cultural district sandwiched between SFF&CHC member Andrew Carnegie’s library and music hall and Phipps’s Conservatory. The other stands on the Point Breeze grounds of the Frick family mansion, Clayton.

The reason for there being two different Frick art gallery buildings within five miles of each other in Pittsburgh is somewhat droll. Miss Frick gave the gallery in Oakland in her parents memory. As it was about to be finished she let it be known that she had selected paintings from her father’s Pittsburgh collection to hang in the gallery, now called The Frick Fine Arts building. You can read about it, here...

http://www.umc.pitt.edu/tour/tour-060.html

Miss Frick was informed that the gift of the building was most welcome but that the paintings (most of which were considered not of the first quality) were not required. And so in 1969 Miss Frick more or less duplicated the building in her own back yard at "Clayton" in Point Breeze, and hung her father’s pictures there, instead. Both can be toured today. Read more about it, here...

http://www.frickart.org/home/

Former Carnegie Steel boss Henry Clay Frick died in New York on December 2, 1919, at age 69, leaving $20 million to public, educational, and charitable institutions at Pittsburgh. Not long before, his erstwhile business partner Andrew Carnegie had invited him to come a mile up Fifth Avenue for a visit in which they might make their peace, but Frick allegedly replied, "We'll meet in hell, to which we are both going."

Frick was buried in a small, private ceremony and then interred with exaggerated style at Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh, within hallooing distance of Clayton.

H.C. FRICK BURIED: Pittsburgh, Dec. 5,- The funeral of HENRY CLAY FRITH took place at the family residence, Clayton, at noon today, none but relatives and a few intimate friends of the family being present. The Rev. Dr. Edward J. Van Etten, of Calvary Protestant Episcopal Church, stood beside the plain coffin with its one wreath of flowers as he read the services and the music was by Mrs. Christine Miller Clemson*, of one of Mr. Frick's former business associates. Interment was in Homewood Cemetery.

*[Second wife of Daniel Clemson (1853-1936), a partner of Carnegie and a vice president of U.S. Steel Corp. His concert soloist second wife, some 23 years his junior, sang at Henry Clay Frick's funeral. Apparently Mr. Clemson was so enchanted by the church choir singing of Christine Miller that he anonymously paid her tuition to a leading conservatory. The pair married years later when Mr. Clemson, in true dramatic Victorian fashion, revealed that he had been Christine's secret benefactor. ]

The coffin iteslf was oversized and inordinatly heavy. It was interred in a vault that was then filled with tons of concrete. Frick wanted to be sure no one bothered him again.

One wonders if all the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club papers from the "missing" Johnstown Flood defense room at Reed, Smith, Shaw and McClay might have been encased in that tomb with him?

About to be deported, Alexander Berkman, Frick's would be assasin, was dining in Chicago with his fomer love anarchist Emma Goldman when told of the news of Frick's death. He replied that Frick had been "deported by God. I'm glad he left the country before me."

Frick's dutiful daughter Helen Clay Frick spent the many years of her long life keeping her father's image beautifully polished and hastened to sue anyone who breathed even a word of criticism about Henry Clay Frick. As a keeper of her father’s flame and a throwback to an era when all of Pittsburgh bowed in her fathers wake, Miss Frick was a formidable force of nature.

Little Pittsburgh society maidens of several generations – some of them SFF&HC descendents – were taken by their mothers and grandmothers for tea with Miss Frick – it was an agonizing and stultifying experience to hear them tell of it.

To her 15 grandnieces and nephews, Helen Clay Frick was a delightful but demanding maternal figure who dubbed herself "Grantie" for them. She served Earl Grey tea in the music room of "Clayton" her parents' Point Breeze estate, every afternoon and took them on memorable art tours of Europe's great museums. Although she was a formal Edwardian woman who shunned publicity, the diminutive heiress never shrank from a fight, especially to defend the image of her father, Henry Clay Frick, the oft-vilified tycoon whose hard-nosed tactics helped provoke the Homestead steel strike of 1892.

There are those who insist that the well-to-do family in the Phillip Barry film “Holiday” staring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant is based principally on the Frick family.

* * *

The real life Frick Family count these as members:

Dr. Henry Clay Frick II, son of Childs Frick and grandson of Henry Clay Frick, and his family:
-- Dr. Henry Clay Frick II of Alpine, N.J., previous longtime chairman of the board
-- Emily "Pemmy" Frick of Alpine, N.J., wife of Dr. Frick and trustee of The Frick Collection
-- Adelaide F. Trafton of Topsham, Maine, daughter of Dr. Frick and chairwoman of the

Helen Clay Frick Foundation Board and the board of the Frick Art & Historical Center
-- Henry Clay Frick III of Alaska, son of Dr. Frick and an environmentalist

Children of Frances Burden, daughter of Childs Frick and granddaughter of Henry Clay Frick:
-- I. Townsend Burden III of Washington, D.C., businessman and secretary of the foundation
-- Dixon Frick Burden of Telluride, Colo., businessman
-- Frances "Dixie" Burden of Rockport, Mass., who leads spiritual retreats for nuns and priests
Children of Martha Frick Symington, daughter of Childs Frick and granddaughter of Henry Clay Frick
-- Helen Clay Chace of Mt. Kisco, N.Y., also president of The Frick Collection in New York and docent at The Cloisters
-- Arabella Dane, a Boston horticulturist
-- J. Fife Symington III of Phoenix, former Arizona governor (refused request to resign from the board after he was convicted on six counts of fraud)

Son of Adelaide Blanchard, daughter of Childs Frick and granddaughter of Henry Clay Frick
-- Peter Blanchard III of New York City, environmentalist and trustee of The Frick Collection board

There is a photo of Adelaide Childs Frick in the L S Clarke series of photos of the Club that can be seen here:

http://www.pennhighlands.edu/library/digital/louisclarkesffhc%20025.jpg

ANDREW CARNEGIE

Andrew Carnegie
November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919

The rags-to-riches Scottish immigrant who fashioned what would become United States Steel and then withdrew to verdant Scotland.

The name Andrew Carnegie is well known; indeed he is one of the triumvirates of luminaries who make up the most illustrious members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club—along with Mellon and Frick. The bare outlines of his life are offered here; the reader can find many outstanding resources to flesh out the man and his contributions to American life, most notably in the comprehensive biography by David Nasaw.

If Andrew Carnegie had not lived, Horatio Alger would have had to invent him. He rose from a life of almost unspeakable tawdriness in Scotland to become a buttonholer of Presidents. Along the way he was praised, emulated, cartooned, consulted, celebrated and vilified. He ignored his father, whom he saw as a failure, and had an unusually close relationship with his mother Margaret who would remain his main confidant until her death. He concentrated on his rise to success in the rough-and-tumble industrial world of Pittsburgh to the detriment of all relationships other than familial.

As Carnegie said,

"The business career is a stern school of all the virtues. The business man pursues fortune."

Once having achieved that success, he then allowed himself to complete his late and long courtship of his eventual much-younger bride Louise Whitfield.

The wheeling and dealings that brought Carnegie to prominence in the aggressive world of Pittsburgh industrial escalation took him from errand boy to telegraph operator to indefatigable inside-trader and back-room dealer and then ruthless crusher of competitors. He was an expert at navigating the choppy waters of capitalism (and a stern critic of any of his employees who utilized similar tactics). As Carnegie said...

"The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell."

In 1851, he became a telegraph messenger boy in the Pittsburgh Office of the Ohio Telegraph Company, at $2.50 per week, which was more than most day laborers were making—Carnegie was 16. Carnegie quickly learned to distinguish the differing sound the incoming signals produced and learned to transcribe it by ear without having to write it down, Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad employed Carnegie as a secretary/telegraph operator starting in 1853, at a salary of $4.00 per week. Carnegie began a rapid advancement through the company, eventually becoming the superintendent of the Pittsburgh Division. Scott also introduced Carnegie to the concept of making money without working, that is, his first investments. In 1855 he was able to invest $500 in Adams Express. Later he invested money in sleeping cars for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and bought part of the company making the wagons, which again turned out to be most profitable.

The handsome dividends he received from his oil investments enabled him to go into the iron and steel business. In 1865 he helped form a company to replace wooden railway bridges with iron bridges. At the same time he became a partner in a small iron-forging company in Pittsburgh.

Reinvesting his money in railroad related industries (iron, bridges, rails) he was able to slowly earn his first big capital, which would be the basis for his later success, as he concentrated on iron and steel manufacturing and the industries (raw materials, power and transportation) that fed his mills. In this he set up many companies in which he was the silent but majority stockholder.

He also expected his competitors to bow to his wishes and it was Carnegie’s custom that if they were granted contracts he would be in touch with them immediately and let them know that he expected to be given half of the contract for his own factories. To quote him again...

"Whatever I engage in, I must push inordinately."

When troubles came, in the form of The Johnstown Flood and The Homestead Steel Strike, Carnegie took infinite pains to distance himself as much as possible from any hint of involvement or blame. To this day, attempts are made to state that he was not a member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club—no matter, these will not bear close scrutiny. He also reminded people again and again that he was off in Scotland during that little bit of unpleasantness at Homestead. Right. Off at Scotland but, as was his custom, connected electronically hour-by-hour and pulling the strings of his enterprises and minions via telegraph. Yet, he made every attempt to place all the blame on Frick and did his best to smile benevolently as he dedicated in Johnstown and Homewood some of his 2,500 eponymous libraries.

Carnegie was nothing if not disingenuous and self-indulgent. Usually, the public smiled back at him--glad for the crumbs from his table. They had had precious little in the way of wages or benefits, since Carnegie's oft-repeated managerial watchword was, "Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themseves."

No doubt few of the mill families in the crowds on dedication days knew of Mr. Carnegie's dictum:

"And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department."

By 1899, when he consolidated his interests in the Carnegie Steel Company, he controlled about 25 percent of American iron and steel production. In 1901 Carnegie sold his company for $250 million to a syndicate formed by financier J P Morgan.

Having achieved all the wealth he could manage and more, Carnegie abandoned Pittsburgh, the smoky city that he helped in no small part to create, for a fantasy life as a pseudo-laird in Scotland and as a plutocrat in Manhattan. Occasionally he would throw money Pittsburgh’s way and thereafter there were many other charitable acts of the elderly Carnegie, as well as his attempts to be seen as a world peacemaker. Among his benefactions, Carnegie Tech (now part of Carnegie Mellon University), the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Peace Palace in The Hague, the Pan American Union Building in Washington DC and the Carnegie Hero's Fund.

These were, perhaps, his way of doing penance for the way he had made his millions.

There was a famous exchange between representatives of Frick and Carnegie that occurred late in their lives, when Carnegie had softened and hoped to make a rapprochement between them. Both were living in Manhattan, and Carnegie sent word to Frick that he would like for them to meet. The famous response to which was Frick’s, “Tell Mr. Carnegie I will meet him in hell, to which we are both going!” The exchange speaks volumes about both men. In contrast to almost every other South Fork Fishing & Hunting Club member, Carnegie seems to have had no religious affiliation during his long life.

Carnegie was too much of an age with Frick to be seen as a father figure, and Frick was far too successful already by the time they combined business forces for Carnegie to be accepted as Frick’s mentor. They were at times allies, then rivals and adversaries, competing in the small piece of turf that both had imagined that if labeled would have been called “The World’s Most Influential Man”. Neither really deserved the appellation. Frick was too cold and unbending and as the years progressed was out of touch with ordinary human life; Carnegie was too impressed with public opinion and lived too much in his Highland fantasies. As one observer has said, in the end, they were the elephants in each other's living rooms. Their cheerless twilight years were lost in bizarre competition.

In 1887 when Andrew Carnegie was 52 years old, he married Louise Whitfield of New York (7 March 1857 - 24 June 1946), whom he had courted for more than a decade. The extraordinarily long-suffering Louise was 22 years his junior; indeed, Louise’s father and Carnegie were the same age.



They had one daughter, Margaret Morrison Carnegie (1897-); married Roswell Miller.

The daughter of Margaret and Roswell Miller:

Margaret Miller () married Gordon Thompson.

The Carnegies purchased a vast estate in northern Scotland and built the castle of Skibo. Here each summer, Carnegie entertained the people who interested him most, particularly those in the world of literature, science, and education. It is now an ultra exclusive resort -- one may not stay there more than once without buying a membership. If you have to ask what a membership costs, you cannot afford it.

The Carnegie descendants live in Scotland and visit in the US from time to time.

Carnegie once suggested for his own epitaph, “Here lies a man who was able to surround himself with men far cleverer than himself.”

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More on Louise Whitfield Carnegie...

On Tuesday, June 24, Mrs. Andrew Carnegie died at her home in New York City, in her eighty-ninth year. This brought to an end a long and exceptional life of great distinction and fine living. Although since the death of her husband in 1919 Mrs. Carnegie had seldom visited Pittsburgh, she was known to many here for her high purpose, kindliness, and nobility of character. Notwithstanding the great wealth and prominence of her husband, she played her individual part in all his philanthropies as a counselor and an enthusiastic co-planner in his hopes for the betterment of the human race. She was self-effacing in her own benefactions, which were many, but fully lived up to what she felt to be the responsibilities placed upon her by her opportunities for service. A true lady in the old fashioned sense of the word, she was most gracious and kindly to all with whom she came in contact and could well be taken as an outstanding example of American womanhood.

Mrs. Carnegie Dies at 89 in New York. Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, 89, widow of the steel maker and philanthropist, died today at her Fifth Ave. mansion in New York City, according to an Associated Press report. A retiring woman, whose philanthropies always were conducted quietly, she had been in failing health for more than a year. A daughter, Mrs. Roswell Miller of New York, was at her bedside. A granddaughter, Mrs. Gordon Thompson, flew from England May 12 to be with her.

Visited Pittsburgh.

During her last public appearance in Pittsburgh, years ago, Mrs. Carnegie looked at the institutions of learning and culture her husband had given the city, and declared: "Here is the best conception of the idea of the brotherhood of man. I have never enjoyed a visit to any part of the world as I have this visit to Pittsburgh. "The former Louise Whitfield of New York, she had married Mr. Carnegie in 1887--38 years after he came to Pittsburgh from Scotland to work as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory. He had hitched his wagon to the rising stars of iron and steel and was a wealthy but lonely man.

Gave Away Half Billion.

Soon after their marriage he became the richest man the world has ever seen and one of the happiest. Speaking of his life with his 'beloved Lou,' Carnegie said: "Why, oh why, are we compelled to leave the heaven we have found on earth and go we know not where?" With his wife's help Carnegie also became a great philanthropist. In the 18 years from 1901 to 1919 he gave away the bulk of his fortune of half a billion dollars at the rate of $25,000,000 a year.

Many Beneficiaries.

His beneficiaries included old employees, old friends, educational institutions, organizations for world peace, several nations, a United States President, three President's wives, a British prime minister and the City of Pittsburgh. The various money-giving corporations which he established still pour out from four to five million dollars a year. One night in August, 1919, after Mrs. Carnegie had said good night to her husband, he sank into his last sleep. He was buried on top of a small hill in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery near Tarrytown, N.Y.

Lived in Scotland.

During the last 27 years, Mrs. Carnegie led a quiet, retiring life in New York and Scotland. She met annually with the members of her late husband's corporations, made suggestions, and took great pride in their work. Meanwhile, she kept giving away sums of her own money. On the occasion of the Carnegie Centennial in 1935, a little gray-haired lady with a kindly voice, she reminisced: "Pittsburgh has a warm place in my heart. I have so many recollections of the lovely, affectionate friends whom I knew there." Her last public appearance with Andrew had been in Pittsburgh. He had said of her: "Peace and good will attend her footsteps wherever her blessed influence extends."

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Andrew Carnegie was 54 at the time of the Johnstown Flood.

ANDREW W. MELLON

Andrew W. Mellon
March 24, 1855 – August 27, 1937

Banker, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector and Secretary of the Treasury from March 4, 1921 through February 12, 1932 and U. S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James (1932-1933).

Andrew Mellon’s name is well known; indeed he is one of the triumvirate of luminaries (Carnegie, Frick, Mellon) who make up the most illustrious members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. The bare outlines of his life are offered here; the reader can find many outstanding resources to flesh out the man and his contributions to American life, most notably in the new biography by David Cannadine, which I recommend enthusiastically. Also well worth reading are Judge Thomas Mellon’s autobiography and Paul Mellon’s autobiography, Reflections in a Silver Spoon.

Andrew William Mellon was born on March 24, 1855, the son of Judge Thomas Mellon and his wife Sarah Jane Negley. The Negleys had been leading citizens of Western Pennsylvania, and the Mellons were becoming influential Pittsburghers at the time of Andrew’s birth; yet no one could have guessed just how influential they would be, thanks primarily to the way that Andrew built upon his father’s wise judgment and success as an investment banker. He rose to become a national leader—the best known Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton. Both celebrated and vilified in that roll (as the Great Depression set in) Mellon was also one of the nation’s great benefactors, in his gift of the National Gallery of Art and his fine paintings that formed the nucleus of its collections.

His was a stern Scots-Irish Presbyterian boyhood as he grew up on what had been the Negley farm. As a young man he formed a strong partnership with his father as they made one successful investment after another. The symbiotic relationship between father and son remained strong throughout the Judge’s life. As Andrew grew older, the guiding question about what enterprise to engage in shift from “What would Father do?” to “What would Andrew do?” One after another giant enterprises such as Alcoa, Koppers, Gulf Oil, and the like, were added to their vast holdings until their wealth could truly be called “incalculable”.

Andrew W. Mellon was a lifelong friend of Henry Clay Frick; yet inexplicably, both men addressed one another formally as “Mr. Mellon” and “Mr. Frick.”

Not as long in proposing as the sluggish Carnegie, Andrew Mellon nonetheless was well into a settled middle age by the time he and the vivacious Nora McMullen became engaged.

In Hertford, England in 1900, Andrew W. Mellon married Nora McMullen (1881-1973). He was 45; she was 19. Then, he brought her home to Pittsburgh.

From the start things were difficult. Nora is described as being appalled by Pittsburgh in general and repulsed by the hulking house that Mellon had bought and furnished for them as a newly married couple. Pittsburgh, which can be so friendly, does not count among its charms a mild climate nor at that time did it offer much in the way of natural beauty for those who were unwilling to go a bit afield in order to find it. Even today many buildings of the city have not yet been stripped of the soot and grime that turned pale limestone into what looks like buildings carved out of anthracite. It must have been depressing for Nora and inexplicable to Andrew, who had grown up in the city and found it congenial.

She was an enchanting young Englishwoman who was no doubt doted upon and spoiled by her family. Andrew was charmed by her loveliness and perhaps blinded by it as well—missing the realities of her personally that would be revealed later. Nora’s affair and their ensuing divorce draped a pall over the remainder of their lives, and the lives of their children.

Among the unsolved mysteries of Mellon’s life is the question of the identity of a certain "M___". Mellon’s day book for the post-divorce years between 1912 and 1917 listed over sixty appointments with this “M____”, and his biographer has not been able to determine who that was.

Andrew W. Mellon and Nora McMullen Mellon had two children:

Ailsa Mellon (June 28, 1901-August 25, 1969); born in Pittsburgh she served as her father’s official hostess during his Secretary of State years. She married David K. Bruce in 1926 (divorced in 1945). One daughter:

Audrey Bruce ( - 1967) married Stephen Currier. Both died in the same plane crash. Their children are:
- Andrea Currier
- Lavinia Currier
- Michael Currier

Paul Mellon (June 11, 1907 – February 1, 1999) married twice:

(1) Mary Conover Brown
Their children:

- Catherine Conover Mellon (now Conover) married John Warner (US Senator from Virginia; they had three children—Virginia, John and Mary; Warner’s second wife was Elizabeth Taylor the actress and his thrid wife is Jeanne Vander Myde)

- Timothy Mellon

(2) Rachel Lambert Lloyd (“Bunny”) of the Lamberts of Warner-Lambert

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Andrew W. Mellon was 34 at the time of the Johnstown Flood.