Henry Chisholm (April 22, 1822 – May 9, 1881) was a Scottish American businessman and steel industry executive during the Gilded Age in the United States. A resident of Cleveland, Ohio, he purchased a small, struggling iron foundry which became the Cleveland Rolling Mill, one of the largest steel firms in the nation. He is known as the "father of the Cleveland steel trade".
Early life
Henry Chisholm was born in Lochgelly, Fife, Scotland, on April 22, 1822. His father, Stewart Chisholm, was a mining engineer. The Chisholms were a respectable, lower-middle-class family, and Henry was educated in the local public schools. His father died when he was ten years old, and he left school at the age of 12 to take a position as an apprentice carpenter. He was elevated to journeyman carpenter at the age of 17, and moved to Glasgow.
When he was 20 years old, Chisholm emigrated to Montréal, Québec, Canada. He arrived in the city practically penniless. He worked in Montréal as a carpenter and construction contractor until 1849, constructing various buildings and other works up and down the St. Lawrence River. He established his own construction business, which in time became one of the largest in the city.
Cleveland and the steel industry
In 1850, Chisholm won a contract to build a breakwater for docks of the Cleveland and Pittsburgh Railroad, which was in the process of completing its line into Cleveland and through the city to its rail yard on the shores of Lake Erie. The breakwater was completed in 1853, and Chisholm won several more contracts to build docks and piers in the city. By 1857, he had amassed a fortune worth $25,000 ($ in dollars).
Cleveland Rolling Mill
What would, in time, become the Cleveland Rolling Mill was established by brothers and Welsh immigrants David and John Jones in 1856 to manufacture flat bottomed railway rails. The brothers ran out of money that same year, and shut down. Henry Chisholm and his brother, William, made a major investment in the Jones plant in 1857, and the company was renamed Chisholm, Jones and Co. The plant was expanded and began rerolling iron flanged railway rails into flat bottomed rails. In 1860, Amasa Stone and his brother, Andros, made a further investment in the company, which took the name Stone, Chisholm & Jones. The new capital enabled to firm to add a blast furnace and puddling plant, which opened in 1859. A second blast furnace was added in 1860. It was the first blast furnace to operate in the Cleveland region.
On November 9, 1862, Stone, Chisholm & Jones reorganized and became the Cleveland Rolling Mill after receiving investments from Henry B. Payne, Jeptha Wade, and Stillman Witt. The company built a high, wide blast furnace in 1864 near the west end of what is now Saxe Avenue, and the following year erected its first Bessemer converter. This made the Cleveland Rolling Mill only the second Bessemer steel works in the United States.
Cleveland Rolling Mill expanded its presence in 1868 with the construction of the Newburgh Steel Works next to its existing plant. The new works included an open hearth Bessemer furnace; it was the first continuous open hearth Bessemer furnace west of the Allegheny Mountains and only the fifth such furnace in the nation. By the end of 1872, the combined Cleveland plants had two puddling mills; two blast furnaces; two Bessemer converters; a boiler plate mill; two rail and rod mills; a wire mill; and a bolt, nut, and spike manufacturing shop. The Newburgh plants were producing so much pig iron, cast iron, and steel that Cleveland Rolling Mill became one of the principal metalworks in the state.
Cleveland Rolling Mill continued to expand in the last two decades of the century. In April 1880, the firm issued new stock to double its capitalization, purchased the "Canal Tract" from John D. Rockefeller, built the Central Furnaces on the site from 1881 to 1882 In 1882, the firm erected a Garrett rod mill, the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
Other steel interests
In 1864, Chisholm purchased the Lake Shore Rolling Mill, an iron and steel works which had been constructed on the shore of Lake Erie at Wason Street (now E. 38th Street).
In 1871, Chisholm, Charles Crumb Jr., and five other investors, co-founded the King Iron Bridge Company. That same year, Chisholm founded the Union Rolling Mill of Chicago, and put his son, William, in charge of the plant. He also erected a rolling mill at Decatur, Illinois, which included two blast furnaces to furnish the Chicago plant with pig iron. Chisholm sold his interest in the Chicago firm in 1879.