Samuel Thomas Wellman (1847 - 1919)

Born 5 Feb 1847 in Wareham, Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Julia Almina (Ballard) Wellman — married 3 Sep 1868 in Stoneham, Massachusetts

Descendants

Died 11 Jul 1919 at age 72 in Cleveland, Ohio

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Biography

Samuel was born in Massachusetts, but moved with his family to Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1851. He attended Norwich University, Vermont, for a year before enlisting in 1864 as a corporal in the 1st New Hampshire Artillery. After the civil war he married Julia Almina Ballard at Stoneham, Massachusetts, on 3 September 1868. They had children Mina Besse born in 1870, Addie Lena born in 1872, William born in 1875, Holley born in 1881, and Frederick born in 1887.

Samuel began his career working at the Nashua Iron Company. He was encouraged by his father to build a regenerative gas furnace for the company. Wellman did this, impressing Carl Wilhelm Siemens, who immediately hired him to establish the first crucible-steel furnace in America. Samuel went on to improve upon the open-hearth process of steel rail production, which in turn had improved upon the Bessemer process. In 1869, Samuel built the first commercially successful open-hearth furnace in America at the Bay State Iron Works in South Boston.

Another contribution to the steel industry was development of the Hulett unloader, which allowed the unloading of taconite from the iron ore boats of the Great Lakes, particularly on Lake Erie. He also invented an open hearth charging machine and a hydraulic crane. Following an unsuccessful venture with his half-brother, Samuel later founded the Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Engineering Company in Cleveland, Ohio, and was president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers from 1901 to 1902.

Sources

• Wellman, Joshua Wyman "Descendants of Thomas Wellman of Lynn, Massachusetts" Boston: Arthur Holbrook Wellman (1918) pp.455-457

Sicilia, D. B. (1989). Samuel Thomas Wellman. In P. F. Paskoff, (Ed.), Encyclopedia of American business history and biography: Iron and steel in the nineteenth century, (pp. 359–363). New York

Misa, T. J., (1995). A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America, 1865-1925. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1920). Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. New York: The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. pp. 1151–1154

Butler Jr., Joseph G. (1918). Fifty Years of Iron and Steel. Cleveland, OH: The Penton Press. pp. 70–72