Henry Clay Frick Historical Marker

Henry Clay Frick Historical Marker is located in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania in Westmoreland County. Its inscription points direction towards the birthplace of Frick, “steel and coke magnate” and founder of H.C. Frick Coke Company. The Henry Clay Frick historical marker was dedicated to him in 1946 by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Although not much information being presented by the marker, many individuals are introduced to the area that had much significance in Henry Clay Frick’s life, influencing and shaping his future and career in the coke industry. This historical marker is accessible to the public from the drive past on State Route PA-819, extension of Porter Ave, less than a mile from West Overton Village.

American industrialist, Henry Clay Frick was born on December 19, 1849 in the springhouse of West Overton, Pennsylvania in Westmoreland County, the home of his maternal grandparents Abraham and Maria Stauffer Overholt, where their family would establish a fortune within their whiskey distillery business throughout the nineteenth century. Frick would spend the first thirty years of his life here, learning valuable lessons in work ethics and business practices working as a clerk for his uncle’s general store and later bookkeeping at one of his grandfather’s distilleries that would greatly prepare and influence his business career and future.^[1]

Young Frick entered the world of coal and coke with two of his cousins and a friend, investing in local bituminous coal and using beehive ovens. At the time, bituminous coal had little value to industrial use except for the manufacturing of coke, but Frick stayed optimistic and determined, understanding the new developments of technologies in the industry and continued business. Obtaining a loan of $10,000 granted by Judge Thomas Mellon in 1870 marked the beginning of his career, allowing him to build additional ovens for the mills they were building. What would later be renamed the H.C. Frick Coke Company was officially founded in 1871 and by ‘72 he would control two hundred ovens in the Broadford area along the Youghiogheny.^[2] Frick was able to expand his coke enterprise during much of the financial panic of 1873 by buying out competing manufacturers who were wary about continuing business because the price of coke per ton had dropped to ninety cents. The prices would soon recover, and Frick found himself with a fortune.^[3] The empire Frick built would grow to comprise nearly sixty-six percent of the coke industry in the Westmoreland County area alone, establishing himself to be known as “the Coke King.” By 1900, he would control nearly half of the industry in Southwestern Pennsylvania. The areas in the county like Scottdale, Everson, and Connellsville were rich in mines and were greatly relied on by furnace operators when coal deposits in Pittsburgh depleted. The Scottdale area of Westmoreland County, location of his childhood home, would prosper from the coke industry, becoming the wealthiest community in the region.^[4]

Well into his career, Frick married Adelaide Howard Childs of Pittsburgh in December 1881 and would have four children, two of which would pass away during infancy and childhood. He would move to Pittsburgh’s East End, living on an estate named Clayton where he would remain for the majority of his life until moving to New York City to live during his last few years of life. The following year, in 1882, Frick would join in a partnership with Andrew Carnegie, leading industrialist in the steel industry. This partnership guaranteed Carnegie Steel Company its steel mills with an adequate supply of coke at lower cost and ensured that H.C. Frick & Company that its coke would fuel Pittsburgh mills, giving opportunity for expansion. Frick would come to play a major role in the industry, acquiring Duquesne Steel and building the Union railroad to connect the separated steel operations within the company in Pittsburgh. Impressed by his managerial skills, Carnegie appointed Frick to chairman in 1889 and an increased interest of eleven percent within the Carnegie Brothers’ Steel Company. The partnership would not last, turning bitter from their differences and their breaking point would be their opposing responses towards the Homestead Strike, ending their complicated eighteen-year partnership in 1900.^[5]

On December 2, 1919, just weeks before turning seventy, Henry Clay Frick passed away from a heart attack. The legacy he would leave behind would be one that is controversial and misjudged, viewed negatively and being often remembered by his mistakes such as the Morewood Massacre, Johnstown Flood and the Homestead Strike, but undeniably his legacy is one that had greatly impacted and helped the development of both the coke and steel industries, expanding and leaving them prosperous. His contributions would define the Industrial Revolution like many of the “men who built America” included with Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller to name a few. As recognition to his impact on the coke industry, a historical marker had been placed on the highway that leads to where his story began and dedicated to him to keep his legacy alive.

Footnotes:

1. Sanger, Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait, pg. 26-36

2. Warren, "The Business Career of Henry Clay Frick." Western Pennsylvania History: 1918-2018 (1990): 3-15.

3. Standiford, Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That

Transformed America, pg. 54-56

4. Eckman, Around Scottdale and Everson, pg. 7-8, 26, 31

5. Standiford, Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter

Partnership That Transformed America.

Sources:

Eckman, Paul E., et al. Around Scottdale and Everson. Arcadia Publishing, 2012, pg. 7-8, 26, 31

Sanger, Martha Frick Symington. Henry Clay Frick: An Intimate Portrait. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1998.

Skrabec, Quentin R., Jr., Henry Clay Frick: The Life of the Perfect Capitalist. McFarland, 2010.

Standiford, Les. Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership That Transformed America. Three Rivers Press, 2006, pg. 54-56

Vivian, Cassandra. Henry Clay Frick and the Golden Age of Coal and Coke, 1870-1920. McFarland, 2020, pg. 19-40

Wardley, C. S. "The Early Development of the HC Frick Coke Company." Western Pennsylvania History: 1918-2018 (1949): 79-86.

Warren, Kenneth. "The Business Career of Henry Clay Frick." Western Pennsylvania History: 1918-2018 (1990): 3-15.