Andrew Carnegie

Early life

Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland into a weaver's family. In 1848 his father, who had been a Chartist, immigrated to America, settling in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Young Carnegie started work at an early age as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, and a few years later was engaged as a telegraph clerk and operator with the Atlantic and Ohio Company. He was noted as one of the first operators to read telegraphic signals by sound. His ability as a worker was noted by Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad, who employed him as a secretary. In 1859, when Scott became vice-president of the company, he made Carnegie superintendent of the western division of the line. In this post Carnegie was responsible for several improvements in the service. When the American Civil War opened in 1861, he accompanied Scott, then Assistant United States Secretary of War, to the front.

Related Topics:
Dunfermline - Scotland - Weaver - 1848 - Chartist - America - Allegheny, Pennsylvania - Bobbin boy - Cotton - Telegraph - Atlantic and Ohio Company - Thomas A. Scott - Pennsylvania Railroad - 1859 - American Civil War - 1861 - Assistant United States Secretary of War

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While in this position he met also George Pullman, inventor of the sleeping car. Carnegie immediately recognized the great merit of the invention and readily joined in the effort for its adoption. The first sources of the enormous wealth he subsequently attained were his introduction of sleeping cars for railways, and his purchase in 1864 of Storey Farm on Oil Creek, in Venango County, Pennsylvania, which cost $40,000, and yielded in one year over $1,000,000 in cash dividends, and where the oil wells secured a large profit. Carnegie was subsequently associated with others in establishing a steel rolling mill.

Related Topics:
George Pullman - Sleeping car - 1864 - Oil Creek, in Venango County, Pennsylvania - Oil well - Steel - Rolling mill

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