Jacob Reese was born on July 14, 1825 in Llanelly, Southern Wales. He was a son of William and Elizabeth (Joseph) Reese, and a brother of Isaac and Abram Reese. He emigrated to America with his parents when he was seven years old. Both his father and brother Isaac were iron workers, and as early as 1836 Jacob helped in making the first iron "bloom" under the boiling process at the iron works in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania.
In 1836 the family moved to Pittsburgh where Jacob, then twelve years old, began working in the iron mills with his father and brother. Here he continued for the next thirteen years, except for one year spent in Wilkes-Barre, not only becoming a skilled iron worker but also gaining, through study at night, a thorough knowledge of the chemistry and metallurgy of iron and steel.
In 1850 he happened to see an advertisement offering $1, 000 for the best plan of a nail factory. He submitted complete working drawings of a design of his own and won the prize as well as the job of building the plant in Sharon, Pennsylvania. From that time on, for the next sixteen years, Reese's services were much in demand by the iron and steel industry.
During this period he began the inventive work which he continued throughout his life.
In 1852 he built a rail mill for English, Bennett Company in Pittsburgh, the first of its kind in this region; in 1854-55 he was engineer of construction and management for the Cambria Iron Company, Johnstown, Pennsylvania; and from 1856 to 1859 he was engaged in Pittsburgh in the sale of rolling-mill supplies.
From 1860 to 1862 he was in the petroleum business in Pittsburgh, where he built the Petrolite Oil Works, containing both tanks and stills of his own invention. In 1862, in order to make hoop iron for the oil barrels, he designed and built the Fort Pitt Iron Works. He enlarged these mills in 1864 and in 1865 built the Southside Rolling Mill and Tube Works.
The following year at a cost of $50, 000, he built a metallurgical plant of his own in Pittsburgh, and there for twenty-five years engaged in extensive experimentation which yielded him over 175 United States patents and some five hundred inventions and discoveries. Many of these were for iron-mill machinery - rolls, presses, and hammers for the manufacture of iron and steel products.
He perfected the basic openhearth steel process about 1877 but because of interference proceedings in the Patent Office, his claim as prior inventor was not favorably decided until 1881. Meanwhile he had sold some of the involved patents to Andrew Carnegie.
The latter transferred the agreement to the Bessemer Steel Company which, in turn, transferred it to the Steel Patents Company, and for seventeen years Reese was engaged in expensive litigation to obtain payment. The last patent involved in the agreement was granted him just a year before his death. Reese resided in Pittsburgh until 1892, when he moved to Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, which was his home for the remainder of his life.
He was interested in many large manufacturing enterprises and was identified with most of the leading philanthropic, civic, and industrial movements in Pennsylvania.
He was married twice: first, to Eliza Matthews of Pittsburgh; and, second, about 1901, to Jessie McElroy of Philadelphia, who with six children by his first wife survived him.
