Background
James Hay Reed was born on September 10, 1853 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), the son of Dr. Joseph A. and Eliza (Hay) Reed.
James Hay Reed was born on September 10, 1853 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), the son of Dr. Joseph A. and Eliza (Hay) Reed.
After attending the public schools, he entered Western University of Pennsylvania (now the University of Pittsburgh) and graduated in 1872. Thereupon he began the study of law in the office of his uncle, David Reed, the United States district attorney at Pittsburgh.
He was admitted to the bar in 1875 and practised with his uncle until the latter's death two years later. He next opened offices for the practice of corporation law with Philander C. Knox under the firm name of Knox & Reed.
This firm, which proved phenomenally successful and numbered among its clients the largest manufacturing and commercial concerns of the district, lasted until 1901 with both partners acting in high political capacities - Reed serving as President Benjamin Harrison's appointee to the federal district judgeship for Western Pennsylvania (1891 - 92) and Knox, as attorney-general in the cabinets of Presidents McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.
After 1901 Reed became the senior partner in the firm of Reed, Smith, Shaw & Beal, later Reed, Smith, Shaw & McClay. As counselor of Andrew Carnegie, he helped in the organization of the United States Steel Corporation and became a member of the first board of directors, continuing in this capacity for twenty years. He also organized the Union Railroad Company (Pittsburgh) in 1896, and the Pittsburgh, Bessemer & Lake Erie Railroad Company in 1897, acting as president and director of both until the time of his death. Besides representing the Vanderbilt interests in the Pittsburgh district, he served as the vice-president of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad Company from 1891 to 1896.
He was interested in the public utilities of Pittsburgh, which later were grouped in the Philadelphia Company, of which he was the president from 1898 to 1919, and first vice-president during the remainder of his life. He was also president of the Reliance Life Insurance Company of Pittsburgh from the date of its formation in 1903 until 1927, and a director in several banks and trust companies. Many honors symbolic of his diversified human interests as well as his great capacities came to Reed during his long life.
He served as the federal government's delegate to the Universal Congress of Lawyers and Jurists which was held in St. Louis in 1904; was a member of the important Pennsylvania Commission on Constitutional Revision and Amendment, 1919 and 1920; and a member of the Pennsylvania Tax Commission, 1923-27. He established the Pittsburgh Skin and Cancer Foundation, was a director of the Western Pennsylvania Hospital, treasurer and member of the board of trustees of the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, and vice-president and director of the United States Steel and Carnegie Pension Fund. He died in Pittsburgh.
He was married, June 6, 1878, to Kate J. Aiken, by whom he had three children.