Martin Maloney

Background

Martin Maloney was born on December 11, 1847, in Ballingarry near Thurles in Ireland. In 1854, his parents, John and Catharine (Pollard) Maloney, famine-refugees to Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1848, were able to send for him.

Education

Maloney had little schooling but developed dependable and thrifty ways as a worker in the mines, as a clerk in a grocer's store, and as an apprentice to a metal worker.

Career

Although only twenty-six years of age when he removed to Philadelphia, Maloney was well on the road to success. He obtained contracts for lighting the grounds of the Centennial Exposition and for the street-lighting of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Camden, and Jersey City. In 1880, he organized the Pennsylvania Globe Gas Light Company. He became an authority on the processes of gas production and thus became interested in chemistry as a business rather than as a science.

In 1882, he was an organizer of the United Gas and Improvement Company of Philadelphia which acquired local gas companies in various states. Later he promoted the Pennsylvania Heat, Light and Power Company which absorbed a number of electric companies and in 1899 was reorganized as the Philadelphia Electric Company.

The success of this organization made Maloney a factor in promoting the Electric Company of America, one of the earliest holding companies. His interests in time included the Standard Oil Company, the Maloney Oil Company of Scranton, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Pennsylvania Iron Works Company, and even real-estate and hotel ventures.

On intimate terms with great prelates, he was created a papal marquis by Leo XIII (1903) and a papal chamberlain by Pius X (1904). Outside the church his gifts included a park for Scranton and the Martin Maloney Memorial Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania. His "White House" by the sea at Spring Lake was modeled on Leinster House in Dublin. Here he retired amid surroundings which conformed to his sense of beauty in the rich, ornate, and massive form.

His remains were interred in the crypt of the memorial church at Spring Lake.

Achievements

• As a youth, Maloney established a grocery store which failed, and later a plumbing business. In the latter connection, he obtained some patents from which he improved a gasoline burner which came to be used widely in street-lighting. He retained his rights and manufactured and marketed this lamp and other lighting devices through the Maloney Manufacturing and Lighting Company.

Religion

A fervent Catholic, Maloney was a supporter of the Catholic Church Extension Society, building chapels in Rock Hill and Florence, South Carolina, and Rome, Georgia, and was a quiet donor to charities and hospitals.

Personality

Maloney lacked a flair for politics, but as a self-made man, he felt his importance and liked adulation. Despite a contentious and suspicious nature, he was kindly, generous in a large way, and amusingly penurious in small matters.

He built St. Martin's Chapel for the Seminary of St. Charles Borromeo, Overbrook, Pennsylvania, the beautiful Italian Renaissance St. Catherine's Church at his summer home in Spring Lake, New Jersey, as a memorial to a daughter who died at sea, the Martin Maloney Home for the Aged in Scranton, and the elaborate Maloney Chemical Laboratory at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

In Rome, he paid for repairing the ancient Church of St. John Lateran, and in France he became identified as the wealthy American who took title to a number of convents and religious institutions which were thus preserved from confiscation as a result of the legislation of 1901.

Connections

In 1868, Maloney married Margaret A. Hewittson of Carbondale who maintained a harmonious home for him and their three daughters.

Father:

John Maloney

Mother:

Catharine (Pollard) Maloney

Wife:

Margaret A. Hewittson