Samuel Thomas Wellman was born in Wareham, Massachussets, the son of Samuel Knowlton and Mary Love (Bessee) Wellman, and a descendant of Thomas Wellman who was in Lynn, Massachussets, as early as 1640. At the time of Samuel's birth his father was superintendent of the Nashua Iron Company, Nashua, N. H.
In Nashua the boy received his public-school education. Entering Norwich University, Norwich, Vt. , he studied engineering for a year and then enlisted in the Union army and served in 1864-65 as a corporal in Company F, 16t New Hampshire Heavy Artillery.
On his discharge he returned home and entered the drafting room of the Nashua Iron Company, where his father was still superintendent. Here he worked for two years. In 1867 his father gave him the task of building, from drawings furnished, a Siemens regenerative gas furnace for the company. Wellman had just completed it when the engineer sent from England by the Siemens Company arrived in Nashua to build the same furnace. The perfection with which the job had been done by young Wellman so amazed the engineer that he forthwith offered Wellman the opportunity of assisting him in erecting other Siemens furnaces. Wellman accepted and during the succeeding six years was engaged in this work in various parts of the country. In Pittsburgh in 1867, at the works of Anderson, Cook & Company, he assisted in starting and operating the first crucibl esteel furnace in America. After building two more furnaces for another organization there he spent sometime in the offices and steel works of the Siemens agents in Boston, Massachussets Then, as a free lance, he constructed for the Bay State Iron Works, South Boston, the first commercially successful open hearth furnace in the United States. Upon the completion of this work he returned to Nashua and built for his father's company an open hearth furnace and rolling mills. In 1873 he went to Cleveland, Ohio, where he designed and built the Otis Steel Works and remained for sixteen years as chief engineer and superintendent. During this period he began his inventive work in machinery and other equipment for the manufacture of iron and steel, for which he was granted nearly a hundred patents in the course of his life. Two of his inventions brought him worldwide renown. The first, invented in the eighties, was the electric open-hearth charging machine, a device for feeding white-hot steel into open-hearth furnaces; the second, patented December 10, 1895, was an electro-magnet for handling pig iron and scrap steel. In time every open-hearth steel plant of any size throughout the world was equipped with these two devices. In 1890 Wellman with his brother Charles organized the Wellman Steel Company in Cleveland. Six years later they and John W. Seaver formed the Wellman-Seaver Engineering Company, with Wellman as president, and engaged in consulting work, specializing in iron and steel manufacture. Later, this company consolidated with the Webster, Camp & Lane Company of Akron, Ohio, and became the Wellman-Seaver-Morgan Company, of which Wellman was for a time president, and later chairman of the board until his retirement in 1900. He was active in a number of technical and engineering societies both in this country and England, and served as president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1901.
Quotes from others about the person
Charles M. Schwab of Bethlehem Steel described Samuel T. Wellman as "the man who did more than any other living person in the development of steel".
He was married on September 3, 1868, to Julia Almina Ballard of Stoneham, Massachussets, and at the time of his sudden death at Stratton, Me. , he was survived by five children.
