William Larimer Mellon Sr. was an American oil entrepreneur and executive.
Background
William Larimer Mellon Sr. was born on 1 June 1868 in East Liberty, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the eldest of the three children of James Ross Mellon, a supplier of building materials, and Rachel Hughey (Larimer) Mellon. Both parents came of prominent Pittsburgh families. William's paternal grandfather, Judge Thomas Mellon, of Scots-Irish descent, founded in 1870 the Pittsburgh banking house that initiated the family fortune. Andrew W. Mellon, industrialist and secretary of the treasury (1921 - 1932), was William's uncle.
Education
The boy was educated in public and private schools in Pittsburgh and at the Pennsylvania Military Academy in Chester.
Career
Mellon started his business career as a shipping clerk in the family's lumber business. At the age of nineteen, he took advantage of this connection to build houses on speculation. In 1889 Mellon became interested in the oil industry, which was then centered in western Pennsylvania. After briefly negotiating oil leases for his uncles Richard and Andrew, who now ran the family bank, he obtained their support to go into the business for himself at Hookstown, Pennsylvania. Within two years he was producing, buying, and selling petroleum and owned a large number of tank cars. Most of this petroleum was sold to Standard Oil, which dominated the refining business. Wishing to escape rising rail rates and dependence on Standard, Mellon decided to build his own pipeline to the seaboard, to refine his own oil, and to sell it to foreign customers. In 1892, financed by his uncles, he built a pipeline from Gregg Station near Pittsburgh to a refinery and shipping site he had acquired at Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River. By the end of 1893, he had created a small integrated oil business, catering to French and English customers. Standard Oil was anxious to eliminate this competition, and, with a surplus of oil overhanging the market, the Mellons sold their oil business to the Rockefeller firm in 1895. William Mellon then became an "outside man" for his family's bank, investigating new investment opportunities. In the late 1890's, Mellon began building, acquiring, and developing street railway systems in the Pittsburgh area. He left this occupation in 1902 to work for his uncles, who were concerned about their oil investments in Texas. The Spindletop field on the Texas Gulf Coast had given a new impetus to the oil industry the previous year, and the Mellons had invested in the J. M. Guffey Petroleum Company, headed by a well-known Pennsylvania oil wildcatter, Col. James M. Guffey. But Guffey was far more adept at finding oil than he was at managing oil companies. Mellon soon found that extensive changes were required to protect the investors' stake in the Guffey company and its associated refining operation, Gulf Refining Company of Texas.
Appointed executive vice-president of these firms, he demonstrated a keen ability to select talented executives and weld them into an efficient management team. The decline of the Texas Gulf oil field in 1905-1906 threatened the Guffey companies with bankruptcy for lack of crude oil. To reach the new, flush pools in Oklahoma Territory required millions of dollars in additional financing. On Mellon's recommendation, the family bank made the investment. Buying out the Guffey interests, the Mellons created the Gulf Oil Corporation in 1907 and quickly built a pipeline from the Glenn Pool near Tulsa, Oklahoma, to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1909 Mellon became president of Gulf Oil, a post he held until 1930. The new corporation was a success from the start, earning $1 million net profit in its first year. Under Mellon, it pioneered in several directions. In 1910-1911 Gulf Oil undertook the first successful overwater drilling operation in Ferry Lake on the Louisiana-Texas border; and in 1913 it opened the nation's first drive-in service station in Pittsburgh. Growing rapidly, the company by the early 1930's was operating 2, 300 service stations; it built refining facilities throughout the United States and expanded into international oil exploration. By the mid-1920's Gulf's refinery at Port Arthur, Texas, was the largest in the world. Mellon became chairman of the board in 1930, remaining until his retirement in 1948. Mellon died of cerebral arteriosclerosis at his home in Pittsburgh and was buried in that city's Homewood Cemetery.
Achievements
Mellon is known as the president of the Gulf Oil company, that became the nation's fourth-largest oil-producing company and worldwide ranked among the top five integrated oil companies. In 1939 he established the William L. and May T. Mellon Foundation. Among its grants was one of $6 million to the Carnegie Institute of Technology to establish a graduate school of industrial administration.
Politics
Throughout his life Mellon was active in the Pennsylvania Republican party, serving at one time as state chairman.
Personality
From 1928 to 1941 Mellon lived a substantial part of each year on his yacht Vagabondia, in which he cruised to remote parts of the world.
Connections
On Marсh 11, 1896, Mellon married May Hill Taylor, the daughter of a New York entrepreneur. They had four children: William Larimer, Matthew Taylor, Margaret, and Rachel.
Father:
James Ross Mellon
14 January 1846 - 20 October 1934
Mother:
Rachel Hughey Larimer Mellon
3 January 1844 - 7 May 1919
Wife:
May Hill Taylor
Daughter:
Margaret Mellon
Son:
William Larimer Mellon
1910–1989
Was an American philanthropist and physician.
Son:
Matthew Taylor Mellon
Son:
Rachel Mellon
January 8, 1899 – March 2, 2006
Was an American philanthropist.
