Lackawanna Steel Company
and
Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company

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John J. Albright

William A. Rogers

Stephen M. Clement

Frank H. Goodyear

Charles W. Goodyear

Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Co.



The following excerpt is printed verbatim from "A History of the City of Buffalo," published by the The Buffalo Evening News, 1908:

The Lackawanna Steel Company and the Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company

The Lackawanna Steel Company

The founding of The Lackawanna Steel Company's plant at Buffalo preceded that of the Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company by three years, and came about as follows:

On March 23rd, 1899, Mr. Walter Scranton and Mr. Henry Wehrum came to Buffalo with a letter of introduction from Mr. Cadwalader, the attorney for the Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company, of Scranton, Pennsylvania, addressed to Mr. John G. Milburn.

Hearing the nature of their business, Mr. Milburn telephoned to John J. Albright, requesting him to come to his office to meet them. At that time they stated their thought of moving the Lackawanna plant from Scranton, to Buffalo, and a general discussion of the plan there took place.

As Mr. Albright and Mr. William A. Rogers had recently been discussing the subject of organizing a steel plant to be built in Buffalo, the former asked that the latter be brought into negotiations.

Mr. Rogers, happening to be in Cleveland on that day, was reached by telephone and requested to come back that night, so as to meet the party on the following morning. Meanwhile the question of a proper location was considered and the supposition reached that the best spot would be at some point down the Niagara River. This being submitted to Mr. Rogers, he pointed out to them that it would be many years before the improvement of that waterway would make it possible to float the large ore carriers to docks so situated, and, going to map, pointed to the only available spot near Buffalo for a plant of that character and magnitude.

The same afternoon the party took carriages and drove to South Buffalo, where they walked over several miles of territory and selected the site. The purchasing of the property was put into the hands of Mr. Albright, and on April fist the first payment of one thousand dollars was made to obtain an option on one of the pieces of property desired. During the month of April $1,095,430.98 was paid for real estate, so that the whole transaction was practically closed in about a month from the time Mr. Scranton and Mr. Wehrum first came. At he time these negotiations were started General Edmund Hayes was at Jekyl Island, but returned about the first of April and gave valuable assistance in putting the project through.

Mr. Milburn attended to the legal part of these negotiations, and as he was the president of the Pan-American Exposition, which was then being projected, the opinion generally prevailed that a site for the exposition was under consideration. This fact facilitated the getting of options at rtes satisfactory to the steel company During the month of April over two million dollars of the stock of the steel company was subscribed when the capital was increased later.


The Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company

Three years later the Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company came into existence as the fruit of a private car trip to Chicago, taken by some of these men of Buffalo.

Rogers, Brown & Company's iron manufacturing interests include a plant of two blast furnaces located at South Chicago, Illinois, -- a corporation known as The Iroquois Iron Company, in which Messrs. J. J. Albright, Edmund Hayes, and Stephen M. Clement, citizens of Buffalo, had been interested for several years, though they had never seen the property.

Mr. William A. Rogers, vice-president of the Chicago company, accordingly invited these stockholders to accompany him on one of his periodical visits. Mr. Frank H. Goodyear, hearing of the proposed trip, tendered the use of his private car for the occasion, which being accepted, an invitation was extended to Messrs. F[rank]. H. Goodyear and Charles W. Goodyear to join the party. Mr. F. H. Goodyear accepted, and was so impressed with the capacity of such a plant to produce tonnage for a railroad that he wished one established on the line of the Buffalo & Susquehanna Railroad.

The result of negotiations opened by Mr. Goodyear was that Mr. Rogers and the Goodyear brothers joined forces to create the institution, which, out of compliment to his associates, Mr. Rogers called the Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company.


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