Henry Clay Frick

Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist, financier, union-buster, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company, and played a major role in the formation of the giant U.S. Steel steel manufacturing concern. He also financed the construction of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Company, and owned extensive real estate holdings in Pittsburgh and throughout the state of Pennsylvania. He later built the historic neoclassical Frick Mansion (now a landmark building in Manhattan) and at his death donated his extensive collection of old master paintings and fine furniture to create the celebrated Frick Collection and art museum.

Early life

Frick was born in West Overton, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, in the United States, a grandson of Abraham Overholt, the owner of the prosperous Overholt Whiskey distillery (see Old Overholt). Frick's father, John W. Frick, was unsuccessful in business pursuits. Henry Clay Frick attended Otterbein College for one year, but did not graduate. In 1871, at 21 years old, Frick joined two cousins and a friend in a small partnership, using a beehive oven to turn coal into coke for use in steel manufacturing, and vowed to be a millionaire by the age of thirty. The company was called Frick Coke Company.

Henry Frick (politician)

Henry Frick (March 17, 1795 – March 1, 1844) was a Whig member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.

Biography

Henry Frick was born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. He attended the public schools and apprenticed to a printer in Philadelphia. He served in the War of 1812. He settled in Milton, Pennsylvania, in 1816, and established the Miltonian, a political journal, with which he was connected for over twenty years. He was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 1828 to 1831.

Frick was elected as a Whig to the Twenty-eighth Congress and served until his death in Washington, D.C., in 1844. Interment in the Congressional Cemetery.

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