Credit: Cushing, Thomas, History of Allegheny County, 1889.
Born in Catasauqua, Pa., William Jones was just ten when he began his apprenticeship at the Crane Iron Company. After fighting during the Civil War with the 133rd Pennsylvania volunteers. Jones helped develop the first nation's first successful Bessemer steel mill at the Cambria Iron Works, then moved to Andrew Carnegie's Edgar Thomson Works, where he patented more than 50 inventions. As Carnegie's General Superintendent, Jones recruited many talented men, including the then twenty-four- year-old Charles Schwab, who soon became Jones' and later Carnegie's right hand man. Injured in an industrial accident at the Edgar Thompson Works, Jones died in 1889.
