Thomas Alexander Mellon (February 3, 1813 – February 3, 1908) was a
Scotch-Irish American,
entrepreneur,
lawyer, and
judge, best known as the founder of
Mellon Bank and patriarch of the
Mellon family of
Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.
Early life
Mellon was born to farmers Andrew Mellon and Rebecca Wauchob on February 3, 1813, at Camp Hill Cottage, Lower Castletown, parish of
Cappagh,
County Tyrone,
Northern Ireland. The original family house now forms the centrepiece of the
Ulster American Folk Park Museum. His family had come into Ireland from Scotland around the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1816, his great-grandfather, Archibald Mellon, emigrated to the United States, settling in
Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. Andrew and his family followed two years later.
Mellon wrote in his autobiography that at the age of ten, he had been struck by "wealth and magnificence I had before no conception of" upon viewing the mansion of prominent landowners
Jacob Negley and
Barbara Ann Negley.Mellon, Thomas,
Thomas Mellon and His Times, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, 1994). At fourteen, he read the
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and became inspired by Franklin's rags-to-riches tale. Deciding he would not be a farmer, he...
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