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William Larimer Mellon, Sr. (1 June 1868 – October
1949), sometimes referred to as
W. L., was a founder of
Gulf Oil.
Biography
Born in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 1, 1868 to
James Ross Mellon, eldest son of Judge
Thomas Mellon, and Rachel Larimer Mellon, daughter of railroad and land baron
William Larimer, Jr. He spent part of his childhood in the
West with his uncle
Andrew W. Mellon, who deeply influenced him. In the 1880s he developed an interest in the burgeoning
petroleum industry in
Pennsylvania, but his nascent oil company was bought out by
John D. Rockefeller's
Standard Oil in 1895.
When oil was discovered in
Spindletop,
Texas in 1901, the Mellon family invested in the well. When the well began to decline in 1902, W.L. was dispatched to investigate, and took on a progressively larger role in management. In January 1907 he established the Gulf Oil Corporation, which proceeded to build a pipeline from
Oklahoma to
Port Arthur, Texas and was shipping Oklahoma crude oil to port by September. It expanded steadily thereafter, becoming one of the largest oil companies in the
United States.
In 1949 Mellon established the graduate school of industrial administration at the
Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, which is today the
David A. Tepper School of Business at
Carnegie Mellon University. He died in October of that year at the age of 81.
Personal life
Mellon married Mary Hill Taylor, they had four children:
Rachel......
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