John Pitcairn Jr.

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Pitcairn began his professional life at the age of 14, working as an office boy for the general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Altoona. He soon learned telegraphy, and through that became friends with Andrew Carnegie. Pitcairn rapidly worked his way up through the railroad industry; first as assistant to the superintendent of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad, and next as assistant to the superintendent of the Philadelphia Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. On February 22, 1861, during his tenure at the latter, Pitcairn was in charge of the train which carried President-elect Abraham Lincoln from Harrisburg to Philadelphia, en route to the inauguration in Washington, D.C. Later, when the Confederate Army invaded Pennsylvania before the Battle of Antietam, Pitcairn and his brother Robert Pitcairn were dispatched by Colonel Thomas A. Scott, then Assistant Secretary of War, to Chambersburg, to head the train service for the government. Pitcairn next served as assistant superintendent of the Middle Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and followed this with a stint as the superintendent of the Middle Division of the Philadelphia and Erie Railroad. Finally, in 1869, he was appointed general manager of the Oil Creek and Allegheny River Railway Company.

Upon forming a partnership with J. J. Vandergrift of Pittsburgh and George V. Forman of Buffalo, Pitcairn resigned from his position of general manager to focus exclusively on the oil business. During this period, Pitcairn built the Imperial Refinery at Oil City, Pennsylvania, and was heavily involved with the production, refining, and pipeline transportation of oil. With Vandergrift, he built and controlled the first natural gas pipeline for manufacturing purposes, and had a controlling stake in the Natural Gas Company, Ltd., founded in the summer of 1875, and later to become the Natural Gas Company of West Virginia. Through these and other successful investments in energy, mining, and banking, Pitcairn substantially expanded his wealth.

In 1883, Pitcairn teamed up with Captain John Baptiste Ford and several others to establish the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (PPG). Based in Creighton, Pennsylvania (about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh along the Allegheny River), PPG soon became the United States' first commercially successful producer of high-quality, thick flat glass using the plate process. PPG was also the world's first plate glass plant to power its furnaces with locally produced natural gas, an innovation which rapidly stimulated widespread industrial use of the cleaner-burning fuel.

PPG expanded quickly. By 1900, known as the "Glass Trust", it included ten plants, had a 65 percent share of the U.S. plate glass market, and had become the nation's second largest producer of paint. Today, known as PPG Industries, the company is a multibillion-dollar, Fortune 500 corporation with 150 manufacturing locations around the world. It now produces coatings, glass, fiberglass, and chemicals.

Pitcairn served as a director of PPG from its start, its president from 1897 to 1905, and chairman of the board from 1894 until his death.

Pitcairn's interests and holdings were not limited to PPG; at the time of his death, he was also president of the C. H. Wheeler Manufacturing Company, the Pittsburgh Valve and Fittings Company, and the Loyal Hanna Coal and Coke Company, and a director of the Central National Bank of Philadelphia, the Columbia Chemical Company, the Michigan Chemical Company, the Natural Gas Company of West Virginia, and the Owosso Sugar Company.

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