BIOGRAPHY: Andrew J. HAWS, Cambria County, PA 

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From Wiley, Samuel T., ed. Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Cambria 
County, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Union Publishing Co., 1896, p. 70-1
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ANDREW J. HAWS, one of the oldest business men of Johnstown, and the 
manufacturer of the celebrated Haws fire brick, used so extensively in the 
United States, is a son of Isaac and Barbara (Burtner) Haws, and was born near 
Freeport, Butler county, Pennsylvania, in 1825. Isaac Haws, a man of energy and 
will, was a native of Lancaster county, and resided successively near Freeport, 
and in Allegheny county, on the Allegheny river, twenty miles above Pittsburg. 
At the latter place he was engaged in farming from 1840 up to the time of his 
death in 1847, at seventy years of age. He married Barbara Burtner, who was a 
native of Butler county, and died about 1862, aged eighty-two years.
     Andrew J. Haws was reared in Butler and Allegheny counties, received a 
common-school education, and at seventeen years of age went to work in a fire-
brick yard at Brady's Bend. Two years later he was transferred to a metal 
refinery, and a year later was put in a rolling mill, under Alexander Campbell, 
where he helped roll the first "T" rails made west of the Allegheny mountains. 
The Brady's Bend Iron company, which operated all of the above-named works, 
ceased work in 1848, and he acted, during the ensuing four years, as business 
manager for Dr. Gleason, a physician and traveling lecturer on anatomy and 
physiology. At the end of that time, in 1852, he came to Johnstown, and helped 
to roll the first rail that was made for the Cambria Iron works; and after 
having charge of the iron teams for eighteen months, resolved upon commencing 
the manufacture of fire-brick. He then formed a partnership with Ephraim Stitt, 
and they leased for five years the fire-brick yard and cement mill of H. S. 
Smith, of Johnstown. At the end of the first year he bought out Mr. Stitt, and 
when the lease was up purchased the works, which he enlarged and improved. In so 
doing he contracted a debt of thirty thousand dollars, which he was enabled to 
pay off at the rate of five hundred dollars per month, with interest at 6 per 
cent, through the assistance of D. J. Morrell, the manager of the Cambria Iron 
company. After paying his indebtedness in full, he succeeded in manufacturing 
tuyers, at thirty-five cents each, for   the Bessemer Steel mill, that were 
being imported at seventy cents. His tuyers were far superior to the foreign 
article; and his second successful step was in producing a superior silica brick 
for furnaces and open hearths, at one-half the cost of the imported article in 
that line. He gets his best fire-clays at South Fork, and his quartz at McKee's 
Rocks, in Blair county.
     He employs four hundred men and boys in his mines and works, and his plant 
has a capacity of fifteen million bricks per year. His shipments are as far west 
as Colorado and east as Maine, while each year increases his orders from the 
leading cities of the United States. He was his own general manager until 1880, 
when he gave his son, H. Y. Haws, that position, and who, since 1882, has had a 
quarter interest in the business.
     Besides his brick plant, Andrew J. Haws owns a farm of two hundred and 
twenty acres, which is heavily underlaid with coal. This farm is fourteen miles 
from Johnstown, and on it is Mr. Haws's stable of thoroughbred trotting horses, 
of which one has a record of 2.12¼, a second of 2.14, and a third of 2.10½. Mr. 
Haws is a man whose business capacity is of the first order, and to think with 
him is to act. His success is but the record of his victories over great 
obstacles in his career.