Chester Rolling Mill Submitted by Janet Waite with permission of Mr. Roy Cashdollar ********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. ********************************************************************** The following is taken from "A History of Chester The Gateway To The West" by Roy C. Cashdollar (Now Mayor of Chester) Chapter VII Industry pg 67-68 "William Banfield had checked the city for a potential mill site in 1899. He had been a pioneer of the tin plate business in the United States, operating the first factory of its kind in Irondale, Ohio, until 1897, when it was taken over by the U. S. Steel Company. The Irondale plant was called the Wallace, Banfield and Company. Banfield was faced with a lack of water supply, poor freight transportation, and a very high cost for coal. In Chester, he had cheap river transportation for coal and his manufactured products and an ample water supply. In 1900, he began construction in Chester backed by W. L. Smith, J. E. McDonald, C. W. Tindall, J. R. Tindall, W. N. Voegtley, and Charles McKnight. They gave the venture the name of Chester Rolling Mill Company. Once the slow work of setting the heavy foundations for the mill was completed the building pace sped up and operations were under way in 1901. The Chester Land Company interests in real estate from First to Third Streets were gradually liquidated and the land between Third and Fourth Streets to beyond Sixth Street came under the control of the Chester Rolling Mill Co. The prospects of the mill, along with Banfield's influence with Pittsburgh interests brought the extensionof the railroad to Chester from Kenilworth. The railroad company at that time was the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad, later to become the Pennsylvania Railroad. Before the rolling mill reached full production it was absorbed by the American Sheet and Tinplate Company with over five hundred employees working three shifts. They maintained production of special black plate for stove pipes, stoves, signs, metal furniture, and milk cans. Thomas R. Timothy was general manager for many years and Banfield became the district manager. By 1931, the mill had become out-moded and had too small a site for expansion and faced with the financial crisis of the depression, it was dismantled."