Henry Disston

Henry Disston (May 24 1819 - March 16 1878) was an English American industrialist who founded the Disston Saw Mill and developed the surrounding neighborhood of Tacony in Philadelphia. He was the father of industrialist Hamilton Disston.

Early life and rise to prominence

Disston was born in Tewkesbury, England in 1819. As a child, he planned to moved to Albany, New York with his family in 1833. Just days after their ship arrived in Philadelphia, Disston's father died, and Disston took a job there as a saw-maker's apprentice. By 1840, he had started his own saw-making business. Around this time he married, firstly to Amanda Bickley, then after she died suddenly, to Mary Steelman.

By 1850, Disston's saws were renowned in the United States, even as compared against the English manufactures that were usually thought superior. Disston encouraged emigration from England to staff his factory with skilled workers. During the American Civil War, a protective tariff on foreign manufactured goods helped expand Disston's enterprise still more, and despite a fire that ruined the factory, Disston prospered through the 1860s.

Move to Tacony

By 1871, Disston's saw mill had outgrown its factory and he moved the business to the village of Tacony, in what is now Northeast Philadelphia. At the time, Tacony was a small outlying area of Philadelphia, but it was located near the railroad and the Delaware River, and provided Disston with room for his saw mill to grow. Disston constructed homes for his workers, and designed them in an effort to improve their surroundings from their former dwellings in Philadelphia. This area of Tacony, known as the Disston Estate, was designed to bear Disston's imprint in the fashion of true Victorian utopianism.

By the late 1870s, Disston's business and social enterprizes were succeeding, but his own health was failing. After falling ill in 1877, he suffered a stroke and died in 1878. He is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery.

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