James William Ellsworth (October 13, 1849 – June 2, 1925) was an American industrialist and a Pennsylvania coal mine owner. The

coal town A coal town, also known as a coal camp or patch, is a type of company town or mining community established by the employer, a mining company, which imports workers to the site to work the mineral find. The company develops it and provides residen ...

Ellsworth, Pennsylvania Ellsworth is a borough in Washington County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 947 at the 2020 census. The coal town was founded by James Ellsworth, who bought the land in 1890s, developed the Monongahela Railway, and sold the m ...

is named after him. He also served as president of the

Caxton Club The Caxton Club is a private social club and bibliophilic society founded in Chicago in 1895 to promote the book arts and the history of the book. To further its goals, the club holds monthly (September through June) dinner meetings and luncheo ...

and the

Jekyll Island Club The Jekyll Island Club was a private club on Jekyll Island, on Georgia's Atlantic coast. It was founded in 1886 when members of an incorporated hunting and recreational club purchased the island for $125,000 (about $3.1 million in 2017) from John E ...

. Ellsworth married Eva Francis Butler on November 4, 1874. They had two children, Lincoln and Claire. But Mrs. Ellsworth died in 1888 at the age of 36. In 1895, Ellsworth married a second time to Julia Clarke Fincke. The second Mrs. Ellsworth lived to be 74 years old; she died in 1921. In 1907, following the completion of the

Monongahela Railway The Monongahela Railway was a coal-hauling short line railroad in Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the United States. It was jointly controlled originally by the Pennsylvania Railroad, New York Central subsidiary Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Rail ...

, Ellsworth sold the coal mines to

Bethlehem Steel The Bethlehem Steel Corporation was an American steelmaking company headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. For most of the 20th century, it was one of the world's largest steel producing and shipbuilding companies. At the height of its succe ...

and purchased the Villa Palmieri, Fiesole, in part to further his interests as a collector of art and rare coins. His son,

Lincoln Ellsworth Lincoln Ellsworth (May 12, 1880 – May 26, 1951) was a polar explorer from the United States and a major benefactor of the American Museum of Natural History. Biography Lincoln Ellsworth was born on May 12, 1880, to James Ellsworth and Eva F ...

, was a pilot in the Amundsen-Ellsworth Polar Flying Expedition of May 1925 which Ellsworth sponsored. In 1925, Ellsworth died of bronchial pneumonia at his villa near Florence, while awaiting the news of his son's safety.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ellsworth, James 1849 births 1925 deaths Western Reserve Academy alumni 19th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American businesspeople