My Genealogy Hound

ABRAHAM GARRISON, senior member of the firm of A. Garrison Foundry company, under whose management for over half a century the Pittsburgh foundry has won a national if not a world-wide reputation, was born in Orange county, N. Y., March 4, 1804. His paternal ancestors, who were of English descent, settled in what is now Putnam county, N. Y., in 1686. His father had property on the Hudson near West Point, and was owner and captain of a sloop which sailed between Albany and New York. The mother of Abraham was Catherine Kingsland, of English ancestry, who were among the early settlers of New Jersey. From the age of fourteen Mr. Garrison assisted his father in the navigation of his sloop, Gen. Pike, on the Hudson, and long before his twenty-first birthday he was captain of her. On reaching his majority, he, for a year, carried on the grocery business in New York. In 1826 he came to Pittsburgh, where he entered the office of Kingsland, Lightner & Co., then proprietors of the Jackson and Eagle foundries. In 1830 he became foreman for Kingsland, Lightner & Cuddy, the then proprietors of the Pittsburgh foundry. In 1836 he obtained an interest in the business, which was carried on under various firm names until in 1865, when it developed into its present style, our subject being in all these years an active partner.

Mr. Garrison was married, Aug. 1, 1830, in Albany, N. Y., to Mary Clement. He is President of the Diamond National bank, the Safe Deposit company, of Pittsburgh, and the Birmingham Bridge company, as well as director in several other institutions. He has been a generous though unostentatious giver to the varied charities of Allegheny county, and to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, of which he was an original projector.