admin JACOB P. SCHOELLKOPF, founder of the Schoellkopf Aniline and Chemical Works of this city, is one of Buffalo’s principal manufacturers and financiers and is a leading factor in many industrial and other enterprises, the respective fields of Mr. Schoellkopf’s activities being found in several sections of the Eastern and Middle States. Mr. Schoellkopf is not only an eminent man of business, but in his particular province is a technical expert of a high ordei’, having all his life made a special study of chemistry and having in his early youth and earlier maturity enjoyed the advantages of the most advanced and comprehensive training which Germany affords in that science. Mr. Schoellkopf is also a man of thorough general education. His extensive acquirements have been applied to practical uses, and he is connected in high official capacities with a large number of manufacturing and financial corporations.
Mr. Schoellkopf was born in Buffalo February 27th, 1858. His father was the late Jacob F. Schoellkopf, well-known as the founder of many of the leading industries of Buffalo and Niagara Falls. In his boyhood the son attended the local public schools and later studied at St. Joseph’s College. After leaving that institution he went to Germany, where, during the seven years from 1873 to 1880 he pursued a severe course of study at Munich and at Stuttgart. At the latter place he made a specialty of chemistry, graduating from the Polytechnic College in Stuttgart in 1880.
At the close of his university career in Germany, Mr. Schoellkopf retui’ned to Buffalo and engaged in business. His chemical studies had directed his attention to the subject of coal tar dyes, and he had arrived at the conclusion that the American market offered a great field for these products. The outcome was the establishment of the Schoellkopf Aniline and Chemical Works, which were founded by Mr. Schoellkopf shortly after his return to Buffalo and -which constitute the most extensive plant of the kind on the continent, the business being operated by the Schoellkopf, Hartford & Hanna Company, of which Mr. Schoellkopf is President. The enterprise has $3,000,000 capital, employs 350 men and pays $15,000 monthly in wages. The plant embraces about thirty-six acres of land, including thirty brick buildings. It has superb shipping facilities and possesses unequaled special equipments.
Mr. Schoellkopf is President of the American Magnesia and Covering Company, located at Plymouth Meeting, near Philadelphia; Vice-President of the Commonwealth Trust Company and of the Central National Bank; and a Director of the Columbia National Bank and of the Security, Safe Deposit Company. He is also a Director of the Niagara Palls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company; a Director of the National Aniline and Chemical Company of New York; also of the Cliff Paper Company of Niagara Falls and of the International Hotel Company of the same place. He is also interested in the New York State Steel Company.
Though as has been indicated, Mr. Schoellkopf is a man of diverse occupations and one whose duties are arduous in an unusual degree, yet he does not permit himself to be absorbed in business to the exclusion of all other pursuits. His connections with organizations other than those of a financial or industrial character are noticeably with bodies dealing with serious or scientific subjects. He is a member of the Buffalo Historical Society, of the National Geographical Society of Washington, D. C, and of the American Society for Political and Social Science. He is also a trustee of the Buffalo General Hospital.
In 1882 Mr. Schoellkopf married Wilma Spring of Stuttgart, Germany. Their children are: Jacob F., born May 3, 1883, who is a graduate of Cornell University, Class of 1905, and who is now at Strasburg University, Germany; and Ruth Wilma, born May 30th, 1899, and Esther Spring, born June 27, 1901, who resides at the family home in Buffalo.
SOURCE: Memorial and Family History of Erie County New York; Volume I