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for Elizabeth Thaw
Elizabeth Thaw
1796 - 1865
John Thaw, son of Benjamin Thaw and Hannah Engle, was born in Philadelphia and as a young man became an apprentice to a shipping merchant. In 1799, John Thaw entered the shipping business as a merchant and shipped manufactured goods from Philadelphia to various ports in the West Indies. He purchased several schooners for this work including the Schooners: Bee, Barque America, and Ocean, some of which he co-owned with Captain John Dove. He left this business, however, around 1802 when one of his captains supposedly robbed him of all his profits on a voyage to Africa. John Thaw then found a position with the Bank of Pennsylvania. In 1804, the Bank of Pennsylvania began work to establish a Pittsburgh branch which would be the first bank west of the Allegheny Mountains. John Thaw was offered the position of Teller in that bank and in August, 1804, he, his wife, Elizabeth Thomas, and their daughter, Eliza, moved west to Pittsburgh.
The Bank prospered and helped to establish business and industry in the growing "frontier" city of Pittsburgh. The charter for the Bank of Pennsylvania was suspended, however, in 1818 and John Thaw moved to the Pittsburgh branch of the second Bank of the United States which had been approved by Congress in 1816. Adamson Tannehill served as President of this branch as it became one of the nation's strongest banking offices. By the 1830's, the bank entered the political agendas of national politicians who argued the constitutionality of a federal bank. President Andrew Jackson soon removed all federal deposits from the Bank and the branch office was reorganized under the state and renamed the Pennsylvania Bank of the United States. John Thaw remained at this bank until the suspension of its charter in 1841. Thaw continued to work with other banks in Pittsburgh, but was also appointed Notary Public from 1812 to 1833. After the Pittsburgh Fire of 1845, John Thaw who had lost his own house to the fire served as Treasurer to the Monogahela Bridge Company (1845) which built a suspension bridge over the Monogahela River to replace one that was destroyed by the fire. John Thaw also helped to organize and distribute relief funds for the many victims of the fire.
John Thaw and Elizabeth Thomas had eleven children and lived at the corner of Third and Wood Street in Pittsburgh until their house was burned and then moved to a location on Smithfield Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue where John Thaw lived until his death in 1866.
