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WILLIAM BANFIELD, general manager of the tin plate mills of Follansbee, W. Va., with offices at Pittsburgh, Pa., and president of the East Ohio Sewer Pipe Company with the plant at Irondale, O. came to Steubenville in 1907 and is numbered with the men of large business interests who are located here and give stability to the city. He was born in Monmouthshire, England in 1854 When eighteen years of age Mr. Banfield accompanied his father to America and together they worked in the first tin plate mill ever operated in the United States, that being at Leechburg, Pa. He remained there for seven years and worked as heater and roller, after which he became manager of the whole plant and occupied that position in relation to it for the next six years. In October, 1885 Mr. Banfield came to Irondale in Jefferson County and with others, purchased the Pioneer Iron Works plant and established the Irondale Rolling Mill Company under the title of Wallace, Banfield & Co., Limited, and engaged in the manufacture of fine grades of black and galvanized iron and soft sheet steel. The concern did an extensive and successful business, giving employment to a large force of men and grew into one of the leading manufacturing plants of the county. In 1892 the comapny built two tin mills and converted their sheet manufacture into a tim mill and were the first to manufacture tin plate in great quantities, under the McKinley Bill. In 1899 the company sold out to the American Tin Plate Company and in 1900 the plant was dismantled. Mr. Banfield then went to Chester, W. Va., and with other capitalists, built the sheet mills there and later sold out these also to the American Sheet Steel Company, the transaction taking place on the completion of the mills. He was then district manager for the American Tin Plate Company for three years and then joined the Follansbee Brothers Company at Follansbee, W. Va. and there they built the extensive tin plate mills of which Mr. Banfield has been general Manager ever since, this being an independent concern. Among his other business intersts is the presidency of the East Ohio Sewer Pipe Company, a very important enterprise of this section and one in which a large amount of local capital is invested. Mr. Banfield is an elder in the Second Presbyterian Church at Steubenville.  Return to Family Tales
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