The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1907-05-14
COREY STARTED AT $40 PER.
Married His First Wife When Only
IS Years Old.

1883, in the Pennsylvania town of
Braddock, where the first great mills
of Carnegie were operated, William
Ellis Corey, making a monthly wage
of $40, dumping coal on the tipple of
his uncle. J. B. Corey, married Laura
Cook. Young Corey was then not
quite IS years old. He was born in
the same age. She was a pretty girl,
obviously very much in love with the
boy who stood beside her as they took
the VOWS.
The young couple went to live i'm
mediately in a small frame house,
which is still shown in Braddock as
the place which the president of the
Steel trust called home when he
worked for $40 a month.
Until Corey was 16 years old he and
the girl who was TO become his wife
attended the public at Braddoclz and
young Corey's courtship was conduct
Cooks father was a member of a
family prominent in the affairs of
Westmoreland county. and he himself
was in easy, if not affluent. circum-
stances. Laura had been sent away to
normal school at Indiana, Pa, but
gave up her studies. there to become
Corey's wife ~7..-as..-,.
The bride wore a simple gown she
making. and the boy bridegroom
looked very uncomforta BILE in his
Sunday clothes.
Though a painstaking and anxious
housekeeper. the devoted young wife
found it hard to get along on $40
month. But she had a strong faith in
her young husbands ability to get on
in the world.
Not long after his marriage he OBJ
tanned a slightly better position which
paid SIS a month, and before he was
Is years old had taken the first step
in his phenomenal rise to millions by
securing employment with the Edgar
Thompson steel works, the great rail
mill of the Carnegie combination.
Spurred by his wife's desire for his
Corey continued his
studies in the evening at a Pittsburg
college. This condemned the young
bride to many lonely evenings, but she
resigned herself to them, for she
knew that work and study were the
only means by which she and her boy
husband could rise in the world.
Saturday night and Sunday, which
the young man spent at home, he de-
voted to studying books on chemistry
and metallurgy, supplementing knowl-
edge thus gained by work among the
furnaces.
Young Corey was soon transferred
to the Homestead steel works, and
shortly after he was p years old was
made superintendent of the armor
plate department.
Meantime Laura Cook Corey'S faith
er had died, leaving her a few thou
sand dollars, with which the young
couple purchased a home, and which
according to Braddock gossip, also
bought w E. Corey his first fine suit
Of clothes.
When Charles NJ. Schwab was made
president of the Carnegie Steel COM
pany William E. Corey succeeded him
as general superintendent of the en-
tire Homestead works, and in 1903
Andrew Carnegie selected him to take
Mr.. Schwab's place as president of the
Steel trust. - -
AS Laura Cook stood at the altar
with William E. Corey the love which
makes a woman clairvoyant revealed
to her the possibilities of wonderful
success in the youth beside her. She
foresaw in that lightning vision sac
rif1ces she would have to make. hard
places they would have to cross to-
gether, perhaps even the triumph of
gold and of fame in the business
world that was to crown their efforts.
but to bring to her unhappiness and
divorce.
William Ellis Corey, recently re-elect-
ed president of the Steel trust, who is
just Al years old, has conferred on the
comic opera star the result of the TWEEN
ty-three years of successful effort which
he started with the first Mrs. Corey by
his side.
The marriage was made possible by
the divorce obtained in Reno, New, last
July, by the woman Corey married in
1888, 10 Wnom, Dy the testimony OF MS
own father, he owed his success.
The divorce was obtained on the
ground of desertion and Mrs. Corey is
said to have received million dollars in
lieu of alimony because she brought no
other charge against the steel magnate
and did not bring Miss Gilman's name
into the case.
The suit was not brought until var
ious stories had been published concern
ing the separation of the Coreys, ru-