page_title: Hugh J. Chisholm
section_title: Industrialist and entrepreneur
hierarchical_section_title: Hugh J. Chisholm / Industrialist and entrepreneur
context_page_description: Hugh Joseph Chisholm I was a Canadian industrialist who later became a citizen of the United States. He was born in Chippawa, Ontario, to parents of Scottish ancestry. His early years as an entrepreneur in the news distribution business provided a foundation for his later accomplishments in the pulp and paper industry. His founding and leadership of pulp and paper, fibre-ware, and light and power companies as well as banks and railways made him a dominant figure in Maine industry. His legacy went beyond his reputation as a capitalist, however; he created the first forest management program for International Paper Company and developed a planned community for the workers in his mills which was a model for the nation.
context_section_description: With his knowledge of what customers were reading, Chisholm Brothers began printing travel guides and founded a lithograph company in Portland, Maine, moving to half-tone photographs and then eventually, in 1888, to picture postcards. Chisholm became a U.S. citizen and moved to Portland in the mid-1870s.
  After a foray into patenting and manufacturing fibre-ware products, Chisholm became interested in paper and pulp, and, with other capitalists whom he interested in his projects, started several pulp and paper companies in western Maine, including the Umbagog Pulp Company; Otis Falls Pulp and Paper Co.; Rumford Falls Paper Company, Somerset Fibre Company the Oxford Paper Company, the Rumford Falls Sulfite Company; the Continental Bag Company and, with the Hon. William A. Russell co-founded the International Paper Company in 1896. The Otis Falls Pulp Company mill in Jay, built in 1888, was then the third largest paper mill in the country. The Oxford Paper Company’s mill in Rumford began producing paper in 1901, and subsequently produced all postcards for the United States Post Office. This mill became the largest bookpaper mill in the world under one roof, and has operated continuously since that time under several different companies. Chisholm was the second president of International paper company, succeeding its first president The Hon. William Augustus Russell  who died suddenly in January 1899 after founding IP with Chisholm which was then the largest paper company in the world. Chisholm succeeded W. A. Russell as president from 1899 to 1907.  The combined efforts of William A. Russell and Hugh J. Chisholm had eventually brought together 30 pulp and paper mills from across US and Canada. Chisholm went on to initiate the first forest management program for that company and developed a close relationship with the Yale University School of Forestry.
  Chisholm’s entrepreneurial interests also included founding and leading the Livermore Falls Iron Foundry; Rumford Falls Power Company; Portland and Rumford Falls Railway, and the Rumford Falls and Rangeley Lakes Railroad.
caption: Umbagog pulp mills at Livermore Falls on the Androscoggin River in 1909
exif: {}