Thomas Rehrer Osbourn

---

---

Husband Thomas Rehrer Osbourn ¹

---

           Born: 19 Oct 1849 - Philadelphia, PA 1
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

---

         Father: Lewis Grant Osbourn (1814-1860) 1 2
         Mother: Miranda E. Rehrer (      -      ) 1 2

---

---

---

Wife

---

           Born: 
     Christened: 
           Died: 
         Buried: 

---

Children

---

---

General Notes: Husband - Thomas Rehrer Osbourn

---

In 1858 he and his younger brother, Lewis Grant Osbourn, Jr., were taken abroad by their parents to be educated in German and French schools. After spending two years at schools in Paris, France, and in Geneva, Switzerland, the death of the father, in Cairo, Egypt, caused the return of the family to Philadelphia, as soon as permission could be obtained to bring his remains to his native city for burial. The family continued to reside in Philadelphia and Thomas R. Osbourn was educated at the Rittenhouse Academy, Eighteenth and Chestnut streets, conducted by Lucius Barrows, and later at the Academy of William Few-Smith, at Tenth and Chestnut streets, and finally at the age of nineteen, just before going into business for himself, he took a short course at a commercial college. In 1869, with a view of gaining a knowledge of business, he entered the employ of the firm of Wainwright & Company, wholesale grocers at Second and Arch streets, Philadelphia, for a term of five years.
In 1875, Mr. Osbourn, with a cousin, under the firm name of J. G. & T. R. Osbourn, engaged in the wholesale cloth business at No. 31 Bank Street, which continued for seven years, when the firm was dissolved, and the business closed up July, 1882. Having previously invested considerable capital in the stock of a Maryland Coal Company, and in soft coal lands, Mr. Osbourn took an extended course in geology, mineralogy, and coal geology, analysis and mining; he accompanied this with active practical work in the coal fields, and in the opening of mines, and developing the coal property of the Empire Coal Company, of Maryland, in which he had invested; and later, in introducing and finding a market and trade for the coal output of the mines of the Empire Coal Company, as the secretary and treasurer of that company.
During his work and residence in the Maryland coal regions in 1888-89, Mr. Osbourn opened the first mine in the "Four-Foot Vein" of the George's Creek-Potomac Coal region, that was ever worked continuously and commercially, on the lands of the Empire Coal Company, at Bloomington, Maryland. The geological position of the vein in the coal section, being in the "Lower Barren Measures", No. XIV, about three hundred and seventy-five feet below the "Big Vein" or Pittsburgh vein. He also, during that period and later, made vertical coal sections, by instrument and barometer of the coal basin around Westernport, Maryland, and Piedmont, West Virginia, which in later years, September 20, 1893, and June 9, 1898, were published in the Coal Trade Journal.
In March, 1892, Mr. Osbourn patented a mechanical drawing, or labor saving Coke Oven, and various coke quenching apparatus, and during a year's residence in western Pennsylvania and the Connellsville coke region, he made a full and extensive examination of the practice and prevailing methods of coking in the "Beehive Oven", and the possibility of improvement, both in oven and method, and made a detailed report of the same, which was published in the Trade Journal for June 30, 1893, and made further reports, and contributions on coals, coking, analysis, etc., at various dates to trade papers.
Mr. Osbourn was secretary and treasurer of the Bellefonte Central Railroad Company, and of the Nelsonville Coal and Land Company, and the Empire Coal Company. In addition to his duties as an officer of those corporations, he had other and varied business interests; in marketing coal from mines and lands in which he was interested; in buying and selling coal and other lands; and in making contracts for coal, for his own company and from mines of other companies.
He was a member of the Pennsylvania Society Sons of the Revolution; the Undine Boat Club, Germantown Cricket Club and of the Civil Service Reform Association, and was a member of numerous other clubs in his "younger and Club days." He was unmarried in 1911.

1 John W. Jordan, LL.D., Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania (New York, Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1911), Pg 1094.

2 William Henry Egle, History of the County of Dauphin in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA: Everts & Peck, 1883), Pg 530.