Synopsis

Sarah B. Cochran probably didn’t expect to own businesses that competed with Henry Clay Frick’s or to exceed Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropic giving in certain circles. But when her husband and son died suddenly, she had to take over the family coal and coke business at a time when it was illegal, and some thought unlucky, for women to work in or around coal mines. Rather than retreating from the world, from her forties through her seventies she engaged with it through philanthropic activity that shifted power, championed others, and influenced causes.
Today, her contributions can be difficult to identify without already knowing they exist. This book is an introduction to Sarah’s story for academics, genealogists, history buffs, and those interested in sharing stories of other “lesser mortals” who created significant changes but remain largely unknown.

Praise

This wonderful biography brings to life Sarah B. Cochran, a philanthropist, college trustee, and coal industry executive in the early 1900s. Like her contemporaries, including philanthropists Phoebe Hearst, Olivia Sage, and Jane Stanford, Sarah inherited a fortune that she used to better her community. Kimberly Hess masterfully explores the many facets of her life, helping us to understand Sarah’s transformation after the death of her husband and son, and her powerful use of philanthropy to advance the causes she believed deeply in. –Joan Marie Johnson, author of Funding Feminism: Philanthropy, Monied Women, and the Women’s Rights Movement

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Interview with Kimberly Hess

Why did you choose to write the first biography of Sarah B. Cochran? What drew you to her story?

Initially I didn’t set out to write Sarah’s first biography because I felt like that was a job for a historian or someone living in western Pennsylvania. When I took my husband to western Pennsylvania after we were married, he was amazed that he couldn’t find information about Sarah when he Googled her and encouraged me to write a Wikipedia entry for her. I liked that idea because anyone else could add to it. As I did research, I found new information that led me to want to write more about her. I gave a presentation to the Fayette County Historical Society, and the reactions to the presentation made me decide to write a book. I thought about the unique perspective I could offer: I grew up knowing about her, visiting her mansion and church; her putting my great-grandmother through college might have influenced the educational trajectory for part of my family; I had a business background and an MBA that allowed me to analyze the coal and coke industry; and, I had experience with Smith College, a corporate employee resource group, and the Alice Paul Institute that had informed my perspective about the value of Sarah’s story today and even outside of western Pennsylvania.

Why is this topic important for the region of southwestern Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio?

As a business owner, Sarah is a unique and inspiring person in the region’s history. In

one respect, this is important because Sarah made an impact on the region’s built environment and tried to improve life politically and philanthropically. Being able to better understand the scope of her work, not just what she accomplished in one town or campus, is very impressive. I also think her story is important because as part of the Appalachian region, Sarah’s story is about wealth, philanthropy, and influence that people don’t always associate with the region.

You write that, when Sarah’s name is mentioned in historical records, it is usually as a “coal magnate’s widow, not as an accomplished woman in her own right.” Why do you think Sarah was largely left out of the traditional narrative of this time and place in history? Why is it crucial that we tell her story now?

First of all, it’s easy for anyone in that time and place to be eclipsed by Carnegie and Frick, and certainly Sarah wasn’t the biggest self-promoter. But in certain records, evidence of Sarah’s existence or business responsibilities is missing because of the way records were kept and because of assumptions about women’s labor. Pennsylvania mine reports usually named managers, not owners like Sarah; some mining community histories cover women who were miners’ wives, which she wasn’t; and even on the U.S. Census her occupation was sometimes a blank space or the word “None.” So it’s important to tell her story, not only because her story has some universal and timeless elements to it, but because she’s a case study of how someone can become invisible because her reality didn’t fit neatly into expectations.

In addition to learning about the life of Sarah B. Cochran, what do you hope your readers take away from this book?

I hope the book’s existence makes people think about ways to tell the stories of “lesser mortals”–the people who might be historically invisible but whose stories need to be told–in their own communities. There are many ways to make stories like Sarah’s accessible to researchers and the general public. When books and articles aren’t an option, sending artifacts to archives and museums is an option. In the process of writing this book, I sent primary source material to a Methodist archive and sent digital copies of photographs to IUP’s archive.

About the Author

During her business career of nearly twenty years, Kimberly Hess served in volunteer leadership roles at the global and local levels for Smith College’s Alumnae Association and Office of Admission, and she was a trustee of the Alice Paul Institute and a board member of the Chubb Partnership of Women. Her writing has appeared on the websites of Thrive Global, the National Women’s History Museum and the Forté Foundation, as well as on the blogs of the Women’s Museum of California and the David Library of the American Revolution. She has a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from Smith College, an M.B.A. in Marketing from Rutgers Business School, and a Certificate in Historic Preservation from the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies at Drew University. An avid genealogist and traveler, she lives in New Jersey with her husband and daughter.