Thomas W. Lawson

Early life Thomas William Lawson was born February 26, 1857, at Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Thomas and Anna Maria (née Loring) Lawson. Lawson's father, a carpenter, died when he was eight years old. in Scituate, Massachusetts, at a cost of $6,000,000. Boston financier Thomas Lawson's residence in Grand Rivers, Kentucky. He promoted the town as the next great steel-making center to rival Pittsburgh and Birmingham. In 1899, he joined Henry H. Rogers and William Rockefeller in forming Amalgamated Copper Mining Company, a company that combined several copper mining companies, mostly in Butte, Montana, and which tried to dominate the copper market. Amalgamated Copper was criticized for years afterward. It became Anaconda Copper Mining Company in 1915. Lawson broke with the financial backers of Amalgamated and became an advocate for financial reform.

Death Lawson died of diabetes on February 7, 1925, in Boston; and was buried beside his wife.

Personal life Lawson married Jeannie Augusta Goodwillie (1857–1906) in 1878, and they had six children: Gladys, Dorothy, Arnold Lawson, Marian, Douglas

Legacy and honors The Lawson Tower, Scituate, Massachusetts. The tower was part of Lawson's Dreamwold estate. The Thomas W. Lawson, the only seven-masted schooner ever built, was named after him. Lawson, who was intensely superstitious, wrote the novel Friday the Thirteenth in which a broker picks that day on which to bring down Wall Street; the Thomas W. Lawson, in which he had invested heavily, was wrecked off the Isles of Scilly at 2:30 am GMT on Saturday December 14, 1907, but to Lawson, at home in Boston, it was at that time still Friday the 13th.

He is generally credited in the U.S. with the Lawson sofa, made for him at the turn of the 20th century. It was a square, overstuffed sofa on a generous scale with loose seat cushions and pillows.

The Lawson Tower, originally part of his private Dreamworld estate, still stands. The structure is a water tower with a shingled outer shell and observatory which offers views of the area from an observation deck. Frenzied Finance, the Crime of Amalgamated (1906), his controversial and sensationally successful Friday the Thirteenth (1907): an attack on the American stock market. The Remedy (1912) The High Cost of Living (1913) The Leak (1919)