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William Boeing

William E. Boeing (left) and Frederick B. Rentschler, 1929.

William Edward Boeing (October 1, 1881 ? September 28, 1956), born "Wilhelm Edward Boeing", was an aviation pioneer who founded The Boeing Company. Currently the Boeing Family is accredited as being one of top ten wealthiest families in the world.

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Biography

Boeing was born in Detroit, Michigan, to a wealthy German mining engineer named Wilhelm Böing who had made a fortune developing large low-grade penuckle taconite iron ore deposits and who had a sideline as a timber merchant. Anglicizing his name to "William" after returning from being educated in Switzerland in 1900 to attend Yale University,^[1] William Boeing left Yale in 1903 to go into the lumber side of the business. He bought extensive timberlands around Grays Harbor on the Pacific side of the Olympic Peninsula. He also bought into lumber operations.

While president of Greenwood Logging Company, Boeing, who had experimented with boat design, travelled to Seattle, where, during the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909, he saw a manned flying machine for the first time and became fascinated with aircraft.

Model of B&W biplane.

In 1916, Boeing went into business with George Conrad Westervelt as B & W and founded the Pacific Aero Products Co. When America entered the First World War in April 1917, Boeing changed the name of Pacific Aero Products Co. to Boeing Airplane Company and obtained orders from the United States Navy for 50 planes. At the end of the war, Boeing began to concentrate on commercial aircraft, secured contracts to supply airmail service and built a successful airmail operation.

In 1921 William Boeing married Bertha Marie, the daughter of Howard Cranston Potter (a descendant of merchant bankers Alexander Brown of Baltimore, James Brown and Brown's son-in-law and partner Howard Potter of New York) and Bertha's mother Alice Kershaw Potter daughter of Charles James Kershaw and Mary Leavenworth Kershaw (a descendant of Henry Leavenworth). Bertha Potter Paschall had previously been married to Nathaniel Paschall, a real estate broker and by that marriage had two sons, Nathaniel Paschall Jr. and Cranston Paschall. These two sons became Boeing's stepsons and the couple had a son of their own, William E. Boeing Jr. The stepsons went into aviation manufacturing as a career. Nat Paschall was a sales manager for Douglas Aircraft and then McDonnell Douglas. William E. Boeing Jr. became a noted private pilot and industrial real estate developer.

In 1934, the United States government accused William Boeing of monopolistic practices. The Air Mail Act ordered him to break up his company into three separate entities: United Aircraft Corporation, Boeing Airplane Company, and United Air Lines.

Boeing retired from the aircraft industry in 1934. He then spent the remainder of his years in property development and thoroughbred horse breeding. His thoroughbred farm northeast of Seattle was called Aldarra. Aldarra was later developed by William E. Boeing Jr. as a luxury residential development in 2000.

Boeing Airplane, though a major manufacturer in a fragmented industry, did not really take off until the beginning of World War II.

William Boeing died on September 28, 1956, at the age of 74, just 3 days before his 75th birthday. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the Seattle Yacht Club, having had a heart attack aboard his yacht.^[2]