William Henry Gorman


William Henry Gorman was the co-founder of the Citizens Bank of Maryland.

Biography

He was born in Woodstock, Maryland. William Gorman was the younger brother of Arthur Pue Gorman, an influential political leader of the state serving in the Maryland House of Delegates, then the State Senate, plus several terms elected by the General Assembly to the United States Senate. He was raised at a farmstead called "Good Fellowship" dating back to the original land grant by the Lord Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, as Lord Proprietor of the colony and Province of Maryland, as well as a family home in Laurel, Maryland. He went to school at Boromeo College in Pikesville, Maryland, northwest of Baltimore in Baltimore County. In 1866, he served as the deputy revenue collector alongside his brother. In 1871, he founded the Maryland and City Hotels in the state capital of Annapolis, Maryland. In 1874, he also co-founded the Annapolis Savings Institution, the Annapolis Water Company, and the Annapolis Gas and Electric Light Company. In 1884, Gorman moved to the state's biggest city of Baltimore, Maryland and started investing in coal companies. He was the president of The Piedmont Mining Company formed in 1898, and the Gorman Coal and Coke Company. Gorman was also on the board of directors of the West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railway, later the Peidmont and Cumberland Railway.
In 1890, Gorman co-founded of the Citizens Bank of Maryland and named a director with Barnes Compton, Representative in the House of Representatives in the Congress from the 5th congressional district of Maryland along with later serving as Maryland State Treasurer. In 1891, Gorman and his other brother Arthur founded the Cumberland Coal Company in Tucker County, West Virginia with 300 employees and 140 coke ovens.
Gorman and his father were the proprietors of several quarries in the Laurel area and Prince George's County that supplied granite and stone for the U.S. Treasury building and the United States Capitol, in Washington, along with material for bridge construction on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, first passenger railway in the country, begun 1827.
William Gorman died July 7, 1915, from a stroke paralysis at Ford Springs, Pennsylvania.