William Cockerill
William Cockerill ( born March 27, 1759 in Haslingden Lancashire, † January 23, 1832 in Aachen ) was a British entrepreneur who brought the industrial revolution of England on mainland Europe and with British inventions in today's Belgium built a major steel and mechanical engineering group.
Life
The son of a bricklayer Steimetz and dabbled in his hometown as a young man to the production of weaving machines, which, however, initially did not bring a resounding success. Newlyweds with Elizabeth (Betty) Charles, he moved then after Radcliff, where he worked as Schmid. His family he left in Haslingden, where his six sons and two daughters were born. In 1794 he tried to establish themselves as a spin machine producer in St. Petersburg, but even here he had to give up unsuccessfully for three years. The same thing happened to him in 1797 in Sweden, because the local industry was not yet sufficiently developed. A year later, he also left this country and made in Hamburg intermediate station and met the chief clerk of the company Simonis & Biolley from Verviers. He recognized Cockerill skills and signed him as a textile machine manufacturer for the domestic work in Verviers.
There Cockerill renewed with the capital of his principal, the textile machinery textile manufacturer François Biolley and Iwan Simonis and they arrived a few years later, the market leader in this sector. Now William Cockerill brought his family from Haslingden and the young English machinist James Hudson after ( 1773-1833 ). This first worked for William Cockerill, his daughter Nancy married (1782-1817), but soon moved into the company of William Cockerill, Junior (1784-1847), the eldest son of William senior, who is also in Verviers with its own factory had made their own.
1807, during the Continental Blockade, William Cockerill senior moved to Liege, where he first built a textile factory and then went over to the production of textile machinery and iron processing. In 1811 were William Cockerill and his sons John and James, who in his factory worked in a managerial position, given French citizenship in recognition of their achievements. Two years later, William transferred this sons then his company and moved gradually from operations back. Now John, in turn, by the Dutch King William I in 1817 the Castle of Seraing, near Liege acquired and been converted into the central main plant for production of iron, so that, together with the plant parts in Liege the foundation for the development of the largest iron foundry and machine factory in Europe and a widespread down the company, which later the Cockerill -Sambre developed, whose main market should be France. By the Cockerill annexed by the French in the territory of the former Austrian Netherlands and later Belgium became the first industrialized country to England.
After his retirement from the company, William moved with his wife to Spa, where he had bought the Hotel de Ville, now the town hall. There his wife died 1823. Later, and also to escape the unrest during the Belgian Revolution, William spent much of his life in the evening at Castle Berensberg at Aachen, which had been acquired by his son James in 1820 and where it also ran a successful farm. William died in 1832 at Schloss Berensberg and was buried in the family tomb next to his wife in the cemetery at the spa.
William Cockerill had life still several estates and properties in England, most of which were inherited by his sons. In addition, he has been a great horseman and built in spa a successful stud. This passion was inherited by his sons, to William Cockerill great-grandson Henry Suermondt and Otto Suermondt that were as stud farm owner and internationally successful as a gentleman rider also.
Williams eldest son William junior married in Monschauer draper Scheibler family and shifted his activities from 1816 to Guben, where he established the first wool spinning machines and the monastery mill to the factory and mill rebuilt, in the soon a steam engine was operated. The sons John and James married into the family of entrepreneurs pastor and first made in the Liège area independently. The latter drove then in 1825 the industrialization of Stolberg decisive progress. The granddaughter Williams, Friederike Cockerill, married in 1839 to Duisburg industrialist son Max Haniel. By this marriage the unpleasant Belgian competition could be kept in the steam ship from the Rhine.