Will County ILGenWeb Biographies..... 
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File contributed for use by:
Dori Leekly & Margie Glenn

Author: History of Will County, Illinois; Chicago: Wm LeBaron Jr & Co, 186 Dearborn Street, 1878.

Hon. W. A. STEEL, proprietor of the Joliet Stone Quarries, Joliet; was born in Blairsville, 
Penn., Oct. 11, 1836, his father, Hon. Stewart STEEL, was a lawyer of eminence in that State; 
Mr. Steel, when about 17 years of age, spent a short time in mercantile business in Cumberland, 
Md., and Pittsburgh, Penn.; in 1855, he came West and spent a short time in Joliet on his way 
to Missouri, where be built six miles of the North Missouri Railroad, and there made his first 
start in a business career which has been so eminently successful; in 1857, he returned to 
Joliet, which since that time has been his permanent home. He became cashier for Messrs. Sanger 
& Casey, who had just obtained the contract for building the State Penitentiary. In 1858, he 
went to Alton as Deputy Warden of the State Penitentiary; then located in that city, the Warden 
being, Samuel K. CASEY, who resided in Joliet, and remained in the sole charge of the commerce 
and discipline of that institution until July, 1860, at which time he removed the last of the 
convicts to the new institution at Joliet; he then entered the law office of Judge Newton D. 
STRONG, of St. Louis, having previously pursued his law studies in private; he was admitted to 
the bax in St. Louis on the 4th of April, 1861. On the breaking-out of the rebellion, he engaged 
in the construction of four monitors for the Government, via.: the Tuseumbia, Indianola, 
Chillicothe and the Etiah, the last being a full-blooded monitor; he afterward enrolled a 
battalion of 450 men, called the National Iron Works Battalion: was commissionied Major and 
placed in command of the battalion, and stationed in St. Louis for the defense of that city, 
where he remained until after the close of the war. In July, 1865, Mr. STEEL engaged with his 
father-in-law, Col. Lorenzo P. SANGER, in opening his present extensive quarries, the largest 
in the country, the firm being Sanger & Steel, and so continued till March 1, 1871, when he 
purchased Mr. SANGER's interest, and is now the sole proprietor. Among the prominent buildings 
for which Mr. STEEL has furnished the stone may be mentioned the Custom-houses at Madison, Wis. 
and Dea Moines, Iowa, about sixty Court Houses and Jails in Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, 
among them the new Court House at Rockford, Ill., the finest in the State outside of Chicago, 
and the St. Louis Four Courts;, the Government buildings at Rock Island, for which he furnished 
fully 30,000 car-loads of stone; the railroad bridge over the Mississippi River at Dubuque, the 
United States Marine Hospital at Chicago, and a portion of the stone for new State Capitols of 
Illinois and Michigan, besides which are churches and private buildings without number. Stone 
from his quarries is to be found in the cemeteries throughout all of the Northwestern States. 
Besides his quarry interests,. he sank and worked the first shafts in the Wilmington coal 
region. In March, 1870, Mr. Steel was licensed to practice in the Supreme Court of the State, 
and on the 22nd of April following, in the Supreme Court of the United States, and in the 
United States Court of Claims, Jan. 10, 1871 ; he has not followed the practice of the law 
except in the United States Courts at Washington, and then only attending the cases of himself 
and friends. He led the movement which procured the passage of an act of the Legislature 
empowering the city of Joliet to make an appropriation for the building of the Joliet Iron and 
Steel Works, the largest in this country, and with two exceptions, the largest in the world; 
this was accomplished in the face of the most violent opposition, not the least being the 
Governor's veto. He was married Jan. 16, 1862, to Miss Frances Louise SANGER, daughter of the 
late Col. Lorenzo P. SANGER, of Joliet, and has three children - Sanger (now a student in 
Racine College), Louise and Frances. Mr. Steel has collected a very valuable library of 6,000 
volumes, including works on law, medicine, theology, science and general literature, among which 
are many old and rare volumes, some of which were printed as long ago as 1537 ; a further notice 
of this library may be found in the history of the city, in another part of this work ; he also 
inaugurated the first public library in Joliet, in 1867. Mr. Steel was first elected Mayor of 
Joliet in 1869, and has three times since been elected to the same office.