Breeden column: A Big “Mac” Saves Mead
Tom Breeden
In a previous article we traced the evolution of papermaking in the Scioto River Valley of Ohio from Ingham Brothers on the Kinnikinnick Creek in 1810 to the mill on south end of Chillicothe that, thanks to Colonel Daniel Mead, became a Mead mill in 1890.
Thanks to a young George Houk Mead in 1905 the dilapidated mill on Honey Creek that had been so badly mismanaged became over the years a prominent international company. The mill in Chillicothe still operates today as Pixelle Specialty Solutions. A little known story to most is that the Mead Corporation and its holdings were saved a second time in 1978 by an energetic, abrasive, blunt, direct, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mead named James Wilmer “Mac” McSwiney.