6-12-03
SAM BLACK WAS AUTO INSURANCE PIONEER
(School of Business named for Sam and Irene Black)
When Samuel P. Black Jr. joined Erie Insurance in 1927, he was the company's first claims manager. With a strong sense of creativity and a healthy dose of ambition, Black excelled as an agent, officer, and member of the company's board of directors over the course of seven decades. His continual efforts to cut costs, develop new products, satisfy customers, increase sales, and improve operations contributed substantially to Erie Insurance's growth and profitability.
Much of Black's family background is detailed in Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Automobile Insurance: Samuel P. Black Jr. and the Rise of Erie Insurance (Routledge 2001), a book co-authored by John Paul Rossi, associate professor of history at Penn State Erie, and Samuel P. Black Jr. In addition to the history of Erie Insurance and the Black family, the book chronicles the dramatic impact of the automobile on American life.
Black grew up in western Pennsylvania. He was the son of Samuel Patton Black Sr., whose father was a Scots-Irish Presbyterian minister, and Marion Toudy Black, whose father had a varied career as a lithographer, a Union soldier, a coal mine operator, a dry goods store owner, and a stock market speculator. Marion Black hoped that her first-born son would become a Protestant missionary. Rather than reading the religious books she gave him Black read everything he could get his hands on by Horatio Alger. The books were all stories about young boys who worked hard, saved, and became a success-the plan Sam Black Jr. adopted.
His mother taught him to read and to handle his money carefully early in life. At age 8 he sold matchboxes door-to-door, and at 11 he turned to selling newspapers. As a teen he delivered telegrams for Western Union and eventually worked for the U.S. Post Office when he graduated from high school. He attended Philadelphia School of the Bible, but left after for two years to seek his success in the business world. Following a brief experience selling electrical appliances, he went to work in 1921 at the age of 19 as a claims adjuster for Pennsylvania Indemnity. The company transferred him to its Erie office in 1923, where he met H.O. Hirt and Ollie Crawford. The rest, as they say, is history-the history of Erie Insurance.
Sam Black married Irene Held in 1932, and they had two children, Samuel P. "Pat" Black III and Elizabeth Lee Black, now deceased. He retired from Erie Insurance in 1961 and, at a time when most people end their careers, began his own insurance agency, Samuel P. Black and Associates. His business grew quickly and became one of Erie's leading insurance agencies in premium volume.
Following a distinguished career at his own agency, Sam Black Jr. died in December 2001 at the age of 99. His wife, Irene, died in May 2002 at the age of 95.
Samuel P. Black and Associates is led today by Samuel P. Black III, known to the community as Pat. He will represent the family in ongoing stewardship of the Sam and Irene Black School of Business endowment. Pat is a graduate of Penn State, a member of the School of Business Board of Visitors, and a director of the Penn State Erie Council of Fellows, of which he has been a member since 1994.
Pat Black recently received the John L. Robison Humanitarian Award at the 2003 annual dinner of the George J. D'Angelo Boys and Girls Club of Erie. He is a member of the board of directors of Erie Insurance Group, a trustee of Mercyhurst College, a former director of the French Creek Council of Boy Scouts of America, a current member of the Discovery Square Board of Trustees, and a member of the Flagship Niagara League Board of Directors. Black was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Erie Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Erie Conference on Community Development.
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Contact:
Loretta Brandon
814-898-6063 (O)
E-mail: lzb6@psu.edu