Built together.
Built to last.

1854 — Pottsville, Pennsylvania

Jacob Ulmer arrives in Schuylkill County

Born in 1826 in Württemberg, Germany, Jacob Ulmer emigrated to the United States and settled in Pottsville, Pennsylvania in 1854. In March 1855 he opened a meat market on North Center Street — one man, one trade, one city. By 1873 he had built a packing plant along East Railroad Street in the Jalappa neighborhood of Pottsville — near the corner of Walnut and Railroad Streets — which grew into Jacob Ulmer Packing Co. — incorporated in 1890 and capable of processing 500 hogs per day. It became one of the largest packing operations in Pennsylvania, serving markets across Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Jacob Ulmer also served as director of the Pottsville Steam Heat and Power Company and the Edison Electric Illuminating Company — an immigrant who didn't just join the American economy, but helped power it.

Early 20th Century — Pottsville, Pennsylvania

President, Miners' Bank of Pottsville

Having built a commercial institution of regional significance, Jacob Ulmer went on to serve as President of the Miners' Bank of Pottsville — placing him at the center of the financial life of a community shaped by coal, labor, and ambition. He understood that building industries required building the infrastructure to finance them.

1849–1925 — Ohio, Pennsylvania & Chicago

James W. Ellsworth: Coal, Railroads & the World's Fair

While the Ulmers were building in Pottsville, the Ellsworth family was reshaping the American economy at a national scale. James William Ellsworth — Lincoln's father — was one of the most consequential industrialists of the Gilded Age. As a Pennsylvania coal mine owner, the town of Ellsworth, PA bears his name to this day.

His reach extended far beyond coal. Ellsworth joined the Board of the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition — the most ambitious civic undertaking in American history — and personally negotiated with the nation's railroad companies to raise the capital needed to build what came to be called the "Dream City." He helped secure European artworks for the Palace of Fine Arts (now the Museum of Science and Industry) and shaped the cultural vision of the fair that introduced America to the 20th century.

In 1925, he financed his son Lincoln's first attempt to cross the Arctic by air alongside Roald Amundsen — placing the Ellsworth family at the intersection of industrial power and human exploration.

1925–1935 — The Arctic & Antarctic

Lincoln Ellsworth & the Age of Polar Aviation

Lincoln Ellsworth became one of the defining explorers of the 20th century. He flew with Roald Amundsen on the 1925 Arctic expedition and the landmark 1926 transpolar airship voyage aboard the Norge — the first crossing of the Arctic Ocean by air. Then, over four Antarctic expeditions from 1933 to 1939, he systematically mapped the last unmapped continent on Earth.

His 1935 first transcontinental flight across Antarctica covered 2,300 miles of unknown terrain, produced foundational geological data, and expanded human knowledge of the planet's final frontier. That same flight named a peak after the woman he married: Mount Ulmer.

1933 — Zürich, Switzerland

Two families become one

Jacob Ulmer's daughter Mary Louise Ulmer was learning to fly at Walter Mittelholzer's airfield in Zürich when she met Lincoln Ellsworth. They were engaged within fourteen days and married in New York on May 23, 1933 — uniting the Ulmer family's tradition of commercial institution-building with the Ellsworth legacy of industrial power and relentless exploration.

Mary Louise went on to become a naturalist and historian. After Lincoln's death in 1951, she stewarded his legacy at the American Museum of Natural History for decades — a keeper of history, as her family had always been builders of it.

1940s–1950s — Grosse Pointe, Michigan

Jacob S. Ulmer: Paratrooper, Builder

Jacob Ulmer's grandson, Jacob S. Ulmer, carried the family's legacy into the 20th century in the most direct way imaginable — by earning it. He served his country as a paratrooper in the Army Air Corps, participating in the D-Day invasion of Normandy and the campaigns that followed. He saw the worst of what the world could produce and came home anyway with something to build.

Back on American soil, Jacob S. founded his own welding company in Grosse Pointe, Michigan — a business built from skill, discipline, and the kind of focused determination that only comes from having done hard things under impossible conditions. It was the Ulmer pattern, carried forward: serve first, then build.

2007 — Seattle, Washington

A final gift, across generations

Mary Louise Ulmer-Ellsworth passed in 1993, but her legacy reached forward. Through her estate, she posthumously funded Laura Ulmer's education at Seattle University's Albers School of Business in 2007 — ensuring that the family's belief in preparation, learning, and building would carry into the next generation.

It is perhaps the most direct expression of what the Ulmer family has always done: invest in people, trust in the future, and build something that outlasts you.