Elbert Henry Gary (October 8, 1846August 15, 1927) was an American lawyer, county judge and business executive. He was a founder of U.S. Steel in 1901, bringing together partners J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and Charles M. Schwab. The city of Gary, Indiana, a steel town, was named for him when it was founded in 1906. Gary, West Virginia was also named after him. When trust busting President Theodore Roosevelt said that Gary was head of the steel trust, Gary considered it a compliment. The two men communicated in a nonconfrontational way, unlike Roosevelt's communications with leaders of other trusts. Biography Elbert Gary was born near Wheaton, Illinois, on October 8, 1846, to Erastus and Susan Abiah (Vallette) Gary. He attended Wheaton College and graduated first in his class from Union College of Law in 1868. The school later became the Northwestern University School of Law. Gary started to practice law in Chicago in 1871 and also maintained an office in Wheaton. He was a co-founder (with his uncle, Jesse Wheaton) of the Gary-Wheaton Bank. While he was working as a young corporate attorney for railroads and other clients in the years after the Great Chicago Fire, Gary was elected president of Wheaton three times, and when it became a city in 1892 he served as its first mayor for two terms. He served two terms as a DuPage County judge from 1882 to 1890. For the rest of his life he was known as "Judge Gary". It was a common custom in the nineteenth century for men to be addressed by military, political, or academic titles after those titles were no longer current. U.S. Steel Gary practiced law in Chicago for about twenty-five years. He was president of the Chicago Bar Association from 1893 to 1894. It was while he was hearing a case as a judge that he first became interested in the process of making steel and the economics of that business. In 1898 he became president of Federal Steel Corporation in Chicago, which included a barbed wire business, and retired from his law practice. Federal and other companies merged in 1901 to become U.S. Steel, and Gary was elected chairman of the board of directors and the finance committee. In 1900 at the age of 54, Gary moved from Wheaton to New York City, where he established the headquarters of U.S. Steel. Gary served as chairman