He went on to found the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (now PPG Industries), an early industry innovator which quickly grew into the largest manufacturer of plate glass in the United States, and amassed one of the largest fortunes in the United States at the time.

[2] Pitcairn began his professional life at the age of 14, working as an office boy for the general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Altoona.

[5] Upon forming a partnership with J. J. Vandergrift of Pittsburgh and George V. Forman of Buffalo, Pitcairn resigned from his position of general manager to focus exclusively on the oil business.

[4] In 1883, Pitcairn teamed up with Captain John Baptiste Ford and several others to establish the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company (PPG).

Based in Creighton, Pennsylvania (about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh along the Allegheny River), PPG soon became the United States' first commercially successful producer of high-quality, thick flat glass using the plate process.

PPG was also the world's first plate glass plant to power its furnaces with locally produced natural gas, an innovation which rapidly stimulated widespread industrial use of the cleaner-burning fuel.

Reputedly, Starkey's strong New Church beliefs about the ideal of marriage required her to conduct a close examination of the spiritual nature of her feelings for him.

[10] Following their marriage, the couple lived on Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia, until the completion of the new family estate, Cairnwood, in 1895.

According to public health historian James Colgrove, Pitcairn's opposition to vaccination stemmed from Swedenborgian teachings, a devotion to homeopathy, an alternative medical practice embraced by many New Church members, and his son Raymond's adverse reaction to a vaccination.

In May, 1910, an article by Pitcairn entitled "The Fallacy of Vaccination" was published in the Ladies Home Journal, a periodical with a readership of several million.

[19] Pitcairn subsequently authored a detailed report strongly opposing the commission's pro-vaccination conclusions.