Thomas McIlvain, founder of Montco lumber business

Thomas Baird McIlvain, 96, of Rosemont and Sea Island, Ga., founder of a lumber business formerly based in Montgomery County, died Monday, July 29, of cancer at Waverly Heights in Gladwyne.

In 1956, Mr. McIlvain started the T. Baird McIlvain Co. in King of Prussia. He purchased five acres of land near the Pennsylvania Turnpike with ready access to railroad and highway, and built a large planing mill with a storage shed, according to a company history.

Connecting with some of the premium sawmills in the country, he developed an inventory of kiln-dried hardwoods and added milling services.

The lumber business had long been part of the family's history. The original company, J. Gibson McIlvain Co., a wholesale lumber supplier at 58th Street and Woodland Avenue, was started by Mr. McIlvain's great-great-grandfather in 1798. Legend has it that the firm began with a delivery vehicle and a rented lumber shed.

The company is still in business in Perry Hall, Md.

A teenager during the Depression, Thomas McIlvain left his studies at the Haverford School in 1933, after the 10th grade, and learned the trade by working in family-owned lumber mills in West Virginia.

When he hesitated, feeling guilty about taking a local breadwinner's job amid grinding poverty, he was told he must. "He learned and moved on," said his daughter Alida M. Haslett.

Mr. McIlvain wanted his own company. Started on a card table at his home, the firm grew quickly. His son Thomas B. Jr. joined the business in 1965, and expanded sales from Virginia to New Hampshire.

In the 1980s, the company moved its operations from King of Prussia to Hanover, York County. The name was changed to TBM Hardwoods in the 1990s. Mr. McIlvain retired in 1984.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. McIlvain was raised in Downingtown on the family farm, Smokey Ridge.

For years, he carried the first dollar he ever earned in his wallet. It came from a Quaker aunt whose fireplace he kept stoked.

" 'Thee has done a good job. I wish to reward thee,' " she told him after a year's service, Haslett said.

A hearing impairment kept Mr. McIlvain from enlisting in the Army during World War II. Instead, he joined the Coast Guard in Philadelphia.

Mr. McIlvain loved the outdoors and golf. He was a member of the Merion Cricket Club, Merion Golf Club, Pine Valley Golf Club, Sea Island Golf Club, and Bushkill Rod and Gun Club.

Besides his son and daughter, he is survived by his wife of 71 years, the former Mary M. Boles; another son, Walter B.; another daughter, Mary M. Begg; 13 grandchildren; and 15 great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be at 3 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 20, at the Church of the Redeemer, 230 Pennswood Rd., Bryn Mawr, Pa. 19010. Interment is private.

Donations may be made to the church.