The University of Chicago biographical sketches

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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

THE UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY

NEW YORK

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA

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THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY

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PUI JBRAft

ASTOK, LENOX
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

From a painting by John S. Sargent

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

THE UNIVERSITY OF

CHICAGO

BIOGRAPHICAL

SKETCHES

VOLUME I

By
THOMAS WAKEFIELD GOODSPEED

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•

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

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54466A

ASTCR. LH:

TILDEM I

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COPYRIGHT 1922 BY
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

All Rights Reserved

Published April 1922

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Composed and Printed By

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

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K
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TO
PRESIDENT HARRY PRATT JUDSON

TO WHOM

THE PREPARATION AND PUBLICATION
OF THESE SKETCHES ARE DUE

PREFACE

During the first thirty years of its history the University of Chicago
has had many generous friends. As their numbers grew President
Judson began to feel that they might, with the passing of the generation,
become only names, and that the University owed it to itself and to
them to preserve some record of their lives. As I had known many of
them personally he suggested that I should prepare "short sketches of
the donors of the various funds, endowments, scholarships, etc., of the
University and secure if possible, a photograph of each one." In com-
municating this wish to me, Mr. J. Spencer Dickerson, the Secretary
of the Board of Trustees, said: "The facts which you will doubtless be
able to secure, with any special information which your wide knowledge
of many of these funds provides, will secure for the University a large
amount of historical data which will be useful."

This was the genesis of the sketches appearing in this volume. At
the outset I expected to prepare a series of brief formal statements of
the outstanding facts in each life which might be deposited in the Uni-
versity archives and furnish material for the future historian. No
sooner, however, had I begun my work than I found the story of each
life so full of interest, that, without intention on my part, it assumed the
proportions the reader finds in these pages. The editor of the University
Record, Professor David A. Robertson, learning what I was doing, sought
the first sketch, which happened to be that of William B. Ogden, for
publication. President Judson encouraged me to go on as I had begun.
As each sketch was prepared it appeared in the Record, and the President
and editor came to count on one or more of the sketches for each num-
ber. As they multiplied President Judson expressed his wish that they
should be brought together in a volume. It is due to myself to say thai
the publication of this book is not owing to any suggestion or even wish
of my own. The President's wish has been repeated, quite independently
of him, by many too partial friends, and the foolish vanity of an author
has made it difficult for me to offer objection.

There are two or three things that make me glad to see these sketches
in a volume. I feel that the University has done something toward
discharging the debt of remembrance it owes the generous friends of its

Vll

viii PREFACE

earlier years. Some sort of story of their lives is put into an enduring
record. The remembrance of them will not entirely perish.

It is gratifying to feel that I have provided a few pages of material
for the future historian of the University. They will make his work
easier and his history more authentic.

Then, too, the lover of Chicago will find in this book much about
the early history of his city. The subjects of these sketches were Chicago
men vitally related to the beginnings of things in Chicago as well as to
its marvelous development. As I have spared no pains to tell the true
story of their lives something of the true story of Chicago also appears.

I have been surprised to find that fifteen of the eighteen men of
whom these sketches treat were of New England ancestry. They repre-
sent many callings. There are among them merchants, manufacturers,
dealers in real estate, bankers, heads of great corporations, presidents of
railroads, inventors, lawyers, judges, and clergymen. They are arranged
roughly in the order in which gifts were made.

This volume does not include all the sketches I have prepared, but
all that one book ought to include. As the University wishes to pre-
serve through future generations the remembrance of the generous men
and women who have been its benefactors, this book is called Volume I
of what will be a continuing series.

It may well be that one name will be particularly missed from these
pages — that of John D. Rockefeller, the Founder of the University.
There are three reasons for this. Mr. Rockefeller is still living. I
have already told the story of his munificence to the University in my
history of the first quarter-century of the institution. His beneficences
have become world-wide and the great story of his life will some day
be worthily told in an adequate biography.

My thanks are due to my sons, Charles T. B. Goodspeed and Pro-
fessor Edgar J. Goodspeed, for invaluable assistance in many ways.

THOMAS WAKEFIELD GOODSPEED

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

MARSHALL FIELD . i

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 35

E. NELSON BLAKE . 57

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT ..... 83

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER . 101

CHARLES JEROLD HULL .123

SILAS BOWMAN COBB .... • 147

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT •

CHARLES HITCHCOCK .... •

JOSEPH REYNOLDS . • 225

NATHANIEL COLVER ... ... .243

LA VERNE NOYES -257

ELI BUELL WILLIAMS AND HOBART W. WILLIAMS ... . 279

JOSEPH BOND .289

FREDERICK AUGUSTUS SMITH .... -3*3

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS -335

JOHN CRERAR • 359

INDEX , 381

P0B£j : [ i&

MARSHALL FIELD

MARSHALL FIELD

Marshall Field lived in Chicago nearly fifty years. For the last
thirty years of that period the name of no other citizen was more widely
known. In the same way, during a quarter of a century in which Mr.
Field was comparatively unknown, one of the greatest names in Chicago
was that of William B. Ogden, the subject of the second of these sketches.
The ancestors of Mr. Field came to America about 1630, settling tempo-
rarily in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Joining in the migration to the
valley of the Connecticut, they left Dorchester to the company with
whom the forbears of E. Nelson Blake, the subject of the third of these
sketches, came over. With them, in this migration into the wilderness,
were the forefathers of Sidney A. Kent of whom another of these sketches
treats. Zechariah Field, who came to the new world in 1630, was one
of the company that made that leap into the dark among the savages of
the western wilderness. After settling in Hartford, he later made his
way northward, first to Northampton and finally before his death in
1666, yet farther north, but still in the Connecticut valley, to Hatfield.
From Hatfield, during the following century, the family spread into the
surrounding region, one branch reaching what became, about 1762, the
township of Conway and there united with their neighbors in subduing
the wilderness and building a Christian community. Here lived John
and his wife Fidelia Nash Field and reared a family of four sons and two
daughters — Chandler A., Joseph Nash, Marshall, Helen Eliza, Henry,
and Laura Nash. Three other children did not live to maturity. It was
a family of farmers, and the oldest son, true to the traditions of his race,
lived his life out on the farm, dying at forty-six in 1875. Joseph Nash
and Henry, one three years older and the other more than six years
younger than Marshall, were taken into business with him first as clerks
and then as partners. His sister Helen married Hon. Lyman D. James
of Williamsburgh, about twelve miles from Conway and is still living in
that place. Laura married Henry Dibblee. They made their home
in Chicago and Mr. Dibblee looked after Mr. Field's real estate interests
for many years.

Marshall Field was the third child and the third son in the family.
He is usually represented to have been born in 1835. But the family

2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Bible and the public records of the town of Conway show that he was
born August 18, 1834. His surviving sister, Mrs. Helen Field James,
assures me that he was two years and a half older than herself and
that she was born in February, 1837. I think, therefore, it cannot be
doubted that the true date of Mr. Field's birth was August 18, 1834.
The place was his father's farm on what is still known as Field's Hill,
about a mile south of the village of Conway. Field's Hill is one of the
easternmost of the Berkshire Hills. It is distinguished by two peaks
rising 1,100 and 1,140 feet. The view from its summits is so extensive,
varied, picturesque, and even sublime that there is "not a month in the
year in which enterprising pedestrians do not climb it" to behold the
beautiful and wonderful prospect presented in every direction. It is said
that " the hills and woods near at hand, the valleys with their attractive
villages, and the more distant purple mountains form a view that seems
to many as beautiful as any in the state." On this sightly hill named
for the family which had long possessed it, Marshall passed his boyhood.
He was not blind to the variety and beauty ever before him and used
to declare that one would have to go far to find anything to surpass the
wonderful scenery he looked upon every day of his youth.

The Fields of Conway were hard-working, upright, God-fearing
farmers who dug out of the stony soil no more than a comfortable living.
Their activities were confined to their farms. Their names are almost
absent from the recorded history of the town for more than a hundred
years. Then Marshall Field and his brothers were born and the name
became the most famous in the town's history. How shall we account
for this sudden and extraordinary flowering of a humble family into the
peculiar genius which Marshall Field developed? There have been,
indeed, other illustrious Fields in other branches of the family. One
wonders how much of their genius these distinguished men owed to their
mothers. It is certain that to his mother Marshall always recognized
that he was peculiarly indebted. This mother, Fidelia Nash, was also
of Puritan ancestry. Her mother was one of the most capable and useful
women of the community whose abilities and virtues were extolled in the
town histories. She herself was a woman of refinement and strength
of character. It was said of her that "she reared her sons to avoid the
appearance of evil and to regard a fixed bad habit as one of the greatest
dangers to success." She, with her husband, was a member of the
Second Congregational Church of Conway and in the house of worship
her daughters have placed a tablet in her memory. Mrs. James writes
that a much loved and admired uncle of the Field children said of their
parents, "the father's wonderful judgment of men and affairs and his

MARSHALL FIELD 3

common sense combined with the mother's love of study and refinement
made a good cross in their sons." Mrs. James speaks of her brother
Marshall as being "a very bright, happy, and most attractive boy."
Anyone who knew him in mature life can easily believe that as a boy he
must have been "most attractive."

From his early boyhood Marshall grew gradually into all the work
of the farm. He milked the cows, plowed the hillside fields, made hay,
planted and hoed, cut and husked corn, and did the thousand and one
other things that all farmers' boys did. He enjoyed the sports of fishing,
hunting, coasting, and skating that the wonderful boys' country he
lived in invited; a country abounding in lovely streams, covered with
enchanting forests, diversified with hills and valleys, rivers and moun-
tains, farms and villages.

On one side of Field's Hill was Pumpkin Hollow, into which, if they
became separated from the vines, the pumpkins of the hillside farm
would roll. Here was the district school the Field children attended.
It has been repeatedly recorded that Marshall finished his education in
the Conway Academy. There was no Conway Academy till long after
his school days were over. There was a private school which later
became the village academy and has now developed into the high school.
This private school, with its limited curriculum, but an unusually gifted
teacher, Deacon Gary, he also attended.

Though very diffident and reserved, he seems to have entered into
the sports of the other boys. One story that seems to be well authen-
ticated has come down from those days. The boys were accustomed to
play "fox and hounds." One day, being the fox, he led the hounds a
chase to South Deerfield and back. In the flight from the hounds
devious ways were followed, the hills, valleys, and woods making this
easy. It was afterward calculated that he led the hounds a chase of
nearly twenty miles in two hours and a hah' and returned untouched and
un winded. The strenuous life of the farm had given him speed and
endurance.

His school life ended in 1851 when he was about seventeen years old.
Shortly before this time the Field's Hill farm had been cut off from access
to the highway by the laying out of a new road and the abandonment of
the old one. It had consequently been sold and a new farm had been
bought. Thus it happens that the birthplace of Marshall Field is now
marked only by the cellar of the old homestead.

Marshall never liked the farm. When about sixteen he confided to
his parents his wish to follow a business career and secured their consent
to leave home and seek a clerkship at the end of the school year. This

4 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

he found in the autumn of 1851 in the store of Deacon Davis of Pittsfield.
Conway was a village of a few hundred people. Pittsfield was a small
city of some thousands of people. It was about twenty-five miles west
of Conway in Berkshire, the westernmost county of Massachusetts.
It was, in 1852, beginning to grow into the thriving city it has since
become. Here the slender, quiet country boy started in to learn to
become a merchant. During much of the time he was in Pittsfield his
older brother Joseph was with him; though not in the same store the
two brothers lived together. Just off from the farm, socially backward,
and naturally reserved, they did not seek acquaintances. They worked
long hours and when the day's work was over had little time or inclina-
tion for anything but the quiet and rest of their boarding-house room.
Marshall opened and closed the store, put up the shutters at night and
took them down in the morning, and prepared the store for business.
He did not at the outset show much promise to Deacon Davis. He was
very quiet and unassuming, timid and ill at ease in his strange surround-
ings, and the oft-repeated story is true that his employer concluded and
did not hesitate to say that he would never make a merchant. But
soon it was noticed that the women customers liked him. His unpreten-
tious, courteous demeanor and his attention to their wants pleased them
and he could sell goods to them.

One interesting incident is told of those years in Pittsfield. It is
related that the father of J. Pierpont Morgan, having some business
with Deacon Davis, visited Pittsfield and brought with him his son.
To Marshall was given the task of entertaining J. Pierpont while the
father transacted his business; and an acquaintance was thus begun
by the two boys which was renewed many years later when both had
become leaders in the financial world.

What took Marshall Field to Chicago? The year he became a
clerk in Pittsfield — 1851 — was the year before Chicago's first connection
with the East by rail. The entrance into that city in the spring of 1852
of the Michigan Central and Michigan Southern roads gave such an
extraordinary impulse to the city's growth that in the succeeding four
years its population increased from 38,000 to 86,000. It became the
greatest primary grain market in the world, and all kinds of business
increased enormously. The story of Chicago's development became the
common talk of the older states. Customers spoke of it across the
counters with the clerks in every village store. Ambitious young men
dreamed of it as the city where their business talents might find scope.
The name "Chicago" became synonymous with opportunity. It

MARSHALL FIELD 5

spelled opportunity to Marshall Field, and at the end of five years in the
Pittsfield store he informed Deacon Davis that he was leaving him to go
West.

Many ridiculous stories are told as to the impression he made on his
employer. An absurd conversation between the two is recorded in
which the employer is represented as laughing at the clerk's proposal
to go West and telling him he would never make a success in the West,
but would starve to death out there. The facts are exactly contrary to
all this. Deacon Davis quickly revised his first impression of the coun-
try boy clerk. He was not slow in discovering the unique personality
concealed under that quiet and unpretentious exterior. He saw the quite
unusual promise of the boy. I have this direct assurance from Mrs.
James, "Deacon Davis offered my brother a partnership in the store,
something he had never offered anyone before. My brother refused,
saying he wished to see the West." A curious story has been told, with
so much interesting detail as to make it seem convincing, that Joseph N.
Field, the next older brother, and Henry, the younger brother, had
preceded Marshall to the West and that he joined them and spent several
months with them in Jackson, Michigan. One of these interesting
details relates the introduction of Marshall to George M. Pullman by
Henry who was engaged with the inventor in promoting the Pullman
Sleeping car enterprise. As a matter of fact, Henry Field, in 1855-56,
was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, having been born in 1841, was still at
home in school and did not go West till five or six years later, when he
joined Marshall in Chicago. The older brother Joseph did not leave
Massachusetts till 1857, when he went to Sioux City, Iowa, serving as
court clerk till 1864, and then for one year as cashier of the Omaha
National Bank. He then went to Chicago and joined Marshall, who
seems to have gone straight from Pittsfield to that city in 1856.

Chicago, as a city, was then only eighteen years old. Its business
district had not yet been lifted up out of the mud. The pavements
were poor. The sidewalks were of wood for the most part and at various
levels. It was a city of wooden buildings with a few brick and stone
structures in the business district.

In the same year in which Marshall Field made Chicago his home,
Charles L. Hutchinson, twenty years younger, became a Chicagoan.
So also did Andrew MacLeish, a dry-goods merchant like Mr. Field.
The two leading dry-goods houses were those of Potter Palmer, 137-139
Lake Street, and Cooley, Wadsworth & Company, 205 South Water
Street. These stores antedated Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company and

6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Mandel Brothers, since grown into great houses. Potter Palmer, in
1856, was a retail store reaching out into the wholesale field; Cooley,
Wadsworth & Company was a wholesale house doing no retail business.
Three stories are told as to the capital which Marshall Field took
with him to Chicago. The first is that he arrived in that city with
something approaching a thousand dollars. The second says that he
borrowed one hundred doUars from his father with which to go West,
giving his note and paying it in full before a year had passed. The third,
and this is the common tradition, relates that when he secured his first
position in Chicago he had less than a dollar in his pocket. The stories
all agree that he was no capitalist and began his Chicago career at, or
very near, the bottom of the ladder. The Chicago city directory of
1856-57, published in June, 1857, contained this record, " Marshall Field,
clerk, 205 South Water Street, Mass. 6m." indicating that he was a new
arrival from Massachusetts and in June, 1857, had been in the city about
six months. The directory does not indicate where he lived till the fol-
lowing year and then enters his place of residence as the Metropolitan
Hotel, corner of Randolph and WeUs streets. His first employers were
Cooley, Wadsworth & Company. The firm, immmediately after he
entered its employment, began the erection of a fine new store at 42, 44,
and 46 Wabash Avenue and became Cooley, Farwell & Company. Thus
emerged into the business life of Chicago that great Christian citizen and
merchant, John V. Farwell. Marshall Field was twenty-two years old
when he became a clerk in this house. His sister writes me, "His salary
the first year was $400. He slept in the store, bought no new clothes
except a pair of overalls, and saved $200." He served in the double
capacity of clerk in the store and of traveling salesman, and the overalls
suggest that there were manual-labor jobs also. In his trips for the
house he was struck by the extraordinary rapidity with which the country
was filling up, new villages, each with new stores, springing up everywhere.
He began to realize what an ever-increasing demand for goods would be
made on Chicago by this extraordinary growth of population. Young
Field's experience in Pittsfield had wrought a great change in him. He
was no longer a bashful, timid, unsocial boy. He had acquired such
confidence in himself that when he applied, perhaps to Mr. Farwell him-
self, who was a junior partner in 1856, for a position he is said to have
assured him that he was a good clerk and could sell goods. If he really
said this of himself we may be sure that he did it with an air of such quiet
confidence that he was believed. One who knew him prior to 1860 tells
me that he had lost the reserve and social backwardness of his boy-

MARSHALL FIELD 7

hood, and was cordial, friendly, social. Always good looking and dress-
ing with taste, being very courteous and intent on selling goods, he made
a most favorable impression on the customers who thronged the store
and gradually built up as a clerk in the store and as a traveling salesman
a large following who wished to do their trading with him.

In 1856 the firm did a business of $600,000. It weathered the finan-
cial storm of 1857 and thereafter its business rapidly increased. Large
demands were made on the employes and young Field was found ready
to take on any amount of work. A fellow-clerk tells me that he did not
succeed by working eight hours a day, but often put in eighteen hours.
This was, perhaps, a rhetorical flourish, but Mr. Farwell himself says
that he always knew what was in stock, that he was a good caretaker of
stock, knew how to show it off to the best advantage and was always on
hand and ready to do anything in his power in carrying out the policy of
the house. Mr. Farwell is quoted as saying that while in his first months,
"he was not particularly impressive, in a very short time it was dis-
covered that he was an extraordinary salesman. He gave undivided
time to our affairs and it came about in the most natural way that having
some capital saved and having a particular line of trade of his own in
the community he should be able to buy in with us and start the career
which was to make him the first merchant in the world. He had
the merchant instinct. He lived for it and for it alone. He never
lost it."

Mr. Field became general manager and a junior partner in the firm
of Cooley, Farwell & Company, at the beginning of 1861. Two or
three years later the bookkeeper, LeviZ. Leiter, was admitted to the firm.
The business had greatly increased, getting into the millions annually.
After retiring from active business Mr. Farwell wrote out reminiscences
of his life which later his son, John V., Jr., prepared for publication by
the Lakeside Press, under the title, Some Recollections of John V. Farwell.
In this book I find this sentence: "We had taken in as partners Marshall
Field and Levi Z. Leiter, who had been our clerks for several years, lend-
ing them $100,000 each."

Mr. Field had now got his feet on the first rungs of the ladder and
he began to climb rapidly. His position in the firm became daily more
important. With new responsibility he developed new talents and at
the beginning of 1864 the firm became Farwell, Field & Company, the
company being Mr. Leiter. Henry Field, Marshall's younger brother,
had meantime followed him to Chicago and became a clerk in the store.
The business had become so large and the business of buying in New

8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

York so important that one of the partners was needed there and for
a time Mr. Field's residence was transferred to that city.

In January, 1863, he had married Miss Nannie Scott, the daughter
of Robert Scott of Iron ton, Ohio, and in 1864 their residence was in New
York. Mr. and Mrs. Field had three children. Lewis, bom in 1866
and dying the same year; Marshall, Jr., born April 21, 1867; and Ethel
Newcomb, born August 28, 1873. Their son, Marshall, Jr., married
Miss Albertine D. Huck, daughter of Louis C. Huck of Chicago. The
daughter, in 1901, married Sir David Beatty, who became, after the
Great War, Admiral of the British Fleet, and in 1919, First Sea Lord.
The three years beginning in 1864 were among the most interesting
in the history of the Chicago dry-goods business. In that year, as I have
said, Farwell, Field & Company came into being. Later in the same year
Carson & Pirie started their wholesale house, followed three years later
by the organization of their retail department under Andrew MacLeish,
the firm name being Carson, Pirie & Company. In 1865 the three
brothers, Leon, Simon, and Emmanuel Mandel organized the firm of
Mandel Brothers. One wonders what the history of the dry-goods
business of Chicago would have been had the firm of Farwell, Field &
Company been continued. But it was not continued; it lasted but a
single year. A partial breakdown in health, with, perhaps, other reasons,
led Potter Palmer to decide to relieve himself of the burden of his store
and he offered the business to Marshall Field and L. Z. Leiter. Their
partnership with Mr. Farwell — four years in the case of Mr. Field, a
shorter time in the case of Mr. Leiter — -had been very profitable to
them. But Mr. Palmer offered his business to them on what Mr. Farwell
called "very handsome terms." Evidently they were so handsome
that they recognized the opening as a great opportunity. With what
they had made in the Farwell partnership they were able to buy
into the Palmer establishment. The name of the new firm was
Field, Palmer & Leiter. The Palmer was not, as might be supposed,
Potter Palmer, but his brother, Milton J. Palmer, who, no doubt, repre-
sented him in the firm. The capital was $890,000 and the interests of the
partners were as follows: Mr. Palmer $450,000; Mr. Field $260,000;
Mr. Leiter $130,000; leaving $50,000 for minor interests. Curiously
enough, Potter Palmer was a "special partner" in the firm of Allen and
McKey, which, just across the street, dealt in "Carpets, curtain goods,
bedding, etc." The store of Field, Palmer & Leiter was a fine, large
building at 110-112-114-116 Lake Street, which at that time was, as,
indeed, it had been from the beginning, the great retail street of Chicago.

MARSHALL FIELD 9

In this store they entered upon the conduct of what was the largest and
most profitable retail business in the city and of a wholesale trade that
was beginning to assume large proportions.

Thus, at thirty years of age, Mr. Field was at the head of a great
business which he continued to expand and to dominate for the rest of his
life, a period of forty-one years. Beginning in Chicago at twenty-two
as a $400 clerk, in three years he had made his way into a partnership
in a large and prosperous concern, and in five years more was at the head
of a great business. It was the romance of success of a business genius
who had toiled as incessantly to win his way as though toil alone would
doit.

Some of Mr. Field's methods of conducting business were well known
to all his customers. The store was a one-price store, the price being
plainly marked on the goods. The goods were what they were repre-
sented to be. Sales were for cash, or, in the case of well-accredited custo-
mers, on thirty or sixty days' time. If credit was given, payment was
expected to be prompt. Goods could be bought on approval and
returned or exchanged. Mr. Field made it a rule not to advertise
in the Sunday papers. Mr. John G. Shedd, the present head of Marshall
Field & Company, recently said, " We regard Sunday advertising as an
infraction of this very wholesome, many-centuries-old, religious dictum,
and are glad to follow it," viz., that six days for labor and the seventh
for rest is best for employer and employe. Mr. Field felt that this
with the practice of lowering the curtains of their display windows from
Saturday night to Monday morning, made for better citizenship. He
specialized on Monday advertising. His conservatism was revealed
in his insistence that the firm should have a large daily cash balance in
the bank.

On becoming the head of the new firm he at once made it his business
to become acquainted with every employe in the store. He made a
study of them until he knew their habits, associations, abilities, and
.special gifts, if they had such gifts. Thus he was able to put each one
where he was best fitted to go and to advance those who showed ability
and zeal. One very human thing is related of him — that whenever he
was leaving Chicago to be long absent he would go through departments,
shake hands with employes, and leave with them "a kind word of
interest and farewell. "

In 1866 Mr. Field's older brother, Joseph, entered the store as a clerk.
In 1867 the Palmer connection came to an end and the firm was recon-
structed by taking into it as partners L. G. Woodhouse, Henry J. Willing,

io BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

and Henry Field, the younger brother. Two years later, Joseph, the
older brother, was made a partner. On the final buying out of Mr.
Palmer the firm had become Field, Leiter & Company and so remained
for the next fourteen years. Mr. Field and Mr. Leiter were each one-
third owners, the other third being divided among the other partners.
I have before me as I write, the original articles of copartnership written
out in long hand, dated January i, 1869, when Joseph N. Field came
into the firm, "for and during the term of three years, ending on the first
day of January, A.D. 1872, .... Capital Stock to be Twelve Hundred
Thousand Dollars ($1,200,000.00) and to be furnished as follows: Mar-
shall Field to furnish $400,000.00, Levi Z. Leiter to furnish $400,000.00,"
and the other four partners $100,000.00 each.

It was a fine illustration of the solidarity of the New England Puritan
family that Mr. Field brought his brothers into connection with himself
at a very early date, shared with them his prosperity, and kept them
with him as long as they would stay, Joseph remaining in the firm to the
end of his own life in 1914, eight years after his brother Marshall's death.
Other partners came in and all of them with the exception of Mr. Shedd
went out. Henry Field went out, but returned, and Joseph was never
let out.

It must not be supposed that the firm of Field, Leiter & Company
always had plain sailing and enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity. This
was very far from being true. The new firm had hardly been organized
when the financial storm of 1867 burst upon the business world. It was
a very severe strain on a concern consisting of young men doing a large
business on what, in the nature of the case, must have been a compara-
tively limited capital. Three things, probably, saved them — the very
profitable business they had been doing for more than two years; Mr.
Field's custom of keeping a large balance in the bank; and the firm's
practice of both buying and selling for cash, or on very short-time credit.
There has been a vast deal of foolish talk about Mr. Field's never bor-
rowing and never giving a note. In the early years the firm often bor-
rowed large amounts. They bought for cash or on such short time as
to save the cash discount, but they borrowed to keep their bank balances
good. And so they weathered the financial storm of 1867 and then for
four years went prosperously on. Mr. Field, meantime, began house-
keeping at 306 Michigan Avenue, near Harrison or Congress Street.

In the autumn of 1868 the firm left Lake Street and moved to a
handsome stone block on the northeast corner of State and Washington
streets. The building was 160 feet square and six stories high with

MARSHALL FIELD II

basement. It was a new structure which had just been built by Mr.
Palmer, who owned the corner on which it stood. As everybody knows,
that corner is still a part — a small part — of the site of the retail store.
In it the wholesale and retail departments were then carried on together.
The retail occupied the first floor and basement, and the wholesale the
four stories above, the upper one being the packing and shipping floor.
Here for two and one-half years they did a great business, the sales reach-
ing $12,000,000 a year. It was during that time that the store attained
the comparative standing and the high reputation it has maintained for
more than fifty years. Mr. Field began to be considered a rich man and
was on the way to the largest mercantile success. With his prosperity,
his mind and heart enlarged. He had become a member of the First
Presbyterian Church, and took an active part in its services and work.
For some years he acted as an usher, showing the congregation to their
seats. Later he became a trustee of the church and continued in that
office for thirty years. He became a director of the Chicago Relief and
Aid Society, which has developed into the United Charities of Chicago.
He was a prominent member of the Young Men's Association, known
also as the Chicago Library Association. This organization had done
a useful work in Chicago, gathering a library and bringing distinguished
men to the city for lecture courses. It had, however, by 1871, declined
somewhat from its highest prosperity and a movement arose for merging
it with the Young Men's Christian Association which was increasing in
numbers and usefulness, even then promising to be what it has since
become, one of the most beneficent movements in the history of the city.
Mr. Field favored the merger. Others opposed it. At the annual
election in the spring of 1871 Mr. Field was the candidate for president
of those who favored the union. There was a hot contest, but he was
elected by a large majority. Someone then discovered that at all elections,
ballots, according to the by-laws, must be printed on white paper. The
ballots by which Mr. Field had been elected were printed on paper of
another color. Thereupon a new election was ordered. Disgusted by
these tactics those members who favored the union allowed the election
to go by default and a few months later the Great Fire of 1871 came and
the Young Men's Association ceased to exist. Mr. Field was for a time
associated with the Chicago Historical Society. He, with others, was
interested in founding the Art Institute and the Citizens' League.
While still a young man Mr. Field had thus personally identified himself
with the life of the city and it looked as though he might enter more
and more widely into active connection with those institutions which

12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

have since that day done so much for the public welfare. Perhaps he
was diverted from this high privilege by the exigencies of business.

The autumn of 1871 saw the beginning of seven or eight troublous
years for Field, Leiter & Company. On October 8 and 9 the business
district and the North Side of Chicago were destroyed by the Great Fire.
For some hours on Monday, October 9, it seemed as though the conflagra-
tion had passed by the Field store and that, with the whole district east
of Dearborn Street, it would be saved. Sometime in the forenoon
Horace White, editor of the Chicago Tribune, went home, confident
that the Tribune building was safe. He gives us this view of what he
saw on the way east across State Street and what he thought. He says,
"The immense store of Field, Leiter & Company I observed to be under
a shower of water from their own apparatus and since the First National
Bank, a fire-proof building, protected it on one corner, I concluded that
the progress of the flames in that direction was stopped." So, also,
thought Mr. Field and Mr. Leiter. Both of them were at the store with
many of the employes long before daylight on Monday morning. They
might have saved a great part of their stock, but believing that the fire
had passed them by, they delayed for many hours the beginning of the
removal of their goods. While the store fire apparatus flooded the out-
side walls on every side from roof to basement, Mr. Field, inside the
building, superintended the soaking of heavy blankets and hanging
them over the windows. It would have been wiser had they employed
every one of their wagons from the early hours of the morning in empty-
ing the great store of its goods. The fire finally came upon them suddenly
and unexpectedly and then there was hot haste. Goods were loaded
into wagons and taken to Mr. Leiter's barn on Calumet Avenue near
Twentieth Street and to the barns of his neighbors. There were but two
or three hours for the work and only a small part of the great stock could
be removed. The insurance policies were taken from the vaults and
carried in a bag to Mr. Leiter's house and Mr. Higinbotham and a book-
keeper spent two days and two nights in going through and listing them.
The clerk slept on the floor in the room with the policies. The house of
Mr. Field was too near the line of fire to be used. Goods were in transit
from the East at the tune of the fire as they were every day. An
abandoned railroad roundhouse and a paintshop were hastily secured
at Laporte, Indiana, and in them all consignments of goods from the
East were temporarily stored until they were crammed full.

The Wednesday, October n, issue of the Tribune said: "Field,
Leiter & Company and John V. Farwell & Company will recommence

MARSHALL FIELD 13

business today." Other business men were equally prompt in making
new beginnings. The courage of Chicago rose to the greatness of the
challenge and "business as usual" almost immediately became the rule.
The plan was to "carry on, " and in order to do this business men had to
take what they could get to operate in.

Field, Leiter & Company, in their extremity, bought outright the
car barns of the Chicago City Railway Company and the land on which
they stood, and within a little over a fortnight the business was again
in operation in these barns. They paid $91,785 for this property. A
few weeks after the fire William A. Croffut, managing editor of the
Chicago Evening Post, writing of the business resurrection, said: "Down
State Street to Twentieth, and here is the largest dry-goods store in the
city or the West— Field, Leiter & Company. Here are hundreds of clerks
and thousands of patrons a day busy along the spacious aisles and the
vast vistas of ribbons and laces and cloaks and dress-goods. This tells
no story of a fire. The ladies jostle each other as impatiently as of old
and the boys run merrily to the incessant cry of 'cash.' Yet this immense
bazaar was, six weeks ago, the horsebarn of the South Side Railway.
After the fire the hay was pitched out, the oats and harness and equine
gear were hustled into another building, both floors were varnished, and
the beams were painted or whitewashed for their new service. Here,
where ready-made dresses hang, then hung sets of double harness.
Yonder, where a richly robed body leans languidly across the counter
and fingers point laces, a manger stood and offered hospitality to a
disconsolate horse. A strange metamorphosis — yet it is but an extreme
illustration of the sudden changes the city has undergone."

So many widely differing reports have been made as to the financial
condition in which the Great Fire left Field, Leiter & Company that it
is gratifying to be able to state the exact facts. Mr. Stanley Field has
put into my hands a letter sent to his father, Joseph N. Field, in Eng-
land by Mr. Leiter, in December, 1871- — two and one-half months after
the fire. The balance sheet showing the condition of the firm in detail
accompanied the letter. This balance sheet showed that the merchan-
dise saved amounted to $583,409.09, and that the firm had $2,200,932.29
insurance, of which they counted $339,951.15 uncollectible. The total
assets were $4,564,802.57 and the total liabilities $1,936,922.44, and the
net assets $2,627,880.13. The accompanying letter to the partner in
England dated December 28, 1871, says:

You will see that we have left a very handsome capital to continue our business.
Our sales have been very handsome since the fire, and I think will yield us a net profit

14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

of at least $125,000, making a surplus of $2,750,000. This does not include the
personal property of either of the partners outside of the business. Marshall you
know has considerable. Our indebtedness may seem large to you at the time of the
fire, but you must remember that it occurred in the midst of our largest fall sales, the
sales of September being larger than our entire indebtedness. I do not think our
present indebtedness will exceed $500,000, perhaps not more than $450,000. We have
U. S. Bonds, cash, and good insurance sufficient to cancel this entire amount.

The prospects for our jobbing trade in the spring are very good. The store we
are building for the wholesale, corner Madison and Market, will give us very good
quarters, much better for jobbing purposes than before. For our retail we have no
plan, except to remain in the present quarters for at least a year ....

Palmer sold the corner on which our old store stood, some days ago, for $350,000.
There were 160 feet, making the price about $2100 per foot. Where we shall finally
locate the retail department it is impossible now to tell. It is not at all probable that
we shall again get the two together.

This interesting letter was written in longhand (as it was before the
days of the typewriter), and was signed "Levy Leiter."

As suggested in this letter, soon after the fire the firm leased the
northeast corner of Madison and Market streets from L. C. P. Freer and
erected a large, very plain brick building which the wholesale business
entered early in 1872 and continued to occupy for fifteen years. Here
also was established a second retail store. It took longer for the retail
business to get back to its old location at State and Washington streets.
Mr. Palmer had sold the corner to the Singer Company and that company
put up a handsome five-story building and rented it to the firm which
occupied it in 1873, taking, apparently, a five-year lease.

The astonishing recovery of Chicago from its apparent ruin by the
Great Fire is illustrated by the following facts: The dry-goods business
of the city in 1870 amounted, it is said, to $35,000,000. In 1872, the
year after the fire, the total had risen to $40,000,000.

With the separation of the wholesale and retail and the occupation
by each department of its own building, there seemed for Field, Leiter
& Company an assurance of greater prosperity than they had ever
enjoyed. They were recovering from the effects of the Great Fire and
doing a larger and more profitable business than before when the panic
of 1873 swept over the country spreading financial ruin on every side.
This financial storm was no temporary squall. That student of eco-
nomics, Professor Harold G. Moulton, says, "The great crisis of 1873
affected practically every operation of commerce and finance, and shook
the credit structure to its very foundations. The succeeding depression
was unprecedented in severity and duration, continuing in most branches

MARSHALL FIELD 15

of industry until the end of 1878, and in some lines until 1879. The
largest number of failures occurred in 1878."

Before the business revival came, still another calamity befell Field,
Leiter & Company. In 1877 their retail store burned, entailing a loss
of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars and again interrupting
business. They survived, however, both the business depression and
the losses of the fire. The store was rebuilt but not yet occupied by
them, when, in 1879, a new blow fell upon them. Owing to some mis-
understanding with the owner over the terms of the lease, due, it is said, to
the brusque and dictatorial manner of Mr. Leiter, a delay occurred and
the property was leased to a rival firm. Thereupon Mr. Field took the
matter into his own hands. He had to have that corner and, acting with
the promptness and vigor which characterized him when thoroughly
roused, within nine days after the execution of the lease he bought the
property from the owner and on the same day secured from the rival
house a release of their lease of the store. It was, naturally, a costly
transaction, though he was not held up by the firm having the lease with
unreasonable terms. But from that day he began to buy, as he was able,
the block on which the store stood. He never succeeded, indeed, in
persuading all the owners to part with their holdings, but he continued
his purchases until he owned perhaps seven-eighths of the block and the
great store, twelve stories high, now covers the entire square. The new
building on the old site which the retail store occupied in 1879 had six
stories, one more than the structure destroyed by the second fire, and
thus, the business re-began on the former site with enlarged facilities.
Meantime, in 1878, Harlow N. Higinbotham, who had been with the
firm from the beginning and had developed into one of the most compe-
tent credit men in the dry-goods business, had been admitted to a partner-
ship.

Mr. Leiter, who had, with Mr. Field, bought the Palmer business
in 1865, was a bookkeeper and in the new firm had charge of that part
of the business. He was also credit man until Mr. Higinbotham was
trained for that post. He looked after the finances while Mr. Field
managed the merchandising. Mr. Field was the merchant; Mr. Leiter
was the office man. He was regarded as a very able financier. But
anyone who knew them even slightly could not fail to wonder how two
men so radically different in temperament and disposition could work
together in business permanently and happily. It was no surprise,
therefore, to find that they could not. They separated at the beginning

i6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

of 1 88 1, having been in business together for sixteen years, or, counting
the period when both were partners of John V. Farwell, seventeen or
eighteen years. It is probable that the trouble over the temporary loss
of the lease of the retail store two years before had something to do with
the final separation. Shortly after this change Henry J. Willing and
Henry Field retired and John G. McWilliams entered the firm as a
partner. The name of the firm had become, what it still remains, Marshall
Field & Company, Mr. Field owning the majority interest and in the
public mind representing the firm.

Before the reorganization as Marshall Field & Company the stress
and strain of overcoming the series of disasters and weathering the
financial storms that successively threatened the existence of the firm
through a period of eleven years, from 1867 to 1878, had come to an end
and the great business had been solidly established. From that time
it went on far more prosperously than ever. The transactions before
the fire had reached $12,000,000 annually. In 1881 they had increased
to $25,000,000; in 1890 they aggregated $35,000,000; in 1900 $47,000,
ooo; and before Mr. Field's death amounted to $68,000,000. However
small the percentage of profit might be on such an enormous business
its annual aggregate could not be otherwise than very large, enriching
the head of the house and all his partners.

In 1871 Mr. Field had sent his brother Joseph to England to superin-
tend the buying in that country. In 1881 the Paris office was established
that "the house might be in constant touch with the world's center of
fashion." One by one other purchasing offices abroad were added until
Field agencies were found all over the civilized world. Mr. Field also
adopted the policy of buying or building manufacturing establishments
of his own as well as that of arranging with factories and mills for taking
their entire product. He was a little timid in taking great new steps in
advance. When Mr. Shedd urged the policy of doing a great part of
their own manufacturing, after much hesitation he said, "Very well,
but you must take the responsibility." This Mr. Shedd did and the
factories and mills of Marshall Field & Company now represent an
investment of nearly or quite $20,000,000. They are located in many
states and manufacture a large part of the merchandise sold by the great
stores.

In the management of this rapidly developing business Mr. Field
surrounded himself with a succession of capable lieutenants. He
seems to have been always on the lookout for such men among his
employes. When ability and efficiency were discovered they were

MARSHALL FIELD 17

rewarded by promotion. The men who became partners all rose from
the ranks. Money could not buy a partnership. Hard work, ability,
efficiency, and devotion to the business opened the way to the boy who
began on five dollars a week to one better position after another
until he became head of a department or a partner in the firm. I spoke
above of a succession of partners. In addition to those already men-
tioned, in 1890 Robert M. Fair, Thomas Temple ton, Lafayette McWil-
liams, and Harry G. Self ridge had come in. In 1893 John G. Shedd
entered the firm. As the partners grew older and accumulated wealth
it was Mr. Field's custom to purchase their interest that he might give
younger men of outstanding ability and promise a place in the firm.
The only exception he made to this rule, outside the Field family, was
Mr. Shedd, who entered the store in 1872 as stock boy and clerk in the
linen department at ten dollars a week, became a partner twenty-
one years later in 1893 and has been head of Marshall Field & Company
since 1906.

In 1885 Mr. Field, having bought the ground bounded by Adams,
Quincy, Wells, and Franklin streets, began the erection of a building
covering the entire block to house the wholesale store. Richardson of
Boston, one of the foremost of American architects, designed the building
which has been called "a noble example of Romanesque architecture."
It is seven stories in height, constructed of rough-faced brown granite.
It was completed in 1887 and for the first time gave adequate facilities
to the wholesale store which had outgrown its old quarters on Madison
and Market streets. The West had been settling up so rapidly that
there were years when five hundred new villages were started and the
wholesale business grew accordingly. Chicago itself kept pace with
the growth of the country. In a published interview in 1893 Mr. Field
was quoted as saying, "I had no conception thirty years ago that the
proportions of Chicago would be what they are today." The city had
grown in that period from a population of 150,000 to 1,500,000, and the
business of the retail store had increased correspondingly.

Meantime, while Mr. Field was working out this tremendous mercan-
tile success what had he been doing as a citizen ? He took little interest
in politics. He was called a Democrat, but voted for Republican more
frequently than for Democratic candidates for the presidency. He might,
perhaps, not improperly be called a neutral in politics. He was, indeed,
on the side of good government. Being the high minded, personally
upright and honorable man he was, he could not be otherwise. But he
did not, as his character and position in Chicago suggested that he should,

i8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

enter in any active way into the public movements of his time for better
political, industrial, and social conditions. His expanding business made
great demands on him and he allowed himself to be absorbed in it.

He was not noted for his interest in institutions devoted to charity,
education, and the general welfare. It is an ancient saying, emanating
from very high authority, that " to whomsoever much is given, of him
shall much be required." Mr. Field's great intelligence, his high social
and business standing, his enlarging prosperity, making him Chicago's
richest citizen, pointed him out as the man who should have been fore-
most in all these causes. He had begun well, as I have already indicated,
and if he had gone on as he began he would have developed into Chicago's
foremost citizen in all these directions. Unhappily that early vision
of high service faded. It may be conceded that, fighting his way through
a sea of difficulties, he was too busy to devote time to the service of the
public. But when he came to have more money than anyone else, he
held back both money and service. He listened coldly to appeals for
approved causes of charity, education, and the public welfare when
regard for the general good dictated the largest liberality. He gave, of
course, to many causes, but he did not give as many other men gave,
spontaneously, liberally, as though it was a privilege he welcomed.
He did not identify himself with great causes in personal service. It
must be conceded that in these things Mr. Field fell below the mark.
In them he did not measure up to his opportunities or his obligations.
Sometime in 1889 one of his most intimate friends suggested to him
that he ought to found in Chicago a great university, that it was the
best kind of monument he could leave behind him and that he owed it
to himself and to the city and section where he was being so phenomenally
prospered to perform some such conspicuous and enduring public serv-
ice. Mr. Field was annoyed by this suggestion and replied that other
men might build monuments if they wished and that it was very easy
to give away other people's money. This incident illustrates the point
I am making that through a series of years in which he was rapidly
accumulating wealth he manifested no great interest in institutions
devoted to charity, education, and the general welfare.

These statements, however, require some qualification. Happily
much may be said on the other side. Mr. Field was one of the organizers
of the Commercial Club in 1877 and, when in 1882 the club undertook the
establishment of the Chicago Manual Training School, .now a part of
the University of Chicago system, he contributed $20,000 toward the
$100,000 subscribed, and for a time acted as treasurer of its board.

MARSHALL FIELD 19

It is probably known to all who read this sketch that in 1889 John D.
Rockefeller made a subscription of $600,000 for the founding of the
University of Chicago, conditioned on the raising of $400,000 more
before June i, 1890. It fell to me in connection with Mr. F. T. Gates to
raise the $400,000 which proved to be a work of extraordinary difficulty.
Learning from Mr. D. L. Shorey that Mr. Field owned a considerable tract
of land on the north side of the Midway Plaisance between Washington
and Jackson parks, in November, 1889, we went to look at it as a possible
site for the proposed institution. Fronting on the Plaisance and between
the two great parks it seemed to us an ideal site. Mr. Field had bought
here a tract of about eighty acres in 1879 for $79,166. It had, of course,
advanced greatly in value. We decided to ask Mr. Field to give us ten
acres as a site for the new institution. On December 4, 1889, we went
to see him. We went with much trepidation, for we felt that everything
depended on our success, and we knew that he was not known as a great
giver. His standing in the business community, however, was such
that other men would follow his lead. We found him in his office in the
wholesale building on Adams Street. He received us at once and listened
courteously while we laid the whole case before him and asked him to give
us a site of ten acres on the Midway Plaisance. He received the request
with hospitality, but said the firm was about to make the annual inven-
tory to learn whether they had made any money and asked us to come
to see him again at the end of six weeks. In the meantime I wrote him
a letter that he might have our proposition before him in written form.
Promptly at the end of six weeks we called again. We found his secre-
tary, Arthur B. Jones, warmly in sympathy with us and this gave us
much encouragement. When we entered Mr. Field's office the first
thing he said was this: "I have not yet made up my mind about giving
you that ten acres. But I have decided one thing. If I give it to you I
shall wish you to make up the $400,000 independently of this donation. "
This we assured him we could and would do. He then had his maps
brought and indicated the tract he had in mind to give. We thought we
saw that he had really decided in his own mind to give us the land and
therefore felt that we might safely press the matter. Mr. Gates, my
associate, therefore asked if we might not wire Mr. Rockefeller, for
whom Mr. Field had great respect, that he had decided to give us the
site. He repeated that he was not quite ready to go so far. We then
took our courage in our hands and said, "Mr. Field, our work is really
waiting for your decision. We are anxious to push it rapidly; indeed,
we must do so; and if we can say that you have given us the site, it will

20 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

help us immensely with every man we approach." After a moment's
reflection (a most anxious moment for us), he answered, "Well, I suppose
I might as well decide it now as at any time. If the conditions are
satisfactory you may say that I will give a site of ten acres." He pro-
nounced the points made in the letter sent to him satisfactory and we,
on our part, agreed that the donation of the site should be an addition
to the sum of $400,000 we were to secure. A week later Mr. Gates
secured from him an option to purchase an additional ten acres for
$132,500. This purchase was later consummated, giving the new insti-
tution three blocks, to which a fourth block was soon added by purchase
from Mr. Field, making with the vacated streets a site of twenty-five
acres fronting south on the Midway Plaisance, between Ellis and Uni-
versity avenues. This has since increased to a hundred acres, covering
both sides of the Plaisance for three quarters of a mile east from Wash-
ington Park.

There can be no doubt that this large gift from Mr. Field was the
determining factor in our success in securing the $400,000 fund and thus
assuring the founding of the University of Chicago. The impulse we
assured him would be given to our work by his donation became imme-
diately apparent and continued to the end. We can never forget the
courteous and hospitable manner in which he received us and our appeal
and the cordial and generous interest he manifested from the beginning
to the end. On accepting the subscriptions secured as good and suffi-
cient, he wrote to Mr. Gates, "I congratulate the people of this city and
the entire West on the success achieved, and with all friends of culture
I rejoice that another noble institution of higher learning is to be founded
and founded in the heart of the continent."

In the same year, 1890, he was one of the six signers of the articles of
incorporation, commonly called the charter of the University.

The second monumental service of Mr. Field to the University was
done in the spring of 1892. The institution had been planned on a
scale so much greater than had been originally contemplated that a
million dollars was imperatively needed for buildings and other purposes.
President Harper took the case to Mr. Field and secured from him a
promise to give $100,000 on condition that the sum be made up to
$1,000,000 in sixty days. The trustees felt that the mere physical
labor of securing so great a sum could not be performed in so short a
time. I, therefore, prepared a letter of subscription extending the time
to a hundred days and took it to Mr. Field for his signature. He con-
sidered my appeal with perfect good nature and immediately had a new

MARSHALL FIELD 21

letter prepared which he signed extending the time from sixty to ninety
days. I suppose it was the mercantile instinct that recognized ninety
but not a hundred days as a proper alternative to sixty. But it proved
to be just enough. We barely accomplished the incredible achievement
of securing subscriptions amounting to $1,000,000 in the ninety days, but
we did accomplish it. The condition that it should be done in ninety
days proved to be a wise one and again Mr. Field had done the Uni-
versity an unforgettable service. The suggestion of his friend about
founding a university was not altogether without result.

I do not think I am mistaken in believing that in securing these
contributions from him the University did an equally great service for
Mr. Field. For the first time he had made large gifts to a great public
enterprise. He had begun to learn how to give and had found so much
pleasure in it and in the public appreciation it evoked that it opened a
new chapter in his life, a chapter that will do more to exalt and perpetuate
his fame than all the marvelous achievements of his business career.
He gave $50,000 worth of land, nearly half a block, to the Chicago Home
for Incurables, doubling the extent of the grounds. In 1893 he gave
$1,000,000 for the establishment of the Columbian Museum of Chicago,
and having made this noble beginning continued to the end of his life
to carry on the work of the museum.

In 1898 Mr. Field made his final gift to the University. In that
year he united with Mr. Rockefeller in adding to the site the two blocks
north of the central quadrangles to be used for athletic purposes. No
name being officially given to these grounds, they were, for many years,
called by the students and public Marshall Field. The amount contrib-
uted by Mr. Field in this large addition to the campus was reckoned at
$136,000. It made his total contributions to the University $361,000
and placed his name in the list of the twelve larger benefactors of the
institution. Too much cannot be said in praise of the cheerful and
gracious spirit in which he made these donations.

Mr. Field had always felt an interest in the place of his birth, Conway,
Massachusetts, where his parents had lived and died and his boyhood
had been spent. He had occasionally made small contributions for
worthy enterprises of the village. In the new spirit of giving that had
been born within him he conceived the purpose of giving to his native
place a free public library. The suggestion was welcomed by the town
which had been trying to sustain some sort of a library for nearly eighty
years. In 1899 Mr. Field visited Conway with a landscape architect
and chose the site for the building. Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge were

22 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

selected as architects. The cornerstone of the building was laid July 4,
1900, and the library was dedicated July 13, 1901. Mr. Field, with his
two sisters and other personal friends, was present, as well as a great
concourse of people. He made a brief address of presentation which he
declared was the first public address he had ever made. "The library,
which is of purpose distinctly monumental in character, is built in the
classic style of architecture in Greek detail." The stackroom will
accommodate more than 25,000 volumes. The building is not large,
being suited to the needs of the community, and expense was not spared
in its construction. For the library and its endowment Mr. Field con-
tributed $200,000. This generous gift to his native place was made in
memory of his father and mother. The library is called the Field
Memorial Library.

In the eleven years from 1890 to 1901 Mr. Field's contributions
to various causes must have aggregated nearly or quite $2,500,000.

I now go back thirty years to speak of some things which have
hitherto escaped attention. After the Great Fire Mr. and Mrs. Field
transferred their residence from 306 Michigan Avenue to 4 Park Row
and in 1873 to 923 Prairie Avenue. After 1879 the family residence
was and continued to be at 1905 Prairie Avenue. The health of Mrs.
Field having failed she went abroad in hope of regaining it, but died in
France in 1896. In 1890 Mr. Field had lost his younger brother Henry,
who was a gifted and admirable man. It was said of him that he was
"a lover of good books, devotedly attached to art, having one of the
finest art collections in Chicago. He was identified with all the moral,
intellectual and artistic life of Chicago." After his death his widow
presented his entire collection of paintings to the Art Institute, where
they may be seen in the Henry Field Memorial Room.

The scientific organization and the development of the Field stores
from year to year is too large a subject for this brief sketch and the story
of the progress and extraordinary success of the great business is a
familiar one. But Mr. Field's activities in the world of business were
by no means confined to his wholesale and retail stores. He had to find
investments for his rapidly increasing wealth and he did this for the
most part in two directions. In the late seventies he began to buy
Chicago real estate, first for the two great stores. Later he became
a very large buyer of real estate as an investment. In the late nineties,
when Mr. Leiter found himself in need of funds, though the relations of
the two former partners were somewhat strained, he asked Mr. Field
to buy from him the southeast corner of Madison and State streets.

MARSHALL FIELD 23

This Mr. Field did though it required a payment of $2,000,000 or more.
He made large investments in the downtown business district, but did
not limit them to that area. At the time of his death he was one of the
largest owners, if not the largest holder of such property in Chicago.

He also became a very large investor in the securities of great corpo-
rations. He came to be the dominant influence in the Pullman Company.
He was a director in the company and also in the United States Steel
Corporation, in the Chicago & North Western Railway Company; in the
Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Company; in the Merchants
Loan and Trust Company of Chicago, and in other industrial, railroad,
and banking institutions. It is said that eventually he was connected
as an official, stockholder, or bondholder with thirty-three such com-
panies. He said in his will, "It has been my intention to keep at least
half of my property in real estate and the rest in personal property."

Mr. Field was not noted as a club man. He was, indeed, a member
of many clubs, including the Jekyl Island and Pelee Fishing Clubs, the
Union and Metropolitan clubs of New York, the Union League, Com-
mercial, Chicago Athletic and many others of Chicago and other places.
The club he frequented was the "Chicago" where he lunched almost
daily at what came to be known as the " Millionaires' Table. " There he
met the leading men of the city's business world, among them George M.
Pullman, N. K. Fairbank, John Crerar, and T. B. Blackstone. Other men
more or less familiar with him were P. D. Armour, N. B. Ream, Robert
T. Lincoln, and the three Keith brothers. Perhaps closest of all were the
Cyrus H. McCormicks, father and son, unless John G. Shedd, his partner,
be excepted, of whom he said before a Congressional Committee, "I
regard Mr. Shedd as the greatest merchant in the world. " He was not
the familiar comrade of these men or of anyone else. He was naturally
quiet, reserved, self-contained, and perhaps increasingly so as his years
and wealth increased.

Golf, indeed, so exhilarated him that under its genial influence he
sometimes almost became a boy again. He belonged to the Midlothian
and Chicago golf clubs. Three times a week, Tuesday, Thursday and
Saturday, during his later years he played a game of golf. Winter and
summer found him on these days playing eighteen holes or more. He
came to be what is known as a fair player, his average for eighteen holes
being about one hundred strokes. He played much with Robert T.
Lincoln and S. M. Felton.

Mr. Field never displayed any ambition for the social leadership
of Chicago. Any position in society was open to him. His wealth, his

24 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

intelligence, his taste, his bearing, which has often been described as
princely, all fitted him to shine socially, but his natural reticence and
reserve held him back from any very active part in social affairs. He did
however like to see guests in his own house. Two or three times a week,
in the season for such functions, he would entertain guests at dinners.

Prosperity never made him vain. Wealth did not make him proud.
He avoided ostentation. He was fond of good horses and a handsome
carriage, but he would never permit his coachman to drive him to busi-
ness. He would, when he used his carriage, leave it and return to it at
some distance from the store, to avoid the appearance of ostentation.
One never detected in him the slightest appearance of the arrogance of
wealth. In his quiet dignity there was no assumption of superiority.
With his employes he was always friendly. He showed them a pleasant
face and their relations with him were agreeable and their feelings toward
him most friendly. I am assured that all the employes liked him.
They entertained for him great respect — a testimony to his high charac-
ter, extraordinary success, and rare abilities. He had great self-control.
An employe who knew him well through five years of service covering
the Great Fire and the panic of 1873, the most trying period of his life,
assures me that he never saw him angry. His natural reserve and retis
cence prevented him from giving praise even for exceptional abilitie-
and services, but he made up for this by many acts of kindness which
are gratefully remembered. One employe tells me that he was once sick
for two months but that his pay check came to him regularly every two
weeks. And this was only one of a thousand instances of similar acts of
consideration for employes.

One of the men in the retail store told me this story: Many years
ago after having been a clerk with Field, Leiter & Co., for some time,
he and a fellow-employe put their savings together and opened a store
in a country village. The time came when the community demanded
that they should add dry goods to their stock. He therefore went to
Chicago and laid the case before Mr. Field, who, after hearing his story,
asked him how much credit he would need. Learning that it would be
$5,000, he took the customer to the credit man and directed that a credit
of $5,000 should be given him and added, "I will hold myself personally
responsible." He then said to the customer, "Keep your credit good
with all your other creditors and when you have anything to spare send
it to us." Some years later this man sold his interest in the business and
returned to Chicago. He went one day into the store to have a word
with some of his old fellow-employes and while he was there, Mr. Field

MARSHALL FIELD 25

came along and saw him. After greeting him, he said: "What are you
doing in Chicago?" Being told that he was looking for a situation,
Mr. Field said : "Why didn't you come at once to me ? There's a place
for you in your old department. Report there for duty." I like this story.
It shows there was a warm, human side to Mr. Field and that it was
shown particularly to his employes.

Mr. Field made many trips abroad for business or recreation. When
in Chicago his ordinary daily routine was as follows: He left home at
about nine o'clock in the morning to walk down town, with his coachman
driving the carriage behind him. Walking a block or two north Mr.
Pullman joined him and they walked down to the Pullman Building
together. Here he stopped for a few minutes and then went on to the
retail store. While there he walked through the establishment, having a
word here and there with partners and heads of departments, observing
everything narrowly, rebuking in his quiet way anything lacking in the
deportment of a clerk toward a customer, noting any want of the perfect
order and neatness he required in every part of the store, and directing
instant correction. He would never allow a clerk to get into a dispute
with a customer. If he ever saw anything of this sort the clerk would
feel a gentle pull on his coat tail and turning, would hear Mr. Field say-
ing to him, "Settle it as the lady wishes."

From the retail he would go on to the wholesale where his office was
in the northwest corner of the first floor. Here he spent the rest of the
day till four o'clock. He had a regular hour for lunch and when it
arrived he closed his rolltop desk and that was the signal for the close
of any interview. He left promptly at four o'clock and the closing
of the desk again signified to visitors that his business day in his office
was over.

On September 5, 1905, Mr. Field married his second wife, Mrs. Delia
Spencer Caton of Chicago, whom he had long known. In less than two
and a half months after the wedding he lost his only son by a sudden
death. The son was thirty-eight years old. He left three children —
Marshall Field III, about twelve years old, Henry, about ten, and
Gwendolyn, four years old. Mr. Field's hopes and plans, as will appear
later, centered about the two grandsons.

On New Year's day, 1906, James Simpson, then in Mr. Field's office,
now vice-president of the corporation, and Stanley Field went out to
Wheaton to play golf at the Chicago Golf Club. The snow was nearly
or quite knee-deep and they played with red balls. Soon Mr. Field and
Robert T. Lincoln appeared and played round the course. The party

26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

went back to the city on the train together. The very vigorous exercise
in the deep snow had greatly exhilarated Mr. Field and all the way back
he seemed in an unusually cheerful frame of mind. He was inclined to
be facetious and, to the surprise of all of them, chaffed his companions
all the way in. It was a side of his character he rarely showed. But it
soon became apparent that he had taken cold. He had arranged to go
to New York the first week in January. Mr. Simpson, seeing the hold
the cold had taken, making him quite hoarse, told him he ought not to
go. "Pshaw," he replied, "I am as young as you are," and made light
of it. But it grew upon him and when he reached New York and went
to the Holland House, he was already a sick man. He rapidly grew
worse, and although the most eminent physicians did everything they
could do to save his life he died of pneumonia on January 16. The
week following his death the Independent said in an editorial:
"Several former residents of Chicago, all of them unknown to him,
assembled at a place not far from the room where he was lying,
in order that they might express to each other their appreciation of his
character. At the suggestion of one who had not seen the inside of a
church in thirty years, another of these men prayed that Mr. Field's
life might be spared. All were on their knees. Then it was agreed that
each one should every day at noon, in a church or elsewhere, repeat this
prayer for the recovery of the world's richest merchant, who, beginning
with nothing but his brains and his integrity, had accumulated a fortune
of $150,000,000 in a clean and honest way." This is a strange story and
I would not reproduce it had it not appeared as an editorial in so repu-
table a journal. The editorial writer seems to speak from personal
knowledge. It was an extraordinary illustration of how widespread was
the reputation of Mr. Field for nearly fifty years of business integrity
and honor. As Franklin MacVeagh, another of Chicago's great merchants
and Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, said, "All of Mr.
Field's money was fairly made, and he was conspicuous among the
immensely rich for the fairness of his competition and the cleanness of his
methods. He made no money through oppression and monopoly. He
built himself up on no man's ruin, and his business methods, from the
beginning to the end, were so instructive and influential that his fellow-
citizens were constantly helped by his example. These methods, by
their conspicuously high standards, became contributions to the citizen-
ship of Chicago."

Mr. Field was buried in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, and his grave
is marked by a small granite slab bearing simply his name and the
vears of his birth and death.

MARSHALL FIELD 27

According to the best estimate I have been able to secure, his estate
at the time of his death amounted to about $120,000,000. He was the
most successful dry-goods merchant in the world. He was one of the
half-dozen richest men in the world.

How had he attained this extraordinary business success ? He had
begun with nothing. He had no influential friends and backers. He
had not been lucky. In the early years of his experience as a merchant
he had passed through the financial stringency of 1867 and the disas-
trous panic of 1873, and his store and stock had twice been destroyed
by fire. But he triumphed over all obstacles and in fifty years wrought
out this amazing success. Other men, eminent in business, have found
it difficult to analyze the elements that entered into and explain it.
Much of the credit must be given to the very able men who from time
to time became his partners. Some of these were, perhaps, able only in
their own departments, but in these they were exceptional. Others
were great all-round merchants like Henry J. Willing, Harry G. Self-
ridge, and John G. Shedd. Mr. Shedd was with Mr. Field thirty-four
years. Some of the great and most profitable business policies came
from him. Mr. Field was fortunate in having such men associated with
him. They were among the chief factors in his success. It was, perhaps,
half the battle that he was keen enough to discover men of this quality,
and knew enough so to advance and place them as to call out their great
abilities and make them the agents of his own success. And this choice
and advancement of helpers showed the greatness of the man.

He had, also, in an eminent degree, the New England virtues of
perseverance and thrift. He was by nature timid, and the disasters of
the early years sometimes greatly discouraged him. But the quality
of perseverance was ingrained. The retail store was not for many years
a profitable enterprise. Mr. Leiter wished to give it up and put all the
energy and capital of the firm into the wholesale. To this Mr. Field
would never listen. He believed he could develop a great and highly
profitable retail store. The phenomenal growth of Chicago made this
to his mind a certainty. And he persisted in this devotion to the retail
store until he accomplished his ambition and made it the greatest in the
world.

He had an organizing mind which enabled him with growing expe-
rience to conceive a highly developed system and, with the aid of other
able men, to develop his conception into a well-nigh perfect organization
which functioned simply, efficiently, economically, and profitably.

Those who knew him best declare that this organizing mind developed
into a great financial mind. J. Pierpont Morgan said to Mr. Shedd that

28 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

"of all the men he had ever known Mr. Field possessed the keenest
financial mind." And it is perfectly obvious that in the conduct of his
stores, in his purchases of real estate, and in his investment in stocks
and bonds he rarely went wrong.

Perhaps the most notable of Mr. Field's innovations was that he made
a store in which it was a joy to buy. The display in each of the forty
great show-windows was the work of an artist and invited the passerby
to enter. Inside she found herself in fairyland. The scene was one
of splendor and of beauty. Everything was invitingly displayed but
no one was asked to purchase. The visitor might wander for hours
through an exhibition of objects of beauty and value in endless variety
and from every land. She walked among them as freely as though they
were her own. They were her own to look at and enjoy and gave her
a certain sense of personal affluence. A hundred things appealed to her
and when she wished to see them more closely a clerk, courteous, accom-
modating, and well attired, showed her every attention. The clerks
were held to a rigid code of etiquette. One who has been with the house
forty-six years tells me this story: "We formerly had regular spring and
fall openings when special efforts were made to make the store more
than usually attractive. On one of these occasions I was on the top of
a stepladder, in my shirt sleeves, arranging our display, when a lady
called up to me and asked the price of a piece of goods. I climbed down
the ladder, looked at the tag, and told her the price and she passed on.
I turned to remount the ladder and confronted Mr. Field. He looked at
me severely and said, 'Brown, don't you know better than to wait on a
customer in your shirt sleeves ? I began to explain the exigency, but he
broke in, 'I want no explanation. No excuse will justify a clerk in
Marshall Field & Company waiting on a customer in his shirt sleeves.
Don't let it ever occur again.' And of course it did not." And Mr.
Brown went on to tell me incidents illustrating Mr. Field's insistence
that everything about the store should be clean, neat, and attractive.
This policy of making the retail store irresistibly attractive to customers
was one of the great elements of Mr. Field's success.

He was a man of the highest integrity. The reputation of his house
was founded on the confidence the public came to repose in Mr. Field's
veracity and business integrity. There are many authentic stories of
the summary discharge of clerks for misrepresenting goods or attempt-
ing to deceive customers. Mr. Field would not permit any department
to charge what he thought an inordinate profit. One of the nearest
approaches to violence related of him was his rebuke to the head of a

MARSHALL FIELD 29

subdepartment who gave him the price he was charging for a class of
goods which Mr. Field thought too high. "Mark them down," he said,
"Can't I hammer it into your head that this store exists, after we make
a fair profit, for the benefit of the public, not to exploit it?" Buyers
went to Marshall Field's for many reasons, but one of the chief reasons
was because they could depend on the quality of the goods being what it
was represented to be. Mr. Field's personal reputation for integrity
guaranteed the purchases. It was the crowning asset in his business
success.

And it was more than this. It was a contribution to the mercantile
morale of the West, appreciably raising the standard of business integ-
rity and honor. The following story, told to me by an unimpeachable
witness, illustrates the essential integrity of his nature. A business
associate was once making representations to him which he knew to be
untrue. With the withering severity he was quite capable of assuming
he looked the man in the eye and said, "I hate a liar!"

He was capable of being severe but he was ordinarily very courteous.
He had a peculiar charm of manner which, had there been more warmth
in it, would have been most attractive. Probably in social intercourse
with his more intimate friends he revealed a geniality which did not
elsewhere appear. In his business conferences he was "steely cold,"
but there was a clarity in his views and statements that always won his
contention.

His reticence and reserve were outstanding characteristics. He
would draw out all that he wanted to know from another and communi-
cate nothing. He was never effusive, but always quiet and self-contained.
His mind was active, alert, penetrating, but receptive and not forth-
giving. He was not aggressive, was more timid than bold, but, a course
of action once deliberately adopted, his perseverance and patient per-
sistency could be counted on until his objective was achieved.

When A. T. Stewart, the merchant prince of New York, died, the
great business he had built up soon went to pieces. It reflects honor
on Mr. Field that exactly the opposite of this followed his death in the
business he had created and developed. He had not only built it up
into the largest dry-goods business in the world, but had so organized it,
established its policies and trained able men to succeed him that it has
gone on with amazingly increasing success. In 1901 the partnership of
Marshall Field & Company became the corporation of Marshall Field &
Company, its capital being represented by common and preferred stock.
In 1905, the year preceding the death of Mr. Field, the business had

30 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

increased from $12,000,000 in 1870 to $68,000,000. In 1906 Mr. Shedd
succeeded Mr. Field in the presidency of the corporation and as head
of the business, and instead of any interruption of prosperity occurring,
it has so continued and increased that in 1920 the business, including the
sales from the manufacturing and mill properties, aggregated a trifle less
than $200,000,000. Able men, like Mr. Shedd and Mr. Simpson, have
managed the business, but they would be the first to acknowledge their
indebtedness to the organizing genius which laid broad and deep and
enduring the foundations on which they have built.

This story of the life of Mr. Field would be totally inadequate if it
did not give some account of his will, that extraordinary document by
which he disposed of his great wealth. As it is one of the longest wills
on record, twice the length of this sketch, I shall speak only of those
things which concern the public.

While he conceived the purpose of founding a family and perpetuat-
ing in it a great estate, he also came to see and was given grace to act
on the conception that he owed something to the public and to his own
name. His will is the revelation of both these things. The principal
provisions of the will were two. The first of these was a bequest to the
Field Columbian Museum. As has been already said, in 1893 Mr. Field
had given $1,000,000 for the founding of the museum. During the ten
years that followed he had contributed to its growing work nearly
$1,000,000 more. The will was made in 1904, less than two years before
his death. Providing that any additional contributions he might make
between the signing of the will and his death (and there were several of
these) should be deducted from the bequest, he left to the museum
$8,000,000 as a building and endowment fund. It was provided that
half of this great sum should be preserved as a permanent endowment.
The other half and the accumulations, so far as necessary, were to consti-
tute the building fund. It was required that a site for the museum must
be furnished without cost to the trustees and that in case such site was
not furnished within six years after his death the bequest should be null
and void and should revert to the residuary estate.

The second of the two principal provisions of the will was the be-
queathing to trustees of all "the rest, residue and remainder" of the
estate for the benefit of his two grandsons, Marshall Field III, and Henry
Field, and their children. While the most ample provision was made
for the grandsons meantime, the principal part of the estate was to
accumulate by compound interest until the older of the two grandsons
reached the age of fifty years, when the entire estate was to be turned

MARSHALL FIELD 31

over to them, three-fifths to the older and two-fifths to the younger.
Every possible contingency was provided for to perpetuate the estate
in the family to the third generation at least. This attempt to extend
the accumulations of a bequest through so long a period was judged to
be inconsistent with the spirit of American institutions and against
public policy and at the first session of the Illinois General Assembly
after Mr. Field's death an act was passed and became the law of the
state, prohibiting such accumulations beyond the tune when the heirs
living at the time of the death of the testator should come of age, pro-
viding that these accumulations shall go to the heirs on their attaining
their majority and making any directions contrary to these provisions
null and void. The Supreme Court later declared: " It is not the purpose
of the statute to defeat the intention of the testator as to who should be
entitled to property under a will, but only to prevent indefinite accumu-
lations of wealth. It only limits the period of accumulation and the
produce beyond that limit goes to the same person that would have been
entitled to it if the accumulation had not been directed."

Henry, the younger of the two legatees of the trust estate, died in
1917. The surviving legatee is Marshall Field III, who was born in
1893 and, because of his service in the Great War, is better known as
Captain Field. He becomes the heir of the entire residuary estate with
the accumulations, and everything will be turned over to him on his
reaching fifty years of age. He will not lack ample resources meantime.

Some offerings to friendship were made in the will. But family
ties were especially sacred with Mr. Field and liberal bequests were
made to a large number of relatives. His immediate family naturally
came first, but after them came nearly or quite forty relatives. Some
millions of dollars went to these relatives outside of his descendants,
of whom there were only five at the time of his own death. This was
altogether admirable and reflects high honor on Mr. Field. It was
of a piece with that family loyalty and affection which had made his
brothers and some of his nephews sharers of his prosperity during
his life.

The Field Columbian Museum is now, and will continue to be known
'as, The Field Museum of Natural History. The story of its origin is
part of the story of Marshall Field. When it was arranged that the
World's Columbian Exposition was to be held in Chicago in 1893 it
soon became evident to the collectors of museum material that an
invaluable mass of such material would be found in the great fair.
They began to inquire among themselves, "How can this material be

32 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

retained in Chicago as the foundation of a museum of natural history?"
It is well known that chief among these collectors was Mr. Ed. E.
Ayer, who has given his life and spent a fortune in collecting. He and
others began to talk museum to Mr. Field. He listened without interest.
They continued, however, and J. W. Ellsworth, Mr. Ayer and some
others frequently, as they met at the Chicago Club, or went on a fishing
trip to the headquarters of the Pelee Club, Pelee Island, Lake Erie,
urged upon him the giving of a large sum to found a museum. He per-
sistently declined to consider it. As the world's fair progressed a
committee was formed to take the matter in hand. Some generous
subscriptions were made, but as the close of the fair drew near, it became
apparent that without a great contribution from Mr. Field the whole
project must come to naught. The committee finally said to Mr. Ayer,
"You must go to Mr. Field in a final effort." "Very well," was the
answer, "he has said No! to me one hundred times, but I will see him
once more." He went and asked for fifteen minutes in which to present
the matter. Mr. Field listened impassively and when Mr. Ayer finished
he said, "Well, you have taken forty-five minutes," but his interest
was awakened and he consented to vist the fair and inspect the collections.
They went the next day. All the curators were on hand to explain
their material and Mr. Field gave close attention to all he saw and heard
for three hours, from ten o'clock till one. A day or two later he gave his
subscription of a million dollars for founding the museum. It was not
till the following year that he was persuaded to allow his name to be
attached to it. After that was done he began, apparently, to feel
personally responsible for it. As is well known the collections secured
from the wealth of material in the world's fair were housed for eighteen
years in the Fine Arts building of the fair. There they were classified
and arranged. Mr. Field's interest increased and he continued to make
large contributions until at the time of his death they aggregated con-
siderably more than $2,000,000. In 1911, only a few months before
the bequest of $8,000,000 would have reverted to the estate by the terms
of the will, the South Park Commissioners provided a site for the
museum in Jackson Park, which was later transferred to the Lake
Front Park at the beginning of Roosevelt Road. The site was then the
open water of Lake Michigan but has since been filled in and become
solid ground. The museum building, as originally designed, was to
be more than 1,100 feet long, and at the comparatively cheap building
costs of that day called for an expenditure approaching $8,000,000.
Although the building fund was well invested and steadily increased

MARSHALL FIELD 33

from year to year, building costs, after the Great War came on, increased
still more rapidly. The fund was found quite insufficient. The size
of the building was cut down by nearly or quite one-half, but even then,
when it was finished in 1921, it was found to have cost above $6,000,000.
It is a wonderfully beautiful structure, 730 feet long and 450 feet
wide, of the Ionic type. But the treasures within are even more
wonderful. It is these which will attract increasing throngs of serious
students and casual sightseers through succeeding generations. And
every visitor will go away with his horizon enlarged, his knowledge
increased, and his mind enriched. It is a great educational institution.
It will be a gratification to the public to learn that one of the final pur-
poses of Mr. Field's life was to make it far greater.

I am authorized to say what follows by Mr. Field's nephew,
Stanley Field, who had first-hand knowledge and will be implicitly
believed.

As soon as he began to recover a little from the shock of his son's
death, Mr. Field took up the making of a new will. A day or two before
starting on the journey to New York, from which he never returned,
he called his nephew to his house for an interview. He said he was
engaged in making a new will which would differ in important par-
ticulars from the one made in 1904. Among other changes he had fully
decided on were two which particularly interest me in writing this sketch.
In the first place he proposed to increase very largely the bequests to
the charitable and public-welfare institutions of Chicago. In his will
only four had been named. He now went over a much longer list which
he had prepared and indicated that munificent sums would be left to
them.

He then spoke of the museum, saying that the great building, the
plans of which were being made, was likely to cost $8,000,000, and that
the conduct of a museum in so great a structure would cost much more
than he had contemplated. He went on to say that he had decided, in
making the new will, to increase the bequest for the museum to $16,000,
ooo, one-half of which was to be the building fund and one-half the
endowment fund.

It must be remembered that these declarations of intention were not
made in prospect of the near approach of death. No man in Chicago of
Mr. Field's age had a better prospect of years of healthful activity.
Moreover, he was not withholding money from the museum till death
should take it from him, but was annually supplying large sums to
provide for its expanding work.

34 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

The vision of the duty and the glory of greatly enlarged service and
beneficence came to Mr. Field and he was not disobedient to the heavenly
vision. He was engaged in carrying it out. Had he lived only a few
weeks longer he would have executed these beneficent purposes. But
death intervened. In less than a week after the interview with his
nephew pneumonia had stricken him into unconsciousness and brought
all his activities to an end. He did not have time after his son's death,
only five weeks before his own illness began, to put into black and white
his new plans of public service. Let it be entered to Mr. Field's credit
that even during those few weeks of grief he had not merely dreamed
of returning a much greater share of his wealth to the public, but was
actively engaged in putting the matured plans into effect. His purposes
for the museum have found a warm response in the hearts of his nephew,
Stanley, and his grandson, Captain Field. They, with Mrs. Stanley
Field, have given to the Museum more than half a million dollars, and
as I write they are, between them, enriching the museum by additional
gifts of more than half a million dollars. And thus the larger plans
and purposes of the founder are being carried out by those who loved
him and who revere his memory.

It has fallen to few men to leave behind them a monument at once
so splendid and so useful as the Field Museum of Natural History.
Because of it the name and the fame of the founder will endure.

F UBLIC LIBRA?

ASTOK,
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

•M ! M > I! 1 1 > M I • n 1 1 f i ! ) ••"> I f M >Y| ViY»V

Original wvned by the Chicago Historical Society

From a painting by G. P. A. Healy

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN

William B. Ogden, in whose memory and from whose estate the
Ogden Graduate School of Science of the University of Chicago was
founded, was born June 15, 1805, in the village of Walton, on the Dela-
ware River, in Delaware County, New York. Walton was about sixty
miles west of the Hudson River and only a few miles north of the Penn-
sylvania line, and before the days of railroads in more direct communica-
tion with Philadelphia than with New York City. Delaware County
was a wild and mountainous region, the abundant pine forests of which,
together with the ease with which the logs could be floated down the
river to Philadelphia, attracted the families of many veterans of the
Revolution. Among these settlers were the families of Mr. Ogden's
father and mother. His father was from New Jersey and his mother
from Connecticut. They met in this new wild land and married some
time in the closing decade of the eighteenth century.

It was a wonderful country of mountain, forest, and stream, with
unsurpassed opportunities for the country sports loved by a boy. Every
season of the year abounded in these opportunities for a healthy, fun-
loving boy, such as young Ogden was, and never did a boy avail himself
of them more fully. The rivers were full of fish and the forests of game,
and the boy so loved the open and gave himself with such assiduity to
the outdoor sports of the favored region that his father was compelled,
in the end, to restrict his hunting and fishing to two days in the week.
He became extraordinarily expert with the rifle. On one occasion a
colored man put up his turkeys as a mark, at one hundred yards, at a
quarter of a dollar a shot. If the turkey was hit in the head it belonged
to the marksman, but if hit anywhere else it remained the property of
the negro. So certain was Ogden's aim that the owner of the bird
insisted on his paying half a dollar for a shot. As Ogden was about to
shoot he ran up close to the turkey shouting, "Gib a nigger fair play.
Dodge, dodge, old gobbler, Ogden is going to shoot. Shake yo head,
darn ye, don't ye see dat rifle pointin' at ye?"

There seems to have developed in Delaware County a rather superior
group of hunting men, with blooded horses and pedigreed hounds, and
Mr. Ogden in later years delighted in recalling the exciting experiences
of his early life, and relating them to his friends.

35

36 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Little is known of the educational advantages of Delaware County
in 1820 and thereabouts, but while Ogden was still a boy he decided to
prepare himself for the law, and at about the age of fifteen he went to
New York City to begin his studies. In 1820, however, his father
suffered a stroke of paralysis, and the boy was called home and at the
age of sixteen found himself in partial charge of his father's business.
In his twentieth year his father's death left the entire business respon-
sibility upon him, as well as the headship of the family. The ten years
following his father's death, covering the period from his twentieth to
his thirtieth year, were filled with a variety of activities, curiously pro-
phetic of his subsequent development. In addition to carrying on his
father's business he entered into a partnership and became a merchant,
and in a small way prospered. He entered into the political life of the
county and state. He was a Democrat, and Andrew Jackson made him
postmaster of Walton. He became greatly interested in the project of
the building of the Erie Railroad, and advocated this with such zeal
and power that he was elected in 1834 to the New York Senate on that
issue. In the legislative session following he made, on the twentieth,
twenty-first, and twenty-second days of March, 1835, an exhaustive
argument before the Senate in favor of the project. This speech was
regarded as so important that it was reported in full in the Albany Argus.
In view of the fact that the railroad system was hardly begun at that
early date, the prevision shown by a young man of twenty-nine as to
the future is altogether marvelous. He said: " Continuous railways from
New York to Lake Erie, and south of Lake Erie, through Ohio, Indiana,
and Illinois to the waters of the Mississippi, and connecting with rail-
roads running to Cincinnati and Louisville in Kentucky, and Nashville
in Tennessee, and to New Orleans will present the most splendid system
of internal communication ever yet devised by man." He said: "To
look forward to the completion of such a system in my day may be con-
sidered visionary," but declared that he hoped to live to see it realized.
Mr. Ogden was then a young man who had spent his life in a country
district handling comparatively small business interests. It may be
doubted, however, whether there was another man in the country with
a broader and clearer vision of the railroad expansion of the succeeding
forty years. It might have been confidently predicted of such a man
that he was likely to go far. This might have been predicted also from
young Ogden's military experience. At the age of eighteen he had
entered the New York militia. On the first day of his service he was
made a commissioned officer. On the second day the brigadier general

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 37

in command made Ogden a member of his staff. A little later he was
promoted to the rank of brigade inspector.

But the turning-point in Mr. Ogden's career was his removal to
Chicago. That important event, important for him, for Chicago, for
the West, and therefore for the whole country, came about in the follow-
ing manner: It so happened that a sister of Mr. Ogden had become
the wife of Mr. Charles Butler, of New York City, Mr. Butler being
a brother of the well-known general, Benjamin F. Butler. Charles
Butler, in connection with others, had purchased from the Kinzies and
other owners a tract of 182 acres, all, or most of it, on the North Side,
running from the river northward. Mr. Ogden had some means of his
own, but to what extent he was a partner in this transaction does not
appear. However, in the spring of 1835 he was chosen to go to Chicago
and look after the disposition of the property. Although the place was
a miserable little hamlet of 1,200 or 1,500 people set down in the mud
about the forks of the Chicago River, it was already attracting almost
nation-wide attention as a town of future importance. In the thirties
a considerable body of young, ambitious, and unusually able men made
homes in the little village, and almost at once became leaders, a leader-
ship which they maintained when the hamlet had become a great city.
The following list of such men might be multiplied several times over:
Hon. Isaac N. Arnold, Philo Carpenter, Judge John Dean Caton, Judge
George Manierre, Judge Grant Goodrich, Thomas Hoyne, Gurdon S.
Hubbard, Tuthill King, William B. Ogden, Captain Redmond Prinde-
ville, J. Young Scammon, Judge Mark Skinner, and ("Long") John Went-
worth. In 1834 land values were rising rapidly and the report spread
far and wide. In the spring of 1835 the United States government
announced the opening of a land office in Chicago and a sale of public
lands in the adjacent region. There followed a great gathering of land
seekers. The land office was on the second floor of the store of Thomas
Church on Lake Street. The buyers stood out in the street in front of
the store and the constant tramping of the great crowd made the street
very muddy. Mr. Church therefore brought a supply of dry sand every
morning from the lake shore and covered the ground, making the mud,
for a few hours at least, dry land. So great was the eagerness to buy
land that the receipts of the land office during the first half of June
exceeded half a million dollars, 400,000 acres being sold.

It was during this government land sale that Mr. Ogden arrived in
Chicago. It is related that he was somewhat depressed by his first
inspection of the tract of land he had in charge. He found it to be an

38 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

unbroken field covered with a wild growth of oak and underbrush,
marshy and muddy from recent rains. There was nothing attractive
about it, save perhaps that it lay along the main river and the north
branch. In its wild and unkempt state he could not see in it anything
to justify the great price, $100,000, that had been paid for it. He
determined, however, to take advantage of the land hunger indicated
by the government sales, and advertised a public auction at which these
desirable ( ! ) lots could be bought. His surprise and gratification may
be imagined when his auction resulted in the sale of about one-third
of the lots for more than the entire tract had cost.

Aside from this gratifying stroke of business there was little in the
small, unkempt, muddy village Chicago then was to attract a man who
loved, as Mr. Ogden did, the mountains and streams and forests of his
native place. He felt little disposition to make the small western town
his home. He returned to New York to report to his business associates
the success he had achieved. Meanwhile the real-estate boom in
Chicago was now fairly on. The opportunities for an able and ambitious
man multiplied in the far-western town, and inevitably drew Mr. Ogden
back. He returned to make the village his home and at once laid his
plans for permanent business activity. Naturally enough he turned his
attention at the outset to buying and selling real estate. Dealing in
real estate was the business of Chicago in 1835-36. Mr. Ogden opened
a real-estate office and established a Land and Trust Agency which he
carried on in his own name from 1836 to 1843. By the latter date the
business had so increased and his other interests had so widened that
a partner was secured. A very great and profitable business developed,
and partners came and went. From time to time the firm name changed.
Perhaps the best known of its various names was that of Ogden, Sheldon
& Company, under which title it still continues after more than eighty
years. For some years after founding the business Mr. Ogden gave
himself with tireless energy to building it up. He became a firm believer
in Chicago real estate. The well-known Captain Prindeville is reported
to have told the following story: Mr. Ogden offered him a five-acre
lot on the West Side for $1,000, on what was known in that day as " canal
time," that is, one quarter down and the balance in one, two, and three
years. Prindeville hadn't the money. Mr. Ogden offered to trust him
for a year for the first payment. Still he declined to buy. Then Ogden
proposed to take the land back at the end of the year if Prindeville didn't
like the bargain. But the Captain, seeing no way of making the pay-
ments, refused even this generous offer. Whereupon Ogden broke out:

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 39

"Why, Redmond, that's not the way to get along. When you are deal-
ing with Chicago property the proper way is to go in for all you can get
and then go on with your business and forget all about it. It will take
care of itself." Another man bought the property and made $4,000 on
it in six months.

It goes without saying that a man of Mr. Ogden's unusual ability
was, from the start, one of the leading citizens of the rapidly growing
town. At the first election for town trustees after his arrival he was
made a member of that board. Eli B. Williams was president. The
years 1835-36 formed a period of extraordinary growth in population.
The number of inhabitants more than doubled and the people began to
catch a vision of the future city. It was decided, therefore, to apply
to the legislature for a city charter. In the fall of 1836 the president
of the town board, Mr. Williams, appointed a committee of five men
to draw up a city charter for submission to the legislature. Of this
committee Mr. Ogden was a member, as was J. D. Caton, afterward
chief justice of the state. The committee reported the proposed charter
in December. On March 4, 1837, the legislature passed the bill approv-
ing the charter, and Chicago became a city. From north to south the
new city extended from North Avenue to Twenty-second Street, and
the western boundary was Wood Street.

The first business of the new municipality was the election of a
mayor, and a spirited contest was at once begun. William B. Ogden
was nominated by the Democrats, and John H. Kinzie by the Whigs.
The former was a newcomer, the latter Chicago's oldest resident, having
come with his father, John Kinzie, in 1804, while in his first year. The
Kinzie family stood deservedly high in the young community. Mr.
Ogden and Mr. Kinzie were fellow-attendants of St. James's Episcopal
Church. Both were young men, Mr. Ogden being thirty-two years old,
and Mr. Kinzie a year older. A little over seven hundred votes were
cast. Mr. Ogden was elected Chicago's first mayor by a vote of 469
against 237 for his opponent. One interesting fact connected with this
first election in the new city was that the South Side cast more votes
than the North and West sides together. The following was the dis-
tribution of votes : South 408, North 204, West, 97 ; a total of 709.

It was in this year, 1837, that the Hon. I. N. Arnold, thereafter
Mr. Ogden's legal adviser in Chicago, first met the young mayor. In
describing his personal appearance Mr. Arnold says:

You might look the country through and not find a man of more manly and impos-
ing presence, or a finer-looking gentleman. His forehead was broad and square; his

40 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

mouth firm and determined; his eyes large and dark gray; his nose large; hair brown;
his complexion ruddy; his voice clear, musical and sympathetic; his figure a little
above the medium height; and he united great muscular power with almost perfect
symmetry of form. He was a natural leader, and if he had been one of a thousand
picked men cast upon a desolate island he would, by common, universal, and instinctive
selection, have been made their leader.

It is little wonder that Chicago chose him for its first mayor.

The real-estate boom of 1835-36 had made a good many men appar-
ently rich, and some of them had built, or were preparing to build, com-
fortable homes. Mr. Ogden was one of those who had prospered. In
these two years he had acquired a substantial fortune. His operations
had been so extensive and successful that he felt justified in building
what long remained probably the finest private residence in the city.
He brought to Chicago the rising young architect, J. M. Van Osdel, to
draw the plans for this house and build it in the spring of 1837. It was
the first house in Chicago built by an architect. It is described as
"attractive, homelike, beautiful." It stood on the North Side in the
center of the block bounded on the east by Rush Street, on the south
by Ontario, on the west by Cass, and on the north by Erie. The block
was covered with a fine growth of native trees. The house was built
of wood, a broad porch extending across the south front. It stood in
the center of the block. Here he brought his mother and sister.
Mr. E. H. Sheldon, who married one of his sisters, says:

I lived under the same roof with Mr. Ogden for a quarter of a century, and for
nearly all that time we carried on our house jointly, thus enforcing a very close and
long-continued intimacy. These years brought to each of us, as they do to all, days
of trial, of suffering, and of sorrow, and yet, in all that time, looking back in careful
scrutiny, I cannot recall one harsh or unkind word received from him. His patience
and forbearance were great, his friendship steadfast, and his good-will unbounded.

This is a noble testimony. Mr. Arnold says of the social life of this
home, presided over by Mr. Ogden's mother and his sister:

In this home of generous and liberal hospitality was found no lavish or vulgar

exhibition of wealth, no ostentatious or pretentious display On the contrary,

here were refinement, broad intelligence, kind courtesy, and real hospitality. Here
gathered from far and near the most worthy, the most distinguished representatives
of the best American social life. Here all prominent and distinguished strangers were
welcomed and entertained, and here, too, the most humble and poor, if distinguished
for merit, culture, or ability, were always most cordially received. Here he enter-
tained Van Buren, Webster, Poinsett, Marcy, Flag, Butler, Gilpin, Corning, Crosswell,
Tilden, Bryant, Emerson, Miss Martineau, Fredrika Bremer, Margaret Fuller, the
artist Healy, Anna C. Lynch, and many others, comprising some of the best repre-
sentative men and women of our country and the most distinguished visitors from

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 41

abroad. The guest always found good books, good pictures, good music, and the most
kind and genial reception. Mr. Ogden himself, however, was always the chief attrac-
tion. He was, in his way, without an equal as a conversationalist. His powers of
narration and description were unrivaled.

The testimony to Mr. Ogden's conversational gifts is very abundant.
G. P. A. Healy, the artist, who painted three portraits of Mr. Ogden, says:
"I found him in conversation a worthy rival of the three best I ever met,
viz., Louis Phillippe, John Quincy Adams, and Dr. O. A. Bronson."
Mr. J. Y. Scammon, who knew him intimately for forty years, declares
that as a traveling companion he had never seen his equal. Mr. Arnold,
after saying that he was never more attractive than in his library reciting
the poetry of Bryant and others, or at his piano playing accompaniments
to his own singing of old songs, continues: "Perhaps I ought to make
an exception, when he was driving his own carriage, filled with guests,
over the prairies of the Northwest, for then he would make the longest
day short by his inimitable narration of incidents and anecdotes, his
graphic descriptions, and his sanguine anticipations of the future."

When Mr. Ogden became mayor of the new city of Chicago, with
its 4,000 people, in 1837, it was a poor excuse for a city. The buildings
were for the most part wooden shanties. There were few sidewalks.
For much of the year the streets were little better than mudholes. The
stores were mostly on South Water Street, with one here and there on
Lake Street. The Fort Dearborn reservation was still in existence,
cutting off the South Side from the lake. One bridge, on Dearborn
Street, connected the North and South sides, but was soon destroyed or
removed. A floating bridge at Randolph connected the South and West
sides, and a foot bridge the North and West sides. There were nearly
forty places where liquor was sold, five churches, and seven small private
schools. "The waterworks consisted of a hogshead on wheels, with a
faucet, under which the consumer's bucket received a supply for a price
paid to the proprietor and driver." The imports of the city amounted
to $373,677, and the exports to $11,665. The citizens were growing rich
by selling to one another for the most part city and suburban lots.

The government was spending some money in improving the river,
and on July 4, 1836, work had been started on the Illinois and Michigan
Canal, and labor was in demand. The city began its career under
Mr. Ogden without either money or credit. Improvements of every sort
were needed and had the flush tunes kept on and men continued to grow
rich on real estate, the new mayor, being a man of great intelligence,
enterprise, and energy, would doubtless have made his administration

42 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

memorable for public improvements. But he was hardly seated in the
mayor's chair when the panic of 1837 fell on the country and the city
like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. It was in the early part of this
year that the Illinois legislature had adopted that ambitious bill appro-
priating some $10,000,000 for internal improvements which, when the
crash came, bankrupted the state.

The panic fell on Chicago with most disastrous effect. Its sole stock
in trade became worthless. Men went to bed rich and awoke to find
themselves worth less than nothing. Real estate was transformed from
an asset into a liability, and well-nigh universal bankruptcy followed.
All plans for public improvements had to be abandoned. During his
term of office, however, Mr. Ogden appointed the first permanent board
of health; the first census was taken showing the population on July i,
1837, to be 4,170; and the council elected the first board of school
inspectors. Mr. Ogden was able to do one notable service for the city.
Mr. Scammon, than whom there could be no better authority, says:

There is no brighter page in Mr. Ogden's history than that which records his devo-
tion to the preservation of the public credit. The first time that we recollect to have
heard him address a public meeting was in the autumn of 1837, while he held the office
of mayor. Some frightened debtors, assisted by a few demagogues, had called a
meeting to take measures to have the courts suspended, or some way devised by which
the compulsory fulfilment of their engagements might be deferred beyond that period,
so tedious to creditors, known as the "law's delay." They sought legislative action
or "relief laws," virtually to suspend for a season the collection of debts. An inflam-
matory .... speech had been made. The meeting, which was composed chiefly of
debtors, seemed quite excited, and many were rendered almost desperate by the
recital, by designing men, of their sufferings and pecuniary danger. During the
excitement the mayor was called for. He stepped forward and exhorted his fellow-
citizens not to commit the folly of proclaiming their own dishonor. He besought
those of them who were embarrassed to bear up against adverse circumstances with
the courage of men, remembering that no misfortune was so great as one's personal
dishonor. It were better for them to conceal their misfortunes than to proclaim them;
reminding them that many a fortress had saved itself by the courage of its inmates
and their determination to conceal its weakened condition, when if its real state had
been made known its destruction would have been inevitable and immediate. "Above
all things," he said, "do not tarnish the honor of our infant city!"

This eloquent appeal carried all before it and the honor of the city was
not tarnished.

In this disastrous panic Mr. Ogden suffered with his fellow business
men. He was so seriously crippled that he himself came near shipwreck.
He weathered the storm indeed, being a man of indomitable will and
energy and extraordinary business ability, but it took five years to
extricate himself from his difficulties and get fairly on his feet again.

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 43

For two or three years his private affairs required his individual atten-
tion. In 1840, however, he was a member of the board of aldermen,
and performed a unique public service. For some reason the South Side
or an influential party on that side opposed any bridge across the main
river. It had secured the destruction of the Dearborn Street bridge
or it had been carried away by a flood, and when it was proposed to span
the river on Clark Street the movement encountered bitter opposition.
The aldermen were evenly divided, and it required the vote of Mayor
Raymond to pass the ordinance. It was necessary to make a bridge
that would not obstruct navigation, and Mr. Ogden made plans for
what was known as a swing bridge. It was built according to these plans
and proved so serviceable that during the succeeding five years others
like it were constructed at Wells, Randolph, and Kinzie streets.

When a boy Mr. Ogden intended to follow the law as a profession.
His father's illness and death, and later on business openings, had inter-
fered with his plans, but they did not bring his studies to an end. He
was essentially a business man, but he carried out his purpose to become
a lawyer so far, at least, as to be admitted to the bar in Chicago in 1841.
His brother, Mahlon D. Ogden, who followed him to Chicago, became
not only a successful lawyer, but a judge. It was the house of Mahlon
D. Ogden, standing in the center of a block of ground far north in the
Chicago of 1871, that had the distinction of being the only important
building on the North Side to survive the great fire. It was later dis-
placed by the Newberry Library.

In 1841 William B. Ogden became one of the founders of the Young
Men's Association of Chicago, an organization which for thirty years
maintained a reading-room and conducted lecture courses in the grow-
ing city.

Work on the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which was to open navi-
gation between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico and work
wonders for the prosperity of Chicago, had been begun in 1836. This
waterway was an enterprise of supreme interest in Chicago. The panic
of 1837 had interrupted more or less the progress of the work. The state
became embarrassed, the state bank failed, and in 1841 work on the
canal came to an end. Mr. Ogden felt a profound interest in the com-
pleting of this great public enterprise. In the autumn of 1842 he was
one of a self-constituted committee of four men, the others being Arthur
Bronson, of New York, J. Butterfield, and Mr. Ogden's attorney, I. N.
Arnold, who devised a plan for carrying the work on. More than
$5,000,000 had already been expended, and it was estimated that it

44 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

would cost $1,600,000 more to complete the undertaking. The plan was
approved. The legislature enacted the necessary measures to carry
it out, and this was done with such success that the canal was finished
in 1848, and continued for many years to be one of the great assets of
the city.

One of the early institutions of Chicago was Rush Medical College.
Chartered in 1837, it did not get fairly under way till Mr. Ogden gave
it, in 1843, a site for a building on the North Side, at the corner of Dear-
born and Indiana streets. He assisted in the erection of the first modest
building of the college, and was for many years president of the board
of trustees. This was the beginning of the connection of Mr. Ogden's
name with the University of Chicago, Rush Medical College being now
in organic connection with that institution. Like many another man
he builded better than he knew !

A quotation from Mr. Arnold has indicated that Mr. Ogden was a
man of marked literary tastes. He not only loved good poetry and
filled his house with books, but more than once adventured into litera-
ture. In 1844 a new paper was started in Chicago, the Chicago Demo-
cratic Advocate and Commercial Advertiser. The paper had no editor,
and its editorials were largely written by William B. Ogden, N. B. Judd
(who nominated Mr. Lincoln for the presidency in the famous Wigwam
in 1860), I. N. Arnold, and Ebenezer Peck. A paper with no responsible
editor, however, could not long survive in a city like Chicago, and this
lasted only a few years.

After the panic of 1837 Mr. Ogden continued his real-estate business,
but for a number of years under very difficult conditions. It is said
that between the spring of 1837 and the fall of 1838 values had dimin-
ished 80 per cent. Indeed lots could hardly be sold at any price. In a
few years, of course, prices began again to advance. In 1844 and 1845
that increase in values had begun which marked the founding of many
great Chicago fortunes. In Mr. Ogden's notebook he wrote: "In 1844
I purchased for $8,000 what eight years thereafter sold for $3,000,000."
"I purchased in 1845 property for $15,000 which twenty years there-
after, in 1865, was worth ten millions of dollars." He did not hold these
properties and realize their profits, for he was a dealer in real estate and
was continually buying and selling. The vast amount of real estate he
owned from time to time merely passed through his hands, keeping
business moving and building up the city. He opened up in the course
of these transactions more than a hundred miles of streets, and made
the multifarious improvements necessary in putting new subdivisions

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 45

on the market. He prospered greatly, but his real-estate business did
not furnish the opportunities his extraordinary talents and energies
required. He found them in the great public enterprises which occupied
much of his time during the last thirty years of his life.

In 1846 a popular movement began for the improvement of the
waterways of the West and the harbors of the Great Lakes. This was
a matter of great moment for Chicago, and Mr. Ogden took a leading
part in preparing the way for the extraordinary River and Harbor
Convention held in that city in 1847. He united with two other men
in calling the preliminary meeting in Chicago in 1846, and was a member
of the Committee of Arrangements for the convention. When the
convention assembled in Chicago on July 5, 1847, he nominated the
temporary chairman. The number of delegates is variously given at
from three to ten thousand. Abraham Lincoln was present as one of
them and spoke. Thurlow Weed, who attended, described the con-
vention as "the largest deliberative body ever assembled." It was said
that twenty thousand strangers visited Chicago to attend the conven-
tion. It was held in the courthouse square under an immense tent
covering about two-thirds of the block, the courthouse then standing
on the northeast corner of the square and the jail on the northwest
corner.

In the same year Mr. Ogden was once more a member of the city
council. He also found time to act on the Committee of Arrangements
of the Western Educational Convention held in Chicago, and accepted
the presidency of the Northwestern Educational Society organized by
the convention. This society was instituted to further the better
training of Illinois teachers, and out of it grew the state's admirable
system of normal schools and colleges.

But the great event of the year 1847 in Mr. Ogden's life was his
entrance into the career of an organizer and builder of railroads. The
first Chicago railroad was known as the Galena & Chicago Union. This
company had been chartered in 1836 when Galena was a more important
place than Chicago and was naturally placed first in the name of the
proposed road. After eleven years had passed without any real be-
ginning having been made, Mr. Ogden and a few other men bought the
charter and the few assets and began an effort to secure the building
of the road. Mr. Ogden and Mr. Scammon went to Boston and laid
the situation before William F. Weld, then known as the "railroad
king." Mr. Scammon, in relating the interview, says: "Mr. Weld
said to us, 'Gentlemen, I do not remember any enterprise of this kind

\

46 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

we Boston people have taken hold of upon statistics. You must go
home, raise what money you can, expend it upon your road, and when
it breaks down, as it surely or in all probability will, come and give it
to us, and we will take hold of it and complete it, as we are completing
the Michigan Central." William B. Ogden and J. Y. Scammon were
not the kind of men to be talked to in this way. Mr. Scammon con-
tinues: "A resolution was then formed .... that the Galena should
not break down. We came home, sought and obtained subscriptions
to the stock of the road upon the pledge that the stock should never

be endangered until it rose to par This pledge was kept." An

interesting light is thrown on the wealth of the leading business men of
Chicago in 1847-48 by the following statement of Mr. Scammon:
"There was no man in Chicago who could conveniently, or was dis-
posed to, subscribe for more than $5,000 in the stock of the railroad
company, and the enterprise not only required faith and energy, but
the soliciting of subscriptions from every person who could take even
one share of stock." The work was prosecuted with infinite difficulty.
Mr. Ogden himself visited the farmers along the proposed line from
Chicago to Galena and solicited their subscriptions. He was president
of the road and held that office till 1851, when troubles in the directorate,
regarding which information is lacking, led him to retire from that office.
As a result of his retirement the road was never extended to Galena, but
Freeport remained its terminal, to the intense indignation of Galena,
which had invested generously in the stock. As a business enterprise,
however, the Galena & Chicago Union was eminently successful.

In the midst of his labors to inaugurate the building of railroads
west of Chicago Mr. Ogden also interested himself in securing railroad
connections with the East. The Michigan Central, having reached
Lake Michigan in 1846, had stopped at New Buffalo, sixty-six miles
east of Chicago. Mr. Ogden felt it to be imperative that the road
should be extended to the rising young city. He therefore, in connec-
tion with J. Y. Scammon, set himself to work to bring this about, and
after long effort they revived an abandoned Indiana charter which gave
the exclusive right to construct a railroad from Michigan City to Chicago.
The Michigan Central, being put in possession of this charter, extended
its line and entered Chicago in May, 1852, giving the city two eastern
connections, the Michigan Southern having anticipated its rival by three
months.

The Chicago Board of Trade was founded in 1848 with Mr. Ogden
as one of its organizers and a member of the board of directors. In this

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 47

year also he was a partner of Cyrus H. McCormick, the inventor of the
reaper and mowing machines which have revolutionized the agriculture
of the world, who had recently determined to make Chicago the center
of the new industry. In its beginnings Mr. Ogden assisted in financing
the enterprise which has now become world-wide in its operations.

Meantime he was reflecting deeply and corresponding widely on
the railroad problems of the country. Already his early vision of a
railroad system reaching the Mississippi had so enlarged that he now
saw that system covering the continent and extending to the Pacific
Ocean. He had become so well known for his large and intelligent views
on the railroad policy of the country that when, in 1850, the National
Pacific Railway Convention was held in Philadelphia, Mr. Ogden was
made its presiding officer. He seems thus early to have begun the foun-
dation of those plans which led to the building of the first road to the
Pacific. It was probably in pursuit of those plans that a little later he
was actively engaged in Iowa in furthering the extension of the Rock
Island west of Davenport to the Missouri River, where the Union Pacific
later began.

But Mr. Ogden's mind was not entirely absorbed with railroads
running toward the Pacific. He was equally interested in securing rail
connections for Chicago with the East. On the organization of the
Chicago & Fort Wayne Company in 1853 he became one of its directors.
The road, after making various combinations, extended its lines to
Pittsburgh.

By 1853-54 Mr. Ogden had become a man of considerable wealth.
It may have been about this time that he instructed his financial man-
ager to ascertain and report to him how much he was worth. After full
investigation the report was submitted showing him to be worth about
a million dollars, on which he is reported by the agent to have said to
him, "My God, Quigg, but that's a lot of money."

It was at this time, 1853-54, that Mr. Ogden went abroad, spending
about eighteen months in England and on the Continent. During this
trip he gave another illustration of his inclination toward literary pro-
duction by a series of letters to the Chicago Democratic Press. He
examined the waterways of Europe, and in these letters strongly advo-
cated a ship canal connecting Chicago with the Mississippi and the
Gulf.

In 1855, soon after his return from Europe, he was made a member
of the Sewerage Commission, which brought to Chicago for his many
years of service that eminent engineer E. S. Chesbrough, who devised

48 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

and carried into execution the city's sewerage and water-supply systems.
He became in the same year one of the organizers of the Illinois Savings
Institution, of which he was for many years a director.

In politics Mr. Ogden was for most of his life a Democrat. He was,
however, opposed to slavery, and in 1848-49 lined up with the Free-
soilers. It was therefore only natural that he became one of the founders
of the Republican party. In 1856 he was on the Committee of Arrange-
ments for the first Republican State Convention, which was held at
Bloomington. In the same year, with many other of the old settlers, he
assisted in organizing the Chicago Historical Society and became its
vice-president, holding that office for many years. In this year also he
made one of the important investments of his life. This was the estab-
lishment on the Peshtigo River, Green Bay, northern Wisconsin, of a
great lumber business. Within a few years the firm owned about two
hundred thousand acres of pine lands, built extensive mills with a
flourishing village about them, constructed a fine harbor, and manufac-
tured for the Chicago market forty or fifty million feet of lumber annually.

These years formed a period of extraordinary business activity in
Mr. Ogden's life. He was a little over fifty years old and had reached
the full maturity of his powers. His means were ample, allowing him to
branch out in many directions, and his interests and investments were
widely distributed. He had begun the construction of the Chicago, St.
Paul & Fond du Lac Railroad, and in 1857 was pushing it forward with all
his energy. He was president also of the Illinois & Wisconsin, as well as
of the Wisconsin & Superior Land Grant Railway. These roads, with
the Beloit & Madison, the Rock River Valley, and other small lines he
absorbed into the Chicago, St. Paul & Fond du Lac, and thus laid the
foundation for the great Chicago & North Western System. Meantime-
he had found time to organize a company to tunnel the Chicago River,
and in 1857 he united with the ablest men in the city in founding the
first of the present great banks of Chicago, the Merchants Loan and
Trust Company.

The widespread and disastrous panic of 1857 found Mr. Ogden's
operations thus widely extended. He was under an immense load of
obligations. On the paper of the Fond du Lac Railroad alone he was
endorser to the amount of nearly a million and a half dollars. His failure
seemed to his friends and the public almost inevitable. This general
impression was the occasion of practical expressions of friendship and
personal devotion almost without parallel, and which constitute an
unspeakably eloquent testimonial to the character of Mr. Ogden, his

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 49

integrity, his lovableness, his greatness. The most extraordinary offers
of assistance began to come to him from many friends. Robert Eaton,
of Wales, at once sent to him $80,000 to use at his discretion. Matthew
Laflin, of Chicago, tendered for himself and friends $100,000. Colonel
E. D. Taylor, of Chicago, repeatedly pressed upon him a like amount.
Samuel Russell, of Middletown, Connecticut, whose agent in Chicago
Mr. Ogden had been for many years, wrote to the latter's partner in that
city, placing his entire fortune of half a million dollars in Mr. Ogden's
hands. Perhaps the most touching of all these proffers came from a
Scotch nobleman whose friendship he had acquired while abroad five

years before. It was contained in the following letter:

«
MY DEAR MR. OGDEN:

I hear you are in trouble. I have placed to your credit in New York £100,000.
If you get through I know you will return it. If you don't, Jeanie and I will never
miss it.

Mr. Ogden was not asking his friends for help. These proffers and
others like them were spontaneous expressions of affection and devotion.
He declined them all. He was confident that he could weather the
storm, and making a full exhibit of his affairs to the creditors of the Fond
du Lac road he was allowed to continue in control and pay the obliga-
tions as he was able. In these transactions Samuel J. Tilden was his
New York adviser.

There was indeed another side to these troubles of the Wisconsin
railroads Mr. Ogden was then building. It also illustrated the greatness
of the man. The people in one section of Wisconsin, fearing the loss of
all they had invested, became exasperated against him. They thought
that he had deceived and swindled them, and threatened to shoot him
if he ever again ventured into their country. He immediately sent hand-
bills into the community, calling a public meeting which he would
address. A large and threatening crowd assembled. In vain Mr.
Ogden's friends urged him not to go to the meeting. He was received
with a most menacing uproar. He was unarmed, and appealed to their
sense of fair play, and told them that after they had heard him they
might shoot him if they pleased. With perfect candor and clearness
he laid before them all the facts, and revealed his own losses and embar-
rassments and the disastrous results of the panic. He then pictured
with enthusiastic eloquence the certainty of ultimate success, assured
them it would double the value of every farm, and when he concluded,
instead of mobbing him and shooting him, they appointed a committee

50 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

to wait upon him, which said, "Mr. Ogden, we are authorized by the
farmers and other stockholders along the road to say, if you wish it, we
will double our subscriptions." He was as honest and courageous as he
was able and efficient. It is not to be wondered at that he was brought
forward in 1855 as a candidate for the United States Senate. This was
in the great contest at Springfield in which Abraham Lincoln, the leading
candidate, finally withdrew in favor of Lyman Trumbull and secured
his first election as Senator.

In 1858, while business was still prostrate from the panic of the
preceding year, Mr. Ogden became one of the organizers of the North
Chicago City Railway. Meantime the Chicago & Fort Wayne, of
which he became a director in 1853, after forming a combination with
two other roads and making a through line from Chicago to Pittsburgh,
fell into difficulties during the prostration of the country's business, and
in 1859 sequestrators and receivers were appointed in the states through
which its lines ran. The difficulties of the road brought into full play
the extraordinary business genius of Mr. Ogden. A general meeting
of the stockholders, bondholders, and creditors was held in Pittsburgh.
There was much confusion and conflict of opinion. Mr. Ogden brought
about unity by proposing a plan which created a new company com-
posed of bondholders and other creditors and stockholders, which con-
served the interests of all and assured the success of the road. It
required the appointment of a single receiver for the entire line, and
this office was at once urged upon him at a salary of $25,000 by all
parties. He was already overburdened with other great enterprises,
his health was impaired, and he felt compelled to decline. No other
man, however, could be found, and, after refusing again and again, he
was in the end fairly forced by necessity to undertake the work of putting
the reorganized road on its feet. This he finally did with the under-
standing that his compensation should be less than half the amount
pressed upon him. His administration was most successful, and the
Chicago, Pittsburgh & Fort Wayne finally became a most important
part of the great Pennsylvania System.

It was said a moment ago that wiien the Fort Wayne receivership was
urged upon him Mr. Ogden pleaded that he was already overburdened.
He was then engaged in one of the great organizing and constructive
undertakings of his life. For it was in 1859 that he was organizing
out of his various roads in Wisconsin and northern Illinois the vast
system of the Chicago & North Western. From the beginning he was
the president of the road, and within five years had absorbed into the

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 51

new system his earliest railroad venture, the Galena & Chicago Union,
with several of its connecting and dependent lines. The organization
of the Chicago & North Western System was one of the most brilliant
achievements of his life. He continued in the presidency till 1868,
when, having removed to New York City, he retired. As his connec-
tion with the Galena & Chicago Union, a part of the North Western, had
existed since 1847, the stockholders, on the occasion of his retirement,
adopted the following :

Resolved, That his [W. B. Ogden's] connection with this company dating back for
a period of twenty-one years, his disinterested labors in its behalf without fee or reward
during the whole tune, the benefit he has conferred upon it and the country, demand
our grateful acknowledgments.

The writer of this sketch recalls vividly the visit of the Prince of
Wales, afterward Edward VII, to Chicago in 1860, and his progress, in
an open carriage, down Michigan Avenue. Mr. Ogden was a member
of the committee of three citizens for the reception and entertainment
of the prince. In this year, with the avowed purpose of encouraging
the railroad development of the state, he sought and secured election
to the state senate on the Republican ticket. It might he supposed
that his multiplied business interests, real estate, lumber, railroads, etc.,
with his new political duties, would have absorbed all his energies. But
he was a great executive, of extraordinary administrative ability to
employ the brains and direct the activities of other men. There was,
therefore, nothing but the extent of his resources to limit the enlarge-
ment of his business interests. In 1860 he purchased at Brady's Bend,
in the iron and coal region of Pennsylvania, five thousand acres of land,
and organized the Brady's Bend Iron Company, with a capital of
$2,000,000, which within a few years was employing six hundred men
and making two hundred tons of rails daily.

In 1 86 1 he was appointed, by act of the legislature, one of a commit-
tee to organize the Chicago & Alton Railroad, which was in line with his
purpose in seeking election to the state senate. When, in the same year,
the Civil War broke out, and a great passion of patriotism flamed through
Chicago, Mr. Ogden was a member of the committee organized to raise
funds for arming and equipping the city regiments. It was in this year
also that he was elected president of the Board of Trustees of the first
University of Chicago. The University had begun its educational work
in 1858. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had contributed its site on
Cottage Grove Avenue, north of Thirty-fifth Street, had served as

52 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

president of the Board till his death in the spring of 1861. Mr. Ogden
succeeded him and continued in the office as long as he lived. He felt
a lively interest in the institution, and was understood to be pledged to
erect the north wing of the great university building as soon as the
institution should free itself from debt. This it never did, and the
troubles which broke out among the trustees and for many years para-
lyzed their efforts so discouraged Mr. Ogden that any benevolent inten-
tions he had cherished toward the institution were never carried out.

In 1862, the second year of the Civil War, the national congress
passed an act authorizing the building of the first railroad to the Pacific.
Under this act the Union Pacific was built with William B. Ogden as its
first president. This was a fitting conclusion of his progressive railroad
building. He had expressed the hope in the New York senate in 1835
that he might live to see the railroad system of the country extend to the
Mississippi, and before reaching sixty years of age he had himself become
an influential and even dominant figure in -systems extending from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, being president of roads extending the greater
part of the distance.

We find him during these years making frequent contributions to the
educational and charitable work of Chicago. With three other men
he gave a site of twenty acres to the McCormick Theological Seminary.
He was one of the earliest considerable contributors to the Erring
Women's Refuge. There were naturally repeated gifts to the first
University of Chicago, as well as to the Academy of Sciences.

At sixty years of age he began to think of withdrawing from active
business. He resigned from the presidency of the Union Pacific, and
in 1866 purchased a handsome villa at Fordham Heights, adjoining
High Bridge, on the Harlem River near New York. There were more
than a hundred acres of land, with a front of nearly half a mile on the
river. The place was given the name of "Boscobel." For a number
of years Mr. Ogden resided alternately in Chicago and New York,
gradually spending more and more of his tune at Boscobel. Here he
was living in quiet when he was rudely drawn from his seclusion by the
Chicago fire of 1871. He had definitely retired and placed the care of
his great enterprises for the most part in other hands. And it was not
a single disaster that now fell upon him, but a double one. It was not
Chicago alone that was burning, but his great lumber mills and the
homes of his workmen at Peshtigo. The telegraphic wires disturbed his
dreams of a quiet and peaceful old age with these messages: "Chicago
is burning." "All Chicago is on fire." "Chicago is burned up." "A

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 53

whirlwind of fire is sweeping over Peshtigo." He boarded a train for
Chicago at once, reaching that city Tuesday evening, October 10, passed
through the still smoking ruins, and sought his own home, which, he
had been told on the train, was the only one left standing on the North
Side. He could not find it. He could hardly find the spot where it had
stood. It was his brother Mahlon's house farther north which alone
survived the conflagration on the North Side, and thither, through still
smoldering fires, he made his way. The following day he received final
intelligence of the utter destruction of Peshtigo, aggravated by a terrible
loss of life among his workmen. "His individual loss in the two fires
exceeded two million dollars." This is the declaration of Mr. Arnold,
who had every means of knowing. Mr. Arnold adds: "He met all — I
will not say like a hero, but like a Christian hero." He remained in
Chicago only four days, seeking to encourage the people to rise to those
heroic efforts which transformed what seemed an irreparable disaster
into a real and enduring advantage in a better and greater city. He
then went on to Peshtigo, where his presence was indispensable to the
despairing people. Here he threw off at once thirty years of his age,
becoming a young man of exhaustless energy, untiring industry, and con-
tagious enthusiasm. He said to the people, "We will rebuild this
village — the mills, the shops — and do a larger winter's logging than ever
before." He remained two months or more, superintending and direct-
ing the work. Mr. Arnold writes:

At daylight in the morning he was up, and worked with the men till dark, con-
stantly exposed to the rain and sleet and snow. When night came, he would go on an
open car, drawn by mules, eight miles to the harbor. All the evening, until late in the
night, he was engaged with his clerks and assistants, in drawing plans, writing letters,
and sending telegrams to his agents, and the next morning break of day would find
him again at the head of his men at Peshtigo. During all this period he was cheerful
and pleasant, and inspired everybody with courage and faith in the future. This
terrible strain upon him, and overwork for a man of his years, probably shortened his
life.

A business associate, General Henry Strong, who was with Mr. Ogden
during these herculean labors, closes his account of them with this
estimate of the man :

Thus far in life, I have been associated with no one equal to him in business
capacity, in energy, in perseverance. He possessed many of the qualities of a great
and successful general, viz., unflinching courage, coolness in times of danger, rare
presence of mind in emergencies, decision, a constitution of iron, great physical strength,
executive power of a high order, ability to master the details of anything he had on
hand, firmness of purpose, faith in his own judgment and plans, and an unbending

54 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

will to carry through to completion, and against all opposition, anything he undertook.
In the planning and management of large enterprises, while in the prime of life, he had
no superior and I believe few equals.

Mr. Ogden contemplated marriage in early manhood, but his hopes
were disappointed by the death of his intended wife. He evidently
cherished for her a very tender attachment, and the remembrance of
her deterred him from marriage till very late in life. On February 9,
1875, he married Miss Marianna Arnot, daughter of Judge Arnot, of
Elmira, New York. He had long been on the most friendly relations
with the family and with the daughter, and Mr. Arnold remarks that
the only mistake about the marriage was that it did not take place twenty
or thirty years earlier. At the time of his marriage Mr. Ogden was in his
seventieth year, and his health was beginning to break. With the failure
of his strength he put his affairs into the hands of Andrew H. Green,
one of the ablest men in New York, who continued in permanent charge
of his estate until its distribution after Mr. Ogden's death. His health
continued to fail, and he died August 3, 1877, in his seventy-third year.
He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York, on August 6. Bishop
Clarkson, of the Episcopal church, traveled halfway across the con-
tinent to speak at the funeral, telling of Mr. Ogden's open profession
of his Christian faith somewhat late in life, of his talent for friendship,
of his noble character, and of his commanding abilities. It was at once
everywhere recognized by the press that one of the great men of the
country had passed away.

Not long after Mr. Ogden's death the Chicago Historical Society
suggested to Mrs. Ogden the propriety of placing a portrait of her hus-
band on its walls, and the artist, G. P. A. Healy, was commissioned to
paint it. This was done from a picture that had been made by the same
artist in 1856, when Mr. Ogden was fifty-one years old. On its formal
presentation to the Society on December 20, 1881, the Hon. Isaac N.
Arnold delivered a biographical address from which some quotations
have been made in this sketch. In moving the adoption of resolutions
of thanks to Mrs. Ogden, at the conclusion of Mr. Arnold's address, the
Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, minister to France during the Franco-
Prussian War of 1870, among other things said:

Mr. Ogden was a man of education, intelligence, and refinement. As a business
man he had broad and enlightened views, a bold spirit, and unerring sagacity. Of
courtly and polished manners, there is no society in the world he would not have
adorned. As a conversationalist, I have hardly ever known his superior, or even his
equal. If a public speaker is to be measured by results accomplished, there were few

WILLIAM BUTLER OGDEN 55

men ever more happy or more successful. I have never known a man who could better
address himself to the intelligence, the understanding, the judgment, and the sym-
pathy of men I never heard so effective speeches as those made by him.

Mr. Arnold, in his address, had brought out another and a very
attractive side of his character, saying :

His was one of those sympathetic natures that brought gladness into every circle
he entered. His smile was like the sunshine to the landscape. He developed and

brought into action whatever was good in those with whom he associated His

nature was an inspiration and a stimulant He brightened the path of everyone

with whom he walked. No one entered his presence who was not made happier, and
made to think better of themselves and of others, of life and humanity.

The story was told by Mr. Arnold that a lady born to affluence, but
reduced to poverty, asked Mr. Ogden how her sons could hope to earn a
living. His reply was :

Madam, don't have the least concern. If your sons are healthy and willing to
work, they will find enough to do, and if they cannot begin at the top, let them begin
at the bottom, and very likely they will be all the better for it. I was born close by a
sawmill, was early left an orphan, was cradled in a sugar trough, christened in a mill-
pond, graduated at a log school house, and at fourteen fancied I could do anything
I turned my hand to, and that nothing was impossible, and ever since, madam, I have
been trying to prove it, and with some success.

In view of the long-continued relation of Mr. Ogden to Rush Medical
College and the first University of Chicago as president of their boards
of trustees for many years, the permanent and prominent connection
of his name with the new University of Chicago is as gratifying as it is
appropriate. That connection came about in the following manner:
Mr. Ogden left i\ per cent of his estate for distribution by his executors
and trustees for such benevolent causes as they might select. In 1891
these executors and trustees were Andrew H. Green and Mrs. Ogden.
In January, 1891, Dr. William R. Harper, President-elect of the new
University, was invited to meet Mr. Green in New York to confer with
him with reference to an endowment for scientific studies in the new
University. Only six months had passed since the institution had
secured its earliest fund. A board of trustees had only just been organ-
ized and a president elected who had not yet accepted. It would seem
as though Mrs. Ogden and Mr. Green had been waiting for just this
opportunity and recognized at once the singular appropriateness of
devoting a part of Mr. Ogden's estate to the purpose which he had him-
self cherished while living — the upbuilding of a university for Chicago.

56 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Within six months after first proposing the matter they executed a formal
designation to the University of "70 per cent of the moneys to be devoted
to charities under the terms of Mr. Ogden's will." On July 9, 1891, the
trustees of the University accepted the proposed gift, and in considera-
tion of it undertook to organize and maintain the Ogden Graduate School
of Science. This school was fully organized and began its work of
research and instruction on October i, 1892, the day on which the
University opened its doors to students. The amount received from
the estate for the Ogden Fund was paid to the University at intervals
through twenty-one years, and, in the end, totaled in round numbers
$566,000. This entire sum was invested as a permanent endowment
fund, none of it being employed for buildings or equipment.

The Ogden Graduate School of Science has been exceedingly success-
ful and useful, now registering a thousand students a year pursuing
graduate studies, and being a recognized center of scientific investigation.
The School is housed :'n a dozen buildings built by the liberal gifts of
George C. Walker, Sidney A. Kent, Martin A. Ryerson, Miss Helen
Culver, Charles T. Yerkes, Julius Rosenwald, and by the University
itself. These buildings alone, without their equipment, cost $1,700,000.
The value of the grounds, buildings, apparatus, and endowments
exceeds $3,000,000.

Thus there has been built by gifts from his own estate and from
others, in the city where his active life was passed, a splendid and endur-
ing monument to one of its greatest and best citizens, William B. Ogden.
Nothing could be more appropriate than that such a monument should
exist in memory of the city's first mayor, of the first president of the
trustees of Rush Medical College, and the man who for sixteen years,
more than half of its history, was president of the board of the first
University of Chicago.

POBLU LIBRAE

ASTOK, LENOX
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

E. XELSOX BLAKE

E. NELSON BLAKE

The first settlers of New England no sooner set their feet on the
shores of our continent than they began, not only to make, but also to
write, history. There may have been other pioneers in other lands
who did this before their day, but I do not recall any. The fathers of
Plymouth, even before they landed, began the record of their daily
experiences and continued it through the eventful years that followed.
The Puritan successors of the Pilgrims, in apparently every early
settlement in New England, seem to have shared this desire to preserve
the annals of their times. Sometimes this was done in the records of
the boards of selectmen and sometimes by chroniclers who were moved
by their own historical impulse.

What made our early progenitors historians? Were they impelled
by some instinctive consciousness that they were engaged in no ordinary
enterprise, but were, rather, laying the foundations of a mighty empire
and opening a new historic era ?

They had this advantage, that they wrote of things that were going
on about them and of men of whose lives they had, for the most part,
personal knowledge. And therefore these old stories are in such detail
that we can make out some sort of biography of almost every man in
every town. It is this that makes them such invaluable historica
sources and enables every man of New England ancestry, not only
to trace his genealogy, but to learn what manner of men his forebears
were.

The ancestors of E. Nelson Blake came to America from Somerset-
shire, England, and settled in the town of Dorchester, which, lying
south of Boston, after being a separate municipality for two hundred
and forty years, is now a part of that city. William Blake, the first of
the family to come to the new world, was born in 1594. His great-
grandfather, Humphrey, was also the great-grandfather of the famous
Admiral Blake who, during the protectorate of Cromwell, drove all of
England's enemies from the sea and established that British supremacy
on the water that has never been lost.

William Blake migrated to New England in 1635. In that year
the Rev. Richard Mather, father of a famous son, Increase, and grand-
father of the still more famous Cotton Mather, came over with one

57

58 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

-

hundred other immigrants and became pastor of the church in
Dorchester, remaining its minister till his death in 1669. These new-
comers, happier than those who preceded them, arrived just in tune
to take the places made vacant hi Dorchester by that historic migration
of the earlier settlers to the Connecticut Valley. They thus found
houses already built which they purchased. The History of Dorchester
records that William Blake and his wife came over "probably in the
same ship" with Mr. Mather. Mr. Blake was a man of such character,
ability, and education that he was not only an officer of the church,
but was three times chosen selectman and was also town recorder. In
1656 he was made clerk of the writs for the county of Suffolk and was
continued in that office till his death in 1663. His son, James, born in
1623, coming over with his father when twelve years old and inheriting
his father's abilities, became very prominent in the church and the
town. After serving the church as deacon for fourteen years, he was
promoted against his protest and served a like period as ruling elder
till his death in 1700. He was selectman for thirteen years, assessor,
deputy to the General Court, clerk of the writs, recorder, and, indeed,
spent his life in the service of the church and the community.

There is this curious entry in the town records. A new house was
ordered built for the minister, to be "such a house as James Blake's."
This house, considered a model for the residence of the minister, who
was the most important man in the community, was built previous to
1650. It remained in possession of the family till 1829. It is still stand-
ing and is now owned by the Dorchester Historical Society and has
been fitted for its uses. Pictures of the "Blake House" show that what
was thought a fit residence for the minister was a building of seven
rooms, two stories high, and after the style of two hundred and fifty
years ago, with walls as well as roof shingled.

The great name among the Blakes of the eighteenth century was
that of James Blake, of whom the History of Dorchester, speaking of
the year 1750, says:

On the 4th of December of this year died James Blake, author of the Annals of

Dorchester. He was the .... great-grandson of William Blake It is truly

wonderful .... to see how much writing and work this man accomplished

He had the principal charge of the affairs of the Proprietors of the Undivided Lands
for many years and drafted with great ingenuity the tables for collecting the Province
and town taxes, many of which are now in existence.

Mr. Blake was clerk of the town for twenty-four years and one of the
most accurate surveyors of his time. Through many years and up to

E. NELSON BLAKE 59

the very end of his life he labored on the history of his native town,
making as complete as possible the record of every year, and this is the
work that has come down to us as the Annals of Dorchester. As suggested
at the beginning of this sketch, he was one of those men who wrote history
under an inner urge he had to obey.

Such was the line to which E. Nelson Blake belonged. He is in
the eighth generation in direct descent from the pioneer — William,
James, James, Increase, Benjamin, Nathaniel, Ellis, and E. Nelson
Blake. Ellis Gray Blake, his father, was a printer of Boston. Physi-
cally he was a man of extraordinary activity, a very rapid walker, a
member of two Boston military companies and the Boston Fire Depart-
ment of which he was clerk. He had enjoyed few early educational
advantages, but he had a most alert, inquiring, and acquisitive mind.
He was for many years marine reporter for the Boston Journal, and
Nathan Robbins, president of the Faneuil Hall National Bank, declared
Mr. Blake to be "the best informed man on all topics he had ever
met." He was a devout man, a member of the Baptist church, exerted
a strong religious influence, "was singularly unselfish and was greatly
beloved." His habit of working to the limit of his endurance brought on
an illness which resulted in his death at the early age of forty-five.
Most of his married life was spent in Arlington. There, in 1808, was
built the house in which E. Nelson Blake was born. Known as the
Blake House, it is still standing on Massachusetts Avenue, which is
the principal street of Arlington. It was along this historic street,
then a country road, that Paul Revere rode to warn the people of the
coming of the British forces on that April day in 1775 which saw the
opening of the Revolution. It was through this street the enemy
marched on Lexington and along it that they later retreated, defeated
and decimated by the American militia and the farmers of the country-
side. The Blake house of Arlington was built a hundred and sixty years
later than the Blake house of Dorchester, but it looks like a replica of it.
The pictures of these two ancient houses may be seen in the published
histories of the two towns.

The second wife of Ellis Gray Blake was Ann Elizabeth Wyman,
who was descended from John Wyman, one of the founders of the town
of Woburn in 1640. Woburn is only a few miles north of Arlington and
Wymans early found their way to the latter place, known successively
as Cambridge, West Cambridge, and Arlington. The brothers, Abner P.
and John P. Wyman, owned the farm on which the Blake house stood
and which had been bought by their father Samuel F. Wyman in 1804.

60 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Their sister, Ann Elizabeth, was the mother of E. Nelson Blake. There
were seven children of this marriage, a brother and two sisters older
and three sisters younger than E. Nelson. He was born in the Blake
house February 9, 1831. His mother was a devout woman, and, having
as her pastor one of the leading Baptist ministers of that day in Massa-
chusetts, Rev. Ebenezer Nelson, she called her son by his name.

The father, dying while yet a young man, did not leave such accumu-
lations as would properly care for the seven children of his second
marriage, only one of whom was old enough to make his own way.
This was Stephen P., who, except for six years spent in California,
followed the sea from 1838 to 1871, rising from cabin-boy to captain.

At the time of his father's death E. Nelson was only ten years old,
and, young as he was, it soon became necessary for him to assist his
mother in the care of her large family. At the age of twelve, therefore,
he went to work for a neighboring farmer. His wages were four dollars
a month, about fifteen cents a day. He worked six months, and,
returning home at the end of that time, he handed over to his mother $24,
the entire proceeds of the season's work. For six years thereafter, from
his twelfth to his eighteenth year, he spent his summers working on
the farm of his uncles, Abner and John Wyman, on which the Blake
house stood. His uncles were themselves hard-working men and their
employes were expected to keep up with them. Such a thing as the
eight-hour day was then not only unknown, but undreamed of, and
would have been scouted had it even been mentioned. The hours were
from sunrise to sunset. In the longest days of the summer one of the
uncles used to say to the boy: "Nelson, the days are short and the
nights are mere nothing." With such men enough work could not be
crowded into the hours of the day. They were among the best men of
the community and naturally prospered. But the boy who worked
with and for them throughout his boyhood had little time to spare for
play and the sports of youth. His own phrase aptly tells the whole
story of the recreations of his boyhood: "little or none." There was
some fun in winter when he went to school and met the other boys at
recess and before and after school. But his youth was spent in six
months of hard work each year and six months of hard study. He was
endowed by nature with scholarly instincts and earnest study was as
natural to him as any other kind of industry and thus he was busy
summer and winter.

The boy was fortunate in having a discerning teacher, Daniel C.
Brown, who soon recognized his unusual abilities and serious application

E. NELSON BLAKE 61

to his studies, gave him every encouragement, and became his life-
long friend. The school was a district school, but the teacher discovered
in the boy such gifts of acquisition and of imparting instruction that he
urged Nelson to take up teaching as a profession. It was from this
teacher that Mr. Blake acquired the finished penmanship that distin-
guished him at ninety years of age. He developed a gift for mathematics
and commended himself to his teacher by the facility with which he
acquired mental arithmetic, doing the most difficult figuring in his head.
When the boy reached eighteen, Mr. Brown secured a school for him, and
during the winter of 1849-50 he taught the Wyman district school in
the northern part of the town. It was a difficult school. The teacher
that preceded him had sent an unruly boy out to cut a switch with which
to be flogged. He cut two and managed to pass one of them to his
older brother without being detected. When the teacher began to
flog the boy, the brother attacked and overpowered him, and the younger
boy used on him the extra whip. Naturally, young Blake undertook
the school with some misgivings, but he was by nature both a teacher
and an administrator, and he never had the slightest trouble.

Mr. Blake was born and brought up almost under the shadow of
Harvard College. Only two generations before, one of the Dorchester
Blakes had graduated from that ancient seat of learning at eighteen,
"an eminent pattern of studiousness and proficiency in learning."
E. Nelson Blake had all the instincts and native endowments of a scholar.
Had the circumstances of the family permitted, he would naturally
have gone on from the lower to the higher schools, at sixteen would
have entered college and with his scholarly gifts and habits of applica-
tion would have been a brilliant student. It is vain to speculate where
this would have led him. I am quite sure, however, that it would not
have led him into a more widely useful career than he has had. But such
burdens fell upon the shoulders of the boy, in the support of the family,
that not even preparation for college was practicable and the teaching
of district schools was not profitable enough to assist particularly in
carrying these burdens.

The year 1850 was a most important one in Mr. Blake's life. In
the second month of that year he became nineteen years old. Whatever
may have been his previous spiritual experiences, he had not entered
the church. Now, however, he made a public profession of religion
and united with the First Baptist Church of Arlington. This meant
very much more to him than it means to most men. For him it came
to mean everything. Whatever other interest in his life has been second,

62 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

religion, with all the meaning that word holds, came to be first. He
became one of those who believe in evangelical Christianity, not only
with the mind, but also with the heart, and he has devoted his life to
Christian service. This whole-hearted devotion to the Christian cause
has made him a leader in that cause wherever he has been. It is a
privilege for me, who knew him long and well and through many trying
years, to testify that I have known almost no man who, always so
naturally and inevitably, because it was the supreme law of his life,
responded to the Christian motive.

There was another thing that made 1850 a memorable year in Mr.
Blake's life. Two years before, the great California gold discoveries
had been made. The interest and excitement aroused throughout the
country was unparalleled. Reports of riches lying ready for all comers
in that land of gold started vast numbers westward. In my youth the
members of this great migration were known as "the forty-niners."
In 1850 nearly or quite 100,000 of these immigrants arrived in California.
Many thousands took the long and perilous journey across the plains
and over the mountains. Other thousands took ship for the Isthmus
of Panama and, crossing, sailed up the Coast to San Francisco. Young
Blake, feeling, perhaps, that here was an opportunity to make quick
provision for his mother and her family as well as himself, joined the
migration among those who took the Panama route. The money for
the great adventure he borrowed from his Grandmother Wyman. She
loaned him $200, which he brought back to her two and a half years
later. He started in September, 1850, sailing from New York on the
steamer "Cherokee," which was crowded with a thousand other gold-
seekers. The young Argonaut found $200 a small allowance for the
long journey of 7,000 miles and was compelled to take passage in
the steerage. He proved a very poor sailor and was sick for most of the
voyage. The steerage passengers were a rough crowd, and when he
was able to eat he was too weak to join the scramble for provisions, but
satisfied such appetite as he had on a diet of peaches. Landing at
Chagres on the Isthmus, the passengers were carried in dugouts up
the river of that name to Gorgona, nearly halfway across, where the
trail began over the hills and through the tropical forests. Mr. Blake
rode a pony which, stepping in the tracks of countless other ponies and
mules which had traveled this ancient trail and made deep holes, allowed
his feet frequently to touch the ground. Arriving at the city of Panama,
he found that the San Francisco boat had just left and he was delayed a
week in that city. He was so sick again on the voyage up the coast as to

E. NELSON BLAKE 63

be quite helpless, and a missionary became good Samaritan to him and
ministered to his necessities. He passed through the Golden Gate in
October on the steamer "Oregon," which carried to California the news
of the admission of the state into the Union.

Mr. Blake's older brother Stephen had preceded him to the land
of gold. He had naturally taken the all-sea route and had sailed round
Cape Horn. He was now cultivating a farm near Nicolaus which was
on the Feather River about fifty miles north of Sacramento. After
spending four miserable days in a vermin-infested so-called hotel in
San Francisco, Nelson took a boat up the Sacramento to its junction
with the Feather and up that river to Nicolaus and found his brother,
who had not yet got round to building a cabin, living in a tent and
trying to start his farm. Though worn out and sick, Nelson sought
and found employment with Mr. Nicolaus at $30 a month, living for
six weeks with his brother in the tent. He grew weaker and more
miserable and conferred with Stephen as to how he might regain his
health. His brother, who had sailed all over the world, recommended
the genial climate of the Sandwich Islands. He thought of trying the
mountains, but perhaps most of all he thought of home. He had
reached the lowest ebb of the tide in his fortunes. He was sick and
poor and discouraged.

But he found the old saying, "It is darkest just before dawn," a
true one in his case. In this darkest hour of his fortunes a man appeared
who turned his darkness into day. This was Major, later General,
John Bidwell, a well-known figure in the history of California. Bidwell
migrated to the coast in 1841 with the first overland party, when he
was twenty-two years old. He became associated with Captain J. A.
Sutter and, through this connection, with the first discovery of gold.
The Mexican War found him in charge of Sutter's fort. Serving through
that war he returned to Sutter's settlement and later, locating a rich
gold deposit on the Feather River, which came to be known as "Bid-
well's Bar," he acquired wealth. With the proceeds of the mine he
bought the Rancho Chico, an estate of perhaps 40,000 acres, extending
east from the Sacramento River fourteen miles. He became a briga-
dier general in the Civil War, was elected to Congress, and in 1892 was
Prohibition candidate for president. He was so sincere a Prohibitionist
that in 1867 he uprooted all his wine-producing grapevines. His ranch,
Chico, was about fifty miles north of Nicolaus where young Blake sick,
discouraged, and uncertain which way to turn, was trying to work on
the ranch of Mr. Nicolaus. Early in December, 1850, General Bidwell,

64 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

calling on his friend, Mr. Nicolaus, found Mr. Blake. They had met
once before at Gorgona on the Isthmus, both happening to be crossing
at the same time. There would seem to have been a mutual attraction.
The General invited the young man to return with him to his ranch and
the invitation was gladly accepted. A warm friendship grew up between
the two which continued for fifty years, till the death of the older man
in 1900. General Bidwell was not slow to recognize the high character
and rare abilities of his young friend and sought in every way to attach
Mr. Blake to his fortunes. Shortly after their association began, they
went together to the San Jose Mission, two hundred miles south of
Rancho Chico. Here Mr. Blake's training as a farmer and gardener
asserted itself. From an old fig tree in the garden of the Mission he
cut five canes, took them back to the ranch, stuck them into the ground
of the garden, and by his care gave them such a start that they grew
into great trees of from fifteen to twenty feet in circumference, some
of them with a spread of branches of over a hundred feet. "One of
these trees still stands [1920] in front of the late General's home and is
used by Sunday-school parties from Chico as a picnic ground. Some of
the branches have reached to the ground and have taken root like a
banyan tree."

Five months after his younger brother had gone to the Rancho Chico,
Captain Stephen Blake went to visit him, and such a transformation
had been wrought in his health and appearance that his brother walked
straight past him without recognizing him. He had gained many pounds
in weight and the pallor of sickness had been succeeded by the bloom of
health. A friendly climate, nourishing food, and congenial employ-
ment in the open had made another man of him. The winter of his
discontent had passed. The world again looked good to him and he
continued on the great ranch through the year 1851.

He had gone to California, however, to look for gold, and in the
early part of 1852 he adventured into the mining region. With two
partners he went forty miles northeastward from Chico to the head
waters of Chico Creek and undertook placer mining. Many days
would be spent in laboriously clearing away the surface filling before
getting to the bed of black sand where the placer gold was to be looked
for. So much, however, depended on chance that it seemed to him
too much like gambling. While the partners had fair success, young
Blake, after six weeks, concluded to return to sure and steady employ-
ment of a sort he liked much better. He returned, therefore, and was
warmly welcomed back to the ranch by General Bidwell.

E. NELSON BLAKE 65

Perhaps one of the things that influenced him in giving up mining
and returning to the ranch was the interest he felt in an experiment in
gardening, the preliminary steps in which he had already taken.
General Bidwell treated him as a younger brother rather than as an
employe and gave him free scope for the exercise of his gifts. All
garden stuff was very rare and very costly. The farm of the uncles in
Arlington had been gradually changing with the growth of Boston
into a great market garden. To supply the lack of vegetables in Cali-
fornia it had occurred to Nelson to send to them for seeds of their own
raising and these, hermetically sealed, reached him in February, 1852,
the express charges being a dollar a pound.

The planting of these fresh, high grade seeds produced such a garden in the summer
of 1852 that miners would go miles to see it. In the same box were seed of a natural
strain of peaches, not requiring grafting or budding — a most excellent quality of
fruit. These were planted, carefully tended and grew into trees from four to six feet
in height the first summer. In the fall the first peach orchard in Sacramento Valley
was set out, bearing fruit the following summer. The sandy loam washed from the
mountain sides was the natural home of the peach and the yield of luscious fruit
was abundant.

While in California, the boy became a man, reaching his majority
in February, 1852. But distance and long absence did not weaken the
ties that bound him to his home. He sent money, as he was able, to
his mother, $500 in a single draft. The attachment of General Bidwell
to him increased. He was highly intelligent, a fine reader, an interest-
ing conversationalist, with great business talents, and had proved himself
so useful and congenial that his employer had become his friend and
companion. General Bidwell had found him so alert and capable, so
high-minded and trust-compelling that he greatly desired to keep him
in association with himself. The young man had promised his mother
that he would return to her. The time came when he had to decide
between keeping this promise to her or making California his permanent
residence. As a final inducement General Bidwell offered to deed to
him a thousand acres on Chico Creek, "a never failing stream fed by
the melting snows of the Sierra Nevadas, if he would remain with him
on his 40,000 acre ranch." It was a great offer and a great opportunity
for a young man of twenty-one, well-nigh incredible except to those
who knew the qualities of the mature man. General Bidwell had
sufficient insight to know that he himself would be making a good
bargain if his young friend accepted his offer. He knew also that he
was offering the chance of a fortune.

When Mr. Blake declined the offer that he might fulfil his promise
to his mother it was not the only time, as will appear later in this story,

66 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

that he turned his back on brilliant prospects for the acquisition of large
wealth. On his trips to California in later years he was accustomed to
visit the General at Rancho Chico. In their last interview in 1900,
the General, who, "generous, unsuspicious, easy and hospitable to
strangers" had become, in his old age, the victim of designing men, said
to him, "Had you remained with me in 1853 it would have meant
millions of dollars to us both."

Starting on his return journey in February, 1853, he met in San
Francisco, Cyrus Wood, of Arlington, who later married his sister Harriet.
They talked over their prospects, and, as they sat on Telegraph Hill
overlooking the bay and the city, Mr. Wood suggested that they should
go into what was then the profitable business of raising vegetables for
the San Francisco market. This business Mr. Blake knew perfectly,
but he had set his face for home, and home he went. Not this time was
he a steerage, but a cabin, passenger. As before, the passage was broken
by the journey across the Isthmus, but it brought him weakened by
the sea voyage into the harsh climate of Massachusetts in March, the
worst month of the year. The shock to his health was well-nigh fatal,
and he was long in regaining his physical vigor. One wonders, not only
that he returned in the winter from the mild climate of California to
the severe one of New England, but still more that he returned at all,
for he left the prospects of certain affluence for no prospects at all.
No opening awaited his return to health, which was very slow, save that
of driving the market wagon of his uncles Wyman to Boston and selling
the produce. This he did for the next three years, gaining some valuable
business experience in disposing of his merchandise on the Boston
market.

His real entrance into business took place in 1856, when he was
twenty-five years old. The door by which he entered was humble,
indeed, but it was a door of opportunity and it led him directly to his
business career. In June, 1856, he saw an advertisement of Harvey
Scudder and Company, flour and grain commission merchants, for a
clerk and a porter. Upon applying he found that the position of clerk
had been filled. The member of the firm he interviewed saw at a
glance that he did not look like a porter and was evidently surprised
when he asked for that position. He took the place at $35 a month,
which was later increased to $50. He soon made it apparent that he was
much more than a porter. He studied the stock. He learned the
different qualities of flour. He coopered broken barrels. He applied
himself to learning the basic principles underlying the buying and selling
of flour. He never watched the clock, being engaged in studying the

E. NELSON BLAKE 67

business as though it were his own. He unobtrusively transformed the
business office of the firm, making it clean and attractive with flowers
brought from home. He was indeed a new kind of porter. He was
the kind of employe that cannot help becoming an employer. He
had found the open sesame to business advancement. He did not
regard his employers as his natural enemies, but as friends. He and
they were engaged together in a co-operative enterprise. They were
partners. Their interests were common. He had discovered the secret
of success in all business — co-operation between employer and employe.
When Harvey Scudder and Company's interests demanded extra time
and labor it was freely given without stint and without reward. When
he saw a thing that needed to be done, whether in the office or the
basement, he never waited to be told to do it. He simply did it. As
a result the firm came to trust him implicitly and to rely upon him for
many things outside the duties of his position. And thus it came to
pass that the year was one of the most important in Mr. Blake's life,
and that the outcome of his portership was somewhat extraordinary.
But possibly it did not surprise his employers, for they had come to
know what manner of man he was.

The firm occupied a five-story building, leasing the first floor to a
flour-jobber for $900 a year. Toward the end of the year of Mr. Blake's
services as porter, this tenant failed, and Mr. Blake immediately proposed
to Scudder and Company that he be permitted to rent the floor and
carry on the flour-jobbing business. They asked him how much money
he had. " I have about $1,500 saved up, " he replied. Their answer to
this was perfectly true: "Not much capital on which to do a flour
business." But they had learned to appreciate the character and
abilities of the new aspirant for an independent business career and
had come to have unbounded confidence in him, and they finally said
to him: "Well, Nelson, we will back you in this enterprise, and we will
be your silent partners and will give you access to all our surplus stocks
of flour, to be drawn from as sold." They assisted him by giving him
the use of their name as reference, by recommending him to customers,
by standing back of him with their great credit, and in every way in
their power, all of which was of inestimable service to him. And this
was the new firm's card.

E. N. Blake & Co.,

Commercial Wharf,
Boston.

References
Harvey Scudder & Co., Faneuil Hall Bank

68 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

In January, 1858, Mr. Kilby Page entered the firm and some years
later the firm name became Blake and Page. This partnership con-
tinued for twenty-one years. The business was successful and the
partners prospered.

In the same year in which this partnership was formed, 1858, Mr.
Blake married Miss Annie E. Whitten, of Arlington, daughter of a
Boston merchant. For five years they made their home in Arlington.
In 1863 they moved to East Boston. Here Mr. Blake passed six years
of great religious activity. All his gifts and acquirements he placed at
the disposal of the church and in the conduct of its business affairs, in
the prayer meetings, in the Sunday school and in the teaching of Bible
classes gave himself unstintedly to Christian service. This was so true
that it was a current saying that he was busier on Sundays than in his
business on week days.

The business, however, prospered, and the time came when the
partners had such accumulations that they began to look for an opportu-
nity to extend their operations. Such an opportunity came in 1869
through Chicago firms from whom Blake and Page bought flour and
they purchased a half-interest in the Dake Bakery, the largest cracker
manufacturing concern in the western metropolis. Mr. Blake went to
Chicago to care for the interests of the firm in that city and Mr. Page
remained in Boston. Ten years later, in 1879, their twenty-one year
partnership was dissolved, Mr. Blake taking over the exclusive owner-
ship of the firm's interest in the Chicago business. From 1869 to 1890,
another period of twenty-one years, he was the head and general manager
of the Dake Bakery, the firm names being successively, Blake, Herdman
and Company, Blake, Walker and Company, and Blake, Shaw and
Company. As the head of the concern was a man of uncommon
business ability the Dake Bakery was a prosperous enterprise.

When he entered on the Chicago business, Mr. Blake, with his
family, his wife and little daughter Mabel, who had been born in
Arlington, moved to that city. After an auspicious beginning in the
new business came the disaster of the great fire of 1871, in the sweep of
which through Chicago the Dake Bakery, with all its contents, was
completely destroyed. This gave the business a very serious setback,
causing a loss to the firm of $100,000. Within ten days after the fire,
however, a new building was under way, and in three months the business
was once more in good running order. From that time it continued
with uninterrupted and increasing success.

When Mr. Blake became a large employer of labor he did not forget
that he had once been an employe and he desired to cultivate among

E. NELSON BLAKE 69

his workmen the spirit that had inspired him when he was working
for wages. His attitude toward them was considerate, sympathetic,
and democratic. Fifty years ago he proposed to his partners a plan of
dividing profits in proportion to ability and service, making employes
partners, thus developing among them a personal interest in the business,
an assurance that they were getting all that was due them, as well as
promoting good feeling and securing the best service. The following
incident will illustrate his consideration for the feelings of his employes.
Being in his office one day when the hour for closing arrived, I was asked
to ride home with him. There was no carriage before the door and he
led me some distance down the street. Here we found his carriage
waiting and as we entered it he explained that he never had it driven
to the factory for him as he shrank from having his employes see him
riding from his office while they walked. He was one of them and
wanted them to feel that he was. I was calling on him for a subscrip-
tion and he treated me as though I were doing him a favor.

The large dealings in flour, incident to the business, naturally led
the head of the firm into the Chicago Board of Trade. Wherever he
was, his abilities could not fail to be recognized. In 1880 he was elected
a member of the Board of Directors and served three years. The
Board of Trade then occupied the Chamber of Commerce building on
the corner of Washington and La Salle Streets. With the growth of
business and the great increase in the membership of the Board, larger
quarters became necessary, and toward the close of 1882 the new build-
ing, now occupied by the Board of Trade, at La Salle Street and Jackson
Boulevard was begun. While this great enterprise was under way, in
January, 1884, Mr. Blake was elected president of the Board of Trade.
A year later the unusual compliment of a re-election was given him. The
new building was completed during his presidency. It was constructed of
granite, 174X213 feet, with a tower rising to a height of 310 feet. The
cost, in that day of low building prices, was about $2,000,000. The
building was dedicated on April 29, 1885, Mr. Blake presiding, and
the exercises were held in the great main trading hall. The Board of
Trade, incorporated in 1850 by a handful of men, the early sessions
often attended by one man only, had grown in thirty-five years to be the
greatest organization of its kind in the world, with a membership of
more than two thousand. The dedication of the new building was a
great occasion. Delegates were present from a score of cities, includ-
ing Toronto, Canada, and Liverpool, England. Four thousand people
attended the dedicatory exercises in the great hall. Mr. Blake received
the keys of the new building from the chairman of the Board of Real

70 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Estate Managers, paid a high tribute to the members of the Board of
Trade, welcomed the delegates and, surveying the great hall, gave
expression to the enthusiastic feelings of his fellow-members in this clos-
ing apostrophe, "Magnificent hall! Splendid temple! Beautiful home!
May peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy gates!" At
the banquet which concluded the celebration, Mr. Blake again presided
and introduced the speakers. On retiring from the presidency in 1886
he received from the directors a handsome gold medal.

For several years Mr. Blake served as president of the Western
Cracker Bakers' Association which covered more than half the country.
He was its first president and continued to be re-elected as long as he
would serve. And he was not permitted to retire without receiving
as a token of the Association's appreciation of him and of his services
a very valuable watch which he carried to the end of his life.

Mr. Blake was frequently urged to enter politics. There was very
great need of a man of character and brains to represent his district in
Congress and he was asked to accept the nomination as the one man
who could unite the Republican factions of the district. He made a
serious mistake for his constituents when he insisted that another man
deserved the nomination.

During the long Democratic dominance in Chicago, when the elder
Carter H. Harrison regularly succeeded himself as mayor, some of the
great dailies named Mr. Blake as the one Republican in the city who
could be elected. Mr. Harrison himself, who was Mr. Blake's neighbor,
was reported to have said; "There would be some glory in beating
Mr. Blake, but none in winning over the others named." But Mr.
Blake could not be tempted to give up the care of business and the
other activities in which he was increasingly influential and useful.

On making Chicago his home Mr. Blake naturally and, being what
he was, inevitably connected himself at once with the Christian forces
of the city. He and Mrs. Blake became members of the Second Baptist
Church, on the west side, which, under the pastoral care of my brother,
Dr. Edgar J. Goodspeed, was having a quite phenomenal development,
growing in ten years from a membership of 300 to above 1,600, and
being very active in sustaining missions and founding new churches.
Into all departments of the life of this great church Mr. Blake entered
with all his spiritual interest and his unusual gifts. He soon became and
continued a trustee of the church. His presence added interest to the
great prayer meetings. He engaged in the work of the church missions.
He became the teacher of a young women's Bible class, which was a
part of the morning Sunday school, and had a membership of more than

E. NELSON BLAKE 71

sixty. For twelve years he conducted a great afternoon class of more
than a hundred and fifty which attracted men and women of all denomi-
nations. He was prominent in the social and literary life of the congrega-
tion. Both he and the pastor were exceptionally fine Shakespearean
readers and sometimes read together to the great delight of the people.
He had belonged, while in Arlington, to a Shakespeare Club and had
developed exceptional gifts as a reader. At the close of a reading in
Chicago my brother would grasp his hand, enthusiastic approval light-
ing up his face, and applaud and thank him.

During all the years of his residence in Chicago he was the right-
hand man of his pastors. No one knows this better than I, since I was
one of them for more than four years, from 1871 to 1876. It goes
without saying to anyone who knew Mr. Blake that his purse was
always open to any need of the church and of other good causes. He
was one of the few men who literally held his possessions as a trust
from God to be used for the spread of his kingdom and the good
of the community. He was the most generous giver I have ever
known.

It was, of course, impossible for such a man to confine his religious
and philanthropic interest and activities to his church. And this brings
me to those extraordinary services to education in Chicago — college,
university, and theological education — which were continued through
many trying years and which, in their results, made his life vastly
and enduringly significant.

There were two educational institutions in Chicago under Baptist
auspices, the first University of Chicago and the Baptist Union Theo-
logical Seminary. In 1872 he was made a trustee of the Old Univer-
sity and in 1880 vice-president of the Board of Trustees, and he served
in these positions till 1885. Had not that institution become hope-
lessly involved in financial difficulties before his connection with it
began, his liberality would have saved it. He gave to it continuously
and liberally through many years. But the time never came when
even his liberality (for he was not a rich man) was equal to the task
of extricating it from its difficulties, and its existence ended in 1886.

Of the other institution, the Theological Seminary, he became a
trustee in 18x5 and two years later he was made president of the Baptist
Theological Union, the corporation which owned and controlled the
institution. These positions he continued to occupy till 1893, three
years after his removal from Chicago. Until the final breakdown of
the University the Baptists of Chicago and the West had entertained
high hopes that through these two institutions they would be able to

72 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

do a great service to education and religion. After that time Mr. Blake
was one of the men who recognized that even a partial realization of
these hopes depended on the preservation and permanent establish-
ment of the Theological Seminary. The outlook, indeed, of that
institution was desperate, but it was not hopeless. It was within
the power of one exceptionally liberal giver to lead the movement
which would save and establish it. Mr. Blake proved to be that giver.
There were other Baptists in Chicago and the West of much larger
means, but, unhappily, they were not endowed with either his insight,
his public spirit, or his liberality. All these things he had in the highest
degree. He was comparatively a newcomer in Chicago, but he was
almost the only Baptist layman of any considerable resources who
sensed the situation and was ready to respond to it. When an opportu-
nity came to the Seminary to secure a valuable collection of books,
the Hengstenberg library, he provided the money to pay for it. In
every crisis, and crises were frequent, he stepped into the breach.

In 1876 what was known as the Centennial Movement was
started to raise an endowment for the Seminary. I was called upon,
and, being profoundly interested, left the pastorate to lead the move-
ment. It was inaugurated by a banquet at the old Grand Pacific
Hotel. There was a large attendance and a subscription was made
aggregating $40,000, Mr. Blake leading the way with a cash contribu-
tion of $10,000. One of the by-products of this gathering was the
organization, proposed by Mr. Blake and approved by the meeting,
of the Chicago Baptist Social Union, which has continued and flourished
and proved to be the great unifying and inspiring influence among the
churches from that day to this. A total of $80,000 was secured as the
result of this financial campaign, of which $50,000 went into the perma-
nent endowment fund of the Seminary. The monetary stringency
following the Centennial year defeated the large hopes with which it
was inaugurated, and four years passed before the way opened for a
new movement. Meantime Mr. Blake, by large annual contributions,
continued to lead all others in keeping the Seminary on its feet.

In 1 88 1 the urgency of the situation compelled us to undertake a
new effort for an endowment and we planned to raise $100,000 in Chicago
and a second $100,000 in the rest of the country. As a matter of course
our first appeal was to Mr. Blake. I recall that I said to him:

In starting this effort we are asking you to subscribe far more than your fair
share of the first $100,000. We know this is unjust to you. But it is the only possible
way. You are the only man from whom we can hope to get the sum we must have to

E. NELSON BLAKE 73

start with. The success of the movement, the life of the Seminary, the continuance
of our educational work in Chicago all depend on whether you feel able to subscribe
such a sum.

Mr. Blake knew the situation as well as we did. He knew this was all
true. And he gave us a subscription of $30,000 on condition that the
amount was increased to $75,000 within three months in Chicago. We
worked very hard, through the heat of summer, to fulfil these conditions,
and the fact that we failed indicates how very few men of light and
leading and liberality there were among the Baptists of Chicago of
that day. There were some like Charles N. Holden, Andrew MacLeish,
and John A. Reichelt, and they aided us liberally. We came so near
success that Mr. Blake immediately renewed his pledge with the condi-
tion that the total amount secured should be increased to $100,000,
in the region west of Ohio within the succeeding nine months. This
was successfully accomplished and was followed by the raising of another
$100,000, Mr. John D. Rockefeller having followed Mr. Blake's example
by a similar conditional subscription. Counting the results of the
Centennial Movement, the Theological Seminary emerged from these
campaigns with a clear endowment of $250,000 in addition to its other
assets. The institution was saved, not at all adequately endowed, but
permanently established as a going institution. And it was univer-
sally understood that the man to whom this great result was primarily
due was Mr. Blake.

In my report of the success of the campaign, a report entered in
the minutes of the Board of Trustees, I said, "To the action of Mr.
Blake we owe the grand success achieved." This judgment is not one
arrived at for recording in this sketch, but was the judgment at that
day of myself, of the trustees, and of the public.

In 1877 the Seminary had changed its location from the city to
the suburb of Morgan Park, and in recognition of the great services
rendered to the institution and to the cause of education the chapel
and classroom building erected there was named Blake Hall. When the
Seminary returned to the city in 1892 as the Divinity School of the
new University of Chicago, this building, which still retains the name of
Blake Hall, became the chapel and recitation building of the Morgan
Park Academy for Boys.

Mr. Blake sought no position of leadership in his denomination.
But leadership was thrust upon him. In many denominational activities
he took no part. But in any great emergency all his religious associates
in Chicago looked to him as their natural leader.

74 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

It was so when, through the enlightened liberality of Mr. Rocke-
feller, the opportunity came to them to more than re-establish their
educational work in the founding of the new University of Chicago. In
1887 the American Baptist Education Society was organized and Mr.
Blake was made the first chairman of its Executive Board. The secre-
tary of the Society, Dr. F. T. Gates, soon reached the conclusion that
its first work should be the founding of an institution of higher learning
in Chicago. In December, 1888, a meeting of the Executive Board was
held in the city of Washington to consider this subject. Mr. Blake, as
chairman of the Board, and Dr. William R. Harper, then a professor
at Yale University, attended the meeting and the Board instructed
its secretary "to use every means in his power" to secure the founding
of a "well-equipped institution in Chicago." In writing me an account
of this important meeting, Dr. Harper said: "Mr. E. Nelson Blake
made a most excellent speech in behalf of Chicago."

It will be recalled that the great opportunity for the founding of
the University came through the subscription in May, 1889, of $600,000
made by Mr. Rockefeller on condition that the additional sum of
$400,000 should be subscribed by others within one year from June i,
1889. To me, who had learned by hard experience the difficulty of
raising money for education, this seemed an almost impossible sum to
secure in a single year Being asked, in connection with F. T. Gates,
the secretary, to undertake this well-nigh impossible task, it was only
on Mr. Blake's encouragement that I consented. A conference was
called and seventy men assembled in the Grand Pacific Hotel, June 5,
1889. Mr. Blake was called by acclamation to the chair. A College
Committee of Thirty-six was selected to co-operate with the active
agents, Dr. Gates and myself. One very significant thing occurred
in the appointment of these thirty-six men. Their selection was left
to a nominating committee, but before this committee retired for
consultation the meeting itself directed that Mr. Blake should be the
chairman of the Committee of Thirty-six. And it was characteristic of
the man that he did not wait to be solicited for a subscription, but began
his services as chairman of the College Committee by voluntarily
subscribing $25,000. This was one-sixteenth of the entire amount to
be raised, and two and one-half times as much as was given by any
other Baptist except Mr. Rockefeller. Mr. Blake was one of the six
men who signed the Articles of Incorporation of the University, his
name following that of Mr. Rockefeller, the founder. He was the first
man decided on as a member of the first Board of Trustees. The

E. NELSON BLAKE 75

first meeting of the trustees was held July 9, 1890, and Mr. Blake was
elected the first president of the Board. He was then about to leave
Chicago to make his home in Arlington, Massachusetts, but his fellow-
trustees felt that not only his character, standing, and ability, but his
relation to the founding of the new institution and to the general reha-
bilitation of the educational work of his denomination in Chicago
demanded that the presidency of the Board should be conferred upon
him. At his own expense he made frequent trips from Boston to Chicago
to be present at the Board meetings, often prolonging his stay to attend
to pressing matters of University business. The subscriptions to the
million-dollar fund for founding the new institution had all been made
to the American Baptist Education Society, and that Society had taken
title to the site. In August, 1891, the institution being regarded as
"solidly founded," the Society, through Mr. Blake as chairman of its
Executive Board, conveyed the title to the real estate and assigned
all the unpaid subscriptions to the University and left it to the sole
care of its own trustees. Over his protest Mr. Blake was re-elected
president of the Board in 1891, so unwilling were the trustees to lose
him and so anxious were they to signalize their appreciation of his
invaluable services in the founding of the University.

No one can be so sensible as I am of the inadequacy of this account
of those services and of Mr. Blake's relation to the entire Chicago
educational situation during twenty critical years. One could hardly
be excused for doubting that he was sent to Chicago by the good provi-
dence of God for the purpose of rendering these great services. In no
particular did he fail in fulfilling the trust committed to him.

The Divinity School which he saved forty years ago has grown to
be one of the leading schools of theology of our country, enroling 400
students annually, and being the favorite resort for study of foreign
missionaries returning home for their well-earned furloughs.

The University, to the founding of which he was so intimately
related, has increased the 742 students of its first year to an annual
enrolment of more than n,ooo and its assets from $1,000,000 thirty
years ago to $50,000,000 in 1922, and is recognized as one of the great
universities of the world.

Inadequate as this statement as to Mr. Blake's relations to these
interests is, it is I trust, sufficiently adequate to show that the distin-
guished services he rendered must be held in perpetual remembrance.

I must now turn back from this notable history of public service
to 1880. In that year Mr. Blake's daughter Mabel E. was married to

76 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Mr. Herman H. Kohlsaat, a young man who later became well known in
Chicago and throughout the country as owner and editor of the Chicago
Times-Herald, the Record-Herald, the Chicago Evening Post, and the
Chicago Inter-Ocean. In 1880 Mr. Kohlsaat was a junior partner in
Blake, Shaw and Company and became manager of a bakery lunch
which the firm established. They later sold this part of the business
to Mr. Kohlsaat, who made his bakery lunchrooms famous under the
firm name of H. H. Kohlsaat and Company.

Though I never knew Mr. Blake to seek recognition or position,
these were often thrust upon him. In addition to the positions of
which this story has already told, the Baptist Social Union of Chicago,
which owed its existence to his suggestion, made him its first president
and re-elected him annually as long as he would serve. His great services
to his own denomination in Chicago attracted the attention of the
churches throughout the country and he was made vice-president of
the American Baptist Home Mission Society and later was elected
president of that organization.

Mr. Blake was not a club man. He had too many other absorbing
interests. But he did become one of the charter members of the LaSalle
Club on the West Side of Chicago and was elected its first president.

After having made his home in Chicago for twenty-one years, Mr.
Blake in 1890 sold his interest in the Dake Bakery to his partner W. W.
Shaw and returned with his wife and son to the place of his birth, Arling-
ton, Massachusetts. In making this great change he was not self-moved ;
but yielded to the earnest wishes of Mrs. Blake. They were entirely able
to make the sacrifices required and she had a strong desire to spend the
remainder of her life in the old home. The sacrifices Mr. Blake made
were unspeakably great, but he felt that he could make them if he could
thus insure the happiness of Mrs. Blake. All his activities and rela-
tions were more than satisfactory to him. He was highly useful and
successful, universally trusted and honored, not yet sixty years of age,
in the full maturity of his powers, the chosen leader of his religious
associates, and the president of the Board of Trustees of the new Uni-
versity with its splendid future of prosperity and power. He under-
stood perfectly well that he was making a great business sacrifice, and,
had his heart been fixed on accumulating a great fortune, the way was
wide open before him for doing this. The cracker concerns of the
country were just beginning that series of combinations which resulted
in the organization of the National Biscuit Company and there were
great business possibilities just before him. But while not ambitious

E. NELSON BLAKE 77

for great wealth, it is quite certain that in giving up the intense business
and public life he had been leading for thirty-five years he had failed
to take into account his extraordinarily active temperament, the craving
of his intense nature for expression in energetic action. It has been
my privilege to receive occasional letters from him. These letters tell
the story of how he himself came to the same opinion that was held by
all who were acquainted with his superabounding energy, namely, that
in leaving Chicago and his active business career he thwarted the require-
ments of his own nature and did himself a grave injustice. In a letter of
last year he wrote me what he had in substance said to me before: "In
Chicago were spent the best twenty years of my life." In 1918 a letter
from me recalling his busy and useful Chicago life led him to write
to me from Florida as follows :

My busiest business life in Chicago was my busiest religious period. A large
adult Bible class (100 to 150) on Sunday afternoon, a large class of young women in
the morning (over 60), president of Board of Trade, president of American Baptist
Home Mission Society at the same time, president of Western Cracker Bakers' Associa-
tion at the same time, reaching from New Orleans to Minneapolis, from Pittsburgh
to Omaha, I enjoyed it. I wish I could live it over again. [This when he was eighty-
seven years old!] I would try to do my work bette . I well remember the time
when, as president of your board of trustees, I met, almost daily, you and Dr. Harper
in that office in the Chamber of Commerce Building, corner Washington and La Salle
Streets. Busy was I, here and there. Mrs. Blake's love for old Boston compelled me
to leave it all. Perhaps it was all for the best.

It is certain he had done his full share of the world's work. He
had worked as few men work for nearly fifty years, since his eleventh
year. His twenty-one years in Chicago, busy, happy, prosperous for
himself, had been of immense significance to the denomination to which
he belonged. He had saved the educational situation for that denomina-
tion and in doing this had helped to open the way for the splendid
development which followed in the history of the new University.
During this period his contributions to religious and educational causes
had exceeded $100,000.

It is probable that most men would have thought themselves happy
to be in Mr. Blake's position. After fifty years of labor he now had
leisure. He was released from heavy responsibilities and, having
acquired a competence, was free to employ himself in any way he pleased.
The world was before him and he could go where he liked. He engaged
in affairs that were more of a recreation than a labor. He traveled,
passing many winters in Florida and California. His orange groves
gave him physical exercise and mental occupation. He had leisure

78 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

for reading and knew how to enjoy it. He spent happy hours in his
garden and made it blossom and bear fruit. He was in an ideal situa-
tion for a man who loved a quiet life. The only trouble was he did not
crave a quiet life.

On returning to Arlington, the home of their youth, Mr. and Mrs.
Blake found themselves among relatives. Mr. Blake's next older
sister had married Mr. William T. Wood and it is to her son, William
E. Wood, a life-long resident of Arlington, that I am indebted for much
of the material of this sketch. Mr. Blake made his home in Arlington,
at 808 Massachusetts Avenue, the street on which he was born. It
being impossible for him to live without employment, he soon interested
himself in the organization of the First National Bank of Arlington,
of which he was made president, serving for twenty-one years until
1912, when the bank became merged in the Menotomy Trust Company.
He continued on the Board of Directors of the latter bank until his death.

His religious activities were naturally interrupted by the removal
to a wholly new environment. He was, however, made a deacon of
the old church into which he had been first received forty years before.
This was an office he could never be persuaded to accept in Chicago. His
voice was heard in the midweek meetings of the church. After a time
he again became a Bible-class teacher and finally returned to much of
his old-time religious activity. The time came when he was occasionally
called upon to occupy the pulpit on Sunday. He had an exalted concep-
tion of the work of the Christian minister. He once wrote me as follows :
"I view the calling of a minister as the highest on earth, the noblest,
the grandest, the most sacred, the most holy. No other can compare
with it. An ambassador for Christ! Breaking the bread of life to
starving, dying men! What a calling!" When in 1900 the wooden
church building was destroyed by fire, Mr. Blake was made chairman
of the building committee, and set about the task of rebuilding
in stone with characteristic energy. As Mr. Wood says: "The
people were inspired and educated by the example he set to make
heavy contributions for the entire undertaking in order to fulfil
his insistent requirement that the building, including its fine organ,
should be dedicated free of debt." There was much liberal giv-
ing, but his aggregate contributions exceeding $17,000, including
the gift of a bell in his daughter Mabel's name, "greatly overtopped
any other single contribution, being nearly three times the size of any
other, and his efforts during the two years' period of rebuilding were
untiring."

E. NELSON BLAKE 79

In 1893 Mr. and Mrs. Blake met with an overwhelming bereave-
ment in the death of their only son, E. Nelson Blake, Jr. This son
was born in Chicago in 1875 and was eighteen years old at the time of
his death. The father signified his affectionate remembrance of his
son in acts of beneficence for others. The year after this sorrow fell
upon him

He bought a suitable site in Lake Helen, Florida, [where he spent many winters],
and built a beautiful church and chapel, fitted with stained glass windows and all
appointments, dedicated in memory of his son, which he presented to the Baptist
fellowship. He also created the E. Nelson Blake, Jr., Memorial Fund of $3,000, the
income of which is used for the purchase of prizes — books — given to graduates of
Arlington High School for meritorious work and deportment during their course.
He was also very largely instrumental in having a home built for the Grand Army of
the Republic, and the purchase of the lot and the erection of the building at No.
370 Massachusetts Avenue as a memorial to his son was made possible by his concep-
tion of the project and by his generous donation.

And thus the son, though dead, continues to live and speak. On the
walls of the Grand Army Hall a portrait of Mr. Blake has been hung.

Entering into the business, educational, and religious life of Arlington
he served for many years as a member of the Board of Trustees of the
Robbins Library. His religious services and standing were recognized
soon after his return to his native state by his election and re-election
to the presidency of the Massachusetts Baptist State Missionary Society.

For some years before leaving Chicago, Mr. Blake had been spending
some months of each winter in Florida. He had become interested
in and attached to Lake Helen, which is near the east coast, a few miles
south of De Land. His brother, Captain Stephen P. Blake, had entered
his employment in 1871, after leaving the sea. In the late eighties he
was approaching seventy and, with his son Ellis, was not entirely well.
Feeling that the soft air of the Florida climate would benefit them both,
Mr. Blake bought orange groves in and near Lake Helen, to which his
brother and nephew, with their families, moved in 1888 and found the
new life in every way beneficial and profitable. Stephen spent the
remainder of his life there, living till 1910, his eighty-eighth year, and
the son continues to follow fruit culture with success. Captain Blake
had one other son, John Bidwell Blake, now a Chicago architect and
engineer. Mr. Blake made considerable investments in orange groves
in and about Lake Helen, and for many years they gave him enjoyable
employment during his vacations, and the study of methods of fruit-
growing and experimentation in fruit-culture gave him delightful mental
activity.

8o BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

In addition to building the memorial church, his interest in Lake
Helen led him to present to that little city a large public park — known
as Blake Park. And this also was only an expression of his nature.
He could not long be identified with any place without enriching it
with his benefactions. No man could know him long and under stand-
ingly without having his life enriched by that affluent nature.

In 1903, after forty-five years of married life, Mr. Blake lost the
wife of his youth. Mrs. Blake had survived her son, E. Nelson, Jr.,
ten years. She is herself survived by her daughter, Mrs. H. H. Kohlsaat,
and by her granddaughters, Mrs. Potter Palmer, Jr., of Chicago, and
Mrs. Roger Shepard, of St. Paul. The children of Mrs. Palmer and
Mrs. Shepard gave Mr. Blake seven great-grandchildren.

On February 9, 1905, Mr. Blake married Miss Lucie A. Tucker,
a woman, as Mr. Wood says,

of charming personality and many accomplishments. During the sixteen years of
their married life .... she has been a most devoted and inspiring helper. Her
father was a G. A. R. veteran and her sympathy with Mr. Blake's interest in the local
Post and in his annual entertainment of the marchers on Memorial Day at "The
Maples" — their Massachusetts Avenue residence — has made it congenial to her to
continue the same co-operation with her husband which was so earnestly given by
the former Mrs. Blake.

Mrs. Blake is an accomplished musician and is gifted with an unusual
voice for singing, which has been finely cultivated. Mr. Blake being an
exceptionally good reader, the gifts of one supplemented those of the
other, and the two together furnished many delightful evenings of
entertainment for their friends and others. Mrs. Blake had been an
oratorio singer and had sung in Boston, Baltimore, Providence, and
other cities. Since 1903 she has given the Arlington church the benefit
of her musical gifts.

I have already referred to the whole-hearted devotion of Mr. Blake's
religious life. Perhaps I cannot justly bring this sketch to a close
without speaking of one aspect of this faith and devotion to which I
have not yet referred. With his zeal in and for practical Christian
living he combined an equal zeal for the purity of Christian doctrine.
It may seem strange that a layman should take any deep interest in
doctrinal discussions and tendencies. But it must be remembered
that he was for sixty years or more a teacher of Bible classes, some
of them very large discussion classes, so that he necessarily became a
student of the Christian doctrines. He naturally came to have definite
and well-settled doctrinal views which he taught through so many years

E. NELSON BLAKE 81

that they came to be an essential part of his thinking. He was not
looking for a new theology. The old satisfied him. He did not like
the new terms that came into use to describe methods of Bible study.
He feared that the young and unlearned would feel, perhaps instinctively,
that "critical" study of the Bible must be inspired by a spirit of hostile
criticism. While he had no fears as to the ultimate triumph of the
truth, he did fear that what was called the " historical " study of the Bible
would lead many of the present generation astray. He may be said
to have been a man of one book, the Bible; and few men, in or out of
the schools, knew it so well. He had indeed read much and was familiar
with good literature, but the Bible he had studied, and the more he
studied it, the more he trusted and loved it. It was to him the very
word of God, revealing to men the way of salvation and the path of
duty. He did not, indeed, believe that intellectual assent to scriptural
truth, without a corresponding renewal of the heart and life, constitute
religion or make anyone a Christian. True religion is a matter of the
heart and daily Christian living, the real dominance in the soul and life
of the spirit of Jesus, but he who would grow up into the stature of the
fulness of Christ must know and feed upon the truth which is revealed in
the Bible. The word of God is the word of life.

"The days of our years are three-score years and ten; and if by
reason of strength they be four-score years, yet is their strength labor
and sorrow; for it is soon cut off and we fly away." True as these
words are for most of those who live beyond seventy, Mr. Blake was
the exception to the rule. With bodily strength almost unimpaired he
passed seventy and then eighty. And then he went on strong toward
ninety with his mental powers undimmed and his physical strength
only slowly giving way.

On Wednesday, February g, 1921, his relatives and other friends
celebrated at "The Maples," his residence, his ninetieth birthday. "A
large number of relatives in the Wyman, the Crosby, the Wood, the
Richardson, the Hurst, and the Hart families united in their joy that
' Uncle Nelson ' had been privileged to span these ninety years of such
a useful and active life with his mental forces bright and keen." The
day was pleasantly passed "amid a shower of congratulations by tele-
graph, telephone, letters, and personal messages." Greetings and
offerings of flowers were sent by the officers and employees of the Menot-
omy Trust Company, the First Baptist Church, the Sunday school,
and many friends. About a hundred and fifty greetings, congratula-
tions, and good wishes were received through the mail. Many friends

82 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

called, among them three members of his East Boston Sunday School
class which he taught fifty-five years before. Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat,
his son-in-law, went from New York to spend the day with him. And
so amid affectionate greetings and good wishes he passed the ninetieth
milestone in the journey of life, and started toward the hundredth.
But as the year wore on Mr. Blake's strength gradually failed.
He was, indeed, able to spend much of the summer in his garden,
under the trees. But, as the winter drew on, he felt more and more
the weight of years. He continued, however, to write in the same
clear, firm hand as thirty years before. I have before me a letter
written December 9, which shows no indication that he was near his
end. But just one week later, the sixteenth, he passed away. The
day before his death his daughter asked him where he thought he was
going. He replied, "I do not know. I only know my Lord has said,
'In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place
for you that where I am, there you may be also,' and I can trust Him."
So passed the strong, heroic soul away.

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT

These sketches are written to perpetuate the remembrance of the
benefactors of the University of Chicago. Their lives have been built
into and become a part of its history, and in it they continue to live.
Through its activities they serve the world. The remembrance of the
servants of mankind should not perish. Future generations should
know, not their names only, but who they were and what they did.

One of the earliest of the large benefactors of the University was
Sidney A. Kent, who for nearly fifty years was a Chicago business
man and for much of that time a very prominent one. He was of New
England extraction and was born in Suffield, Connecticut. The Kents
migrated from England to Massachusetts about 1630 and were among
those who soon after that date secured permission to proceed to the
valley of the Connecticut and hew out a home for themselves in what
was then the remote western wilderness. Springfield, Massachusetts,
was founded, and the settlers soon began to spread out into the sur-
rounding country. One company went ten miles down the river and
organized a town on the western bank which they called Southfield and
later contracted into Suffield. The shores of the new town, unlike those
to the north and south, rose abruptly from the bed of the Connecticut
and continued westward in a succession of heavily wooded ridges along
which the north and south roads or streets ran, the chief of these perhaps
being appropriately called High Street. The township was covered with
an almost unbroken forest, so that the settlers were compelled literally
to hew their homes out of the wilderness. Among the first of these
settlers was Samuel Kent, to whom a farm of sixty acres was allotted in
1669. The town of Suffield was on the border-line between Massachu-
setts and Connecticut. Having been settled from Springfield it fell
naturally under the government of Massachusetts, although it lay en-
tirely within the natural and, indeed, legal boundaries of Connecticut.
The people early instituted efforts to have their allegiance transferred,
but did not succeed in doing so for many years. In 1723-24 the electors
made John Kent their agent in the matter and in the end succeeded
in becoming a part of Connecticut.

Though the first Kents of Suffield were, like all the other settlers,
farmers, younger sons soon began to leave the soil and seek their for-

83

84 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

tunes in other fields of effort. Not a few rose to eminence, one of the
most distinguished of these being Chancellor Kent, author of the well-
known Kent's Commentaries, the most famous of early American law
books.

The family did not lack prominence in Suffield itself. Samuel Kent
was three times a member of the board of selectmen. John was a
representative of the town in the general court. When, a hundred years
after the founding of the town, the struggle for American independence
came, the men of Suffield were among the first to respond to the call to
arms. Within forty-eight hours after the news of the battle of Lexington
reached the town, a company of one hundred and eleven men were on
their way to Boston to fight for their liberties. Their captain was
Elihu Kent, the first of the many of that name who entered the patriot
army.

In 1870 the town celebrated its bicentennial anniversary and pub-
lished an account of the event in a small volume. A few portraits of
representative citizens were included and among them appears the face
of Henry P. Kent. One of the streets of the village bears the family
name Kent Avenue.

Sidney A. Kent, the subject of this sketch, was a direct descendant,
in the sixth generation, of that Samuel Kent who was one of the earliest
settlers of Suffield. His great-grandfather, Deacon Amos Kent, was the
great-grandson of Samuel, the early settler. Like his father and his
grandfather the deacon, Amos was a farmer, and his son and grandson
followed him on the ancestral farm.

It goes without saying that the first settlers of Suffield were religious,
and that a Congregational church was the first organization attempted.
In the course of time the Baptists organized and some of the Kents were
among the constituent members of the Baptist church. The Baptists
became strong, well-to-do, and lovers of learning, and in 1833 estab-
lished the Connecticut Literary Institution, which has been one of the
chief glories of the town. The churches, the schoolhouse, and the Lit-
erary Institution naturally formed a center about which gathered the
industrial and business life of the township and became the village of
Suffield.

The farm of Deacon Amos was about one mile west of the village.
On this farm, on July 16, 1834, Sidney A. Kent was born, son of Albert and
Lucinda Gillett Kent. There were two other sons and two daughters,
all except one brother being older than Sidney. The family occupied
a good position in the community. They were in comfortable circum-

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT 85

stances. The farmhouse was so good that when the boy born in it
in 1834 retired from business sixty years later, a man of large wealth,
he made it, with some additions and improvements, his principal place of
residence. He was fortunate in having two older sisters and a brother
four years older than himself who had much to do in molding his
character. The brother, Albert E. Kent, was of exceptional ability and
high character and exercised a strong and beneficent influence over his
younger brother. It is to be regretted that nothing has been left on
record of the boyhood of Mr. Kent. We know, however, that his youth
was spent in one of the most attractive countrysides in America. One
writer, telling the story of the bicentennial celebration, says of Suffield,
" It is one of the very loveliest of the many beautiful towns in the splendid
valley in which it is situated. Its fertile and carefully cultivated farms,
its broad and neatly kept streets, its fine roads, its magnificent residences,
its superb churches, its commodious educational structures, all evince a
high degree of culture and prosperity." One of the speakers at the cele-
bration, referring to High, now Main Street, on and near which the Kents
had their homes, characterized it as "magnificent beyond comparison
with any other street east or west," and the speaker was a resident of
St. Louis. From this street, which was literally the "high street,"
young Kent had under his eye the lovely valley of the Connecticut from
Springfield, nine miles north, to Hartford, seventeen miles south. Look-
ing westward he saw only three or four miles away one of the peaks of the
Mount Tom Range, with the almost perpendicular bluffs of Manateck
Mountain to the south, and a few miles to the northwest were the far-
famed Berkshire Hills. And everywhere were brooks making their
way through the ridges to the river. It was a delightful spot in which to
be born and spend one's boyhood and to which to return in the evening
of life.

Young Kent grew up on his father's farm, but his experience as a
farmer's son was so exceptionally happy that it seems to have been the
dream of his life to spend his last years amid the scenes of his boyhood
and on the ancestral acres. There were no remembrances of grinding
toil and youthful hardship, but rather of beautiful landscapes, of happy
days in the forests and along the streams, of an attractive home life,
and of pleasant years at school. The village of Suffield was small, but
it was an educational center, and the enthusiasm for culture attained its
height during the youth of Sidney Kent. It was during those years that
the Connecticut Literary Institution was established and every wide-
awake boy in the township conceived an ambition for an education. No

86 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

boy was more wide awake than young Kent and at sixteen he was a
student in the Institution. Entering in 1850 he pursued his studies for
two or three years until he was fitted to become a teacher. Whether he
graduated may be doubted.

In the spring of 1853 he lost his father, who died at the age of fifty-
two, when Sidney was eighteen. How far this bereavement changed the
current of his life, the writer of this sketch does not know. But the
year marked one of the most important milestones in his career. The
discovery of gold in California and of the fertility of the prairies of Illinois
and Iowa, followed by the extraordinary migration westward, attracted
the attention and awakened the interest of well-nigh every young man
in the older states. It was while young Kent was a student in the Insti-
tution that the lure of the West laid hold of him also with its resistless
attraction and in 1853 drew him to Illinois. Whether Chicago was his
objective from the start is uncertain, but an opportunity to teach a school
led him at the outset to Kane County, about forty miles southwest of
that city. There he remained for the greater part of a year, fullfilling
his engagement as a teacher. His true vocation, however, was not
teaching but business. He had innate gifts for success in commercial
life. The fabulous opportunities in business presented by the rising
young city so near at hand came to him with such a power of appeal that
after a single year of teaching he made his permanent home in Chicago.
He was without means, apparently, and, accepting the first thing that
offered, he became a clerk in the dry goods house of Savage, Case &
Company, where he remained for two years.

Mr. Kent's older brother, Albert E. Kent, who had the same inborn
capacity for business, had also made his home in Chicago. Both were
ambitious as well as capable, and in 1856 when Sidney was twenty-two
years old they formed a partnership and struck out on their own account
in the commission business. They dealt chiefly in furs, hides, and
grain. Probably something had come to them from the settlement of
their father's estate, for they are said to have engaged extensively in
the fur trade, and Sidney made repeated journeys through the near and
far West buying furs for the eastern market. There were few railroads
at that time beyond the Mississippi and none at all beyond the Missouri,
and these long journeys were difficult, wearisome, and not infrequently
dangerous.

The Chicago of that day was a city of young men. Its business men
were often, as in this case, hardly more than boys. Here was a youth
of twenty-two, one of the principal partners in a business that took him

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT 87

all over the West, as far as the Pacific, buying goods to be sold on the
Atlantic. The courage and enterprise of the young business men of the
Chicago of that day compel our wonder and admiration. Sidney A.
Kent had both courage and enterprise in an extraordinary degree. He
was ready to make great ventures when proportionate rewards were
promised. Since entering business the two partners had studied the
packing industry and, becoming assured that it might be made very
profitable and gave promise of extraordinary development, they entered
that business in a small way in 1854, packing and shipping as a first
venture a thousand hogs. They formed the packing firm of A. E. Kent
& Company and prospered greatly. Sidney was a natural speculator
but by no means a reckless one. He had a keen speculative insight and
a love for large operations. In the sixties he made a deal in pork which
attracted much attention. Believing the country overstocked he sold
a large amount of pork short. Other dealers believed he had made a
mistake and would not be able to deliver what he had sold without heavy
loss. But he persisted and carried the deal through to the end with entire
success. The final outcome was that "he did not sell a barrel of pork on
which he did not make a profit."

About 1872 the firm became incorporated as the Chicago Packing
and Provision Company with Sidney A. Kent as president. He remained
president of the corporation sixteen years. He was still a young man,
being only thirty-eight at the beginning of this period.

His activities during these years were by no means restricted to the
packing business. He was a member of the Board of Trade and dealt
extensively in grain. One of the most notable transactions in which he
was engaged was the great wheat deal which extended from January,
1880, to May, 1 88 1. A number of men were interested, but Mr. Kent
more largely than anyone else. From time to time very large sums of
money were required. Mr Kent's resources were sometimes strained
almost to the limit. It was no doubt during these strenuous months that
he is said to have had his only falling-out with his trusted office man who
made out and signed all his personal checks, even the checks for his
daily private expenses. It is related that he entered his office one day
and said to Mr. French, "Make me a check for $200,000," whereupon
Mr. French began to remonstrate, saying, "Mr. Kent, I can't do it,
it is impossible. You have only $100,000 in the bank." On this, Mr.
Kent, usually quiet and gentle, turned upon him in a sudden fury and
said, "What's that got to do with it ? You can sign a check, can't you ?
You make the check and I will attend to the rest of it." Few deals of

88 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

this sort have been entirely successful on the Board of Trade. This
one, however, proved a very great success. The profits are said to have
approximated a million dollars, the largest share going to Mr. Kent.

Meantime his business connections had become very widely extended.
He had been one of the incorporators in 1864-65 of the Chicago Union
Stock Yards. Six times he was made a director of the Board of Trade,
the first time in 1865, the last in 1883. Immediately after its organiza-
tion he became associated with the Corn Exchange Bank. In 1871 he
was made vice-president and later became president of the bank. For
many years he was director of the Merchant's Loan Trust and Savings
Bank. He was a director in the Kirby Carpenter Company with exten-
sive interests in lumber, lands, and mills on the Menominee River,
Michigan. He became a large holder of stock in the Chicago Traction
Company. He was connected with the American Trust and Savings
Bank. He was a director in the Sante Fe Railroad Company, in the
West Chicago Street Railway, in the Union Iron Company, and in
the Illinois Steel Company. One of the larger later enterprises in
which he engaged was the consolidation of the various smaller gas
companies of Chicago into the Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company.
He was a director in the Northern Trust Company and in the Metro-
politan Bank.

Mr. Kent remained at the head of the Chicago Packing and Provision
Company until 1888. Finding his time and attention taken up with his
many other interests, he then gave up the presidency and became vice-
president of the company. His life had been one of extraordinary
activity for the entire period since he entered business for himself, a
period of thirty-two years. He was fifty-four years old, had accumulated
a fortune, and began to think of retiring from active business.

While Mr. Kent was still president of the Chicago Packing and Pro-
vision Company there occurred one of the most interesting episodes in
his life which reveals the man in a light so attractive and illuminating
that this sketch would be quite incomplete without it. The story
reveals his attitude toward his employes and toward the question of the
eight-hour day which has been agitating the country ever since the
incident occurred. It is told by George A. Schilling, a prominent labor
leader of that day, who wrote as follows:

In 1885 the Federal Trades of the United States convened in Chicago and resolved
"that on and after May i, 1886, eight hours shall constitute a day's work." Agitation
for the inauguration of the eight-hour day began in the city in the early part of Febru-
ary, 1886. The movement gathered strength day by day and as the time for its
introduction approached Chicago was ablaze for this demand.

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT 89

In the latter part of April, 1886, I, in company with another delegate of the
Chicago Trades Assembly, called upon Mr. Kent at his office and asked his aid in the

introduction of the eight-hour day at the Union Stock Yards He simply asked

whether his men demanded it. I told him that I had every reason to believe that they
wanted it. "Well," said he, in a modest way, "I will go down there tomorrow and
inquire and send you word later." Next morning he appeared at the packing house
and told his superintendent to call in the foreman of every department. When they
came he said, "I am informed that our men desire an eight-hour day," and he asked
that each foreman return to his department and have the men vote on the question.
"Tell them," he said, "that I have the following proposition to make: I will either
give them the present ten hours' pay for nine hours' work, or give them nine hours'
pay for eight hours' work. Say to them that they need not fear to express themselves
fully on the subject, as I have thought the matter over and have concluded to give the
eight-hour day a trial."

The foremen returned and apprised the men of Mr. Kent's message, and, after
due deliberation, they concluded to accept nine hours' pay for eight hours' work, but
requested that the common laboring men, who were then receiving $1.75 per day,
should not be reduced at all. This Mr. Kent gladly conceded and complimented his
skilled workmen on the interest they felt in their poorer-paid fellows.

May i, 1886, came on Saturday, and "Hutch House," as it was then called, blew
its whistle at 8 o'clock in the morning. The men were so elated at this victory that they
rechristened the building, and thereafter called it the "Kent House."

The action of Mr. Kent in conceding the eight-hour day had such remarkable
influence that by Monday, May 3, the whole Union Stock Yards was out for its adop-
tion, and every packer was compelled to grant it. But, instead of consenting to nine
hours' pay for eight hours' work, the workmen of other houses demanded ten hours'
pay for eight hours' work, and when Mr. Kent's attention was called to this he willingly
followed suit. The eight-hour system was thereafter established throughout the Union
Stock Yards for some 30,000 employes and remained intact until November of the
same year.

Mr. Schilling goes on to say that Mr. Kent then went abroad for a
prolonged absence, and that while he was away was waged "one of the
most extraordinary contests in the annals of the labor movement of
Chicago for the retention of the eight-hour day."

The workmen lost the battle for the time being. Mr. Kent retired
from the presidency of the Chicago Packing and Provision Company.
But he had won the lasting gratitude of the laboring men. They elected,
in 1888, R. M. Burke to the state senate, and Mr. Schilling goes on with
his story as follows:

In the year 1889 Senator Burke seized the opportunity to nominate Sidney A.
Kent for the exalted office of United States Senator, and no one in Chicago was as
much surprised as Mr. Kent himself on reading the papers the next morning. The
following is the substance of the speech made by Senator Burke: "Mr. President and
members of the Senate: I would place in nomination for the position of Senator of the
grand state of Illinois one of the nation's true noblemen, a plain, practical man. He,
as an employer of labor, does not think that the honest demands of labor should be

90 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

met with a policeman's club. Notwithstanding the fact that he is among Chicago's
most wealthy citizens, he rises above his environment, and in summing up the whole
industrial question, suggests a solution in the establishment of the eight-hour day law.
It is not simply a theory with him, but two years ago he made a strenuous effort to
inaugurate the same in the Union Stock Yards and did so for a time. When inter-
viewed on the subject he said : ' The fact is that there are thousands of men continually
out of work, who want a job and ought to have it, not only for their own well-being
but for the safety of society, and if the reduction of the hours of labor to eight per day
will give them an opportunity to earn an honest living, as I believe it will, no employer
should oppose it. And if the men will only devote their spare time to education and
improvement we will all be gainers in the end. The only thing to be feared is igno-
rance.'

"Mr. President and members of the Senate, I wish to say that you may think it
strange that I, a representative of the laboring people, should nominate one of Chicago's
millionaires. Let me say, however, in justification of my act, I do so, not because of
his millions, but because his noble mind and heart shine through his wealth: because
notwithstanding a successful business career such as few men can boast of, he manifests
none of that ostentation, arrogance and tyranny that are characteristic of the dollar
kind: a man of few words, plain and modest as a schoolgirl, with all the simplicity
of a true American who never held or sought office. None will be more surprised at
my action than he, and he may possibly call me to task for the liberty I have taken with
his name, but as a representative of the laboring people, I would nominate the great
eight-hour advocate, Sidney A. Kent of Cook County."

The late governor, R. J. Oglesby, in complimenting Senator Burke on his nominat-
ing speech, said it was the highest tribute he had ever heard paid to a rich man.

The members of the Board of Trade tried to have some amusement for a few days
thereafter because he, a millionaire, was the candidate of the Labor Party for the
United States Senatorship. To all these good-natured jests he replied that he was
proud of the honor, especially as he had received the full party vote (that of Mr. Burke)
without having sought it.

Mr. Kent always regretted the loss of the eight-hour day in the Union Stock Yards.
He believed that employers generally should have been more friendly toward it. He
said that the question whether the eight-hour work day would be a benefit to the
workman and to the public at large would be solely determined by the use made of the
leisure time. If it resulted in a broader intelligence, society at large would be
the gainer: the workman's powers of consumption would be enlarged and the
condition of our home market improved.

If all the work people felt as I do, we would collect a limited sum, erect a modest
stone over his grave and inscribe thereon :

Here lies Sidney A. Kent, the millionaire packer of Chicago, who, in 1886, cham-
pioned and conceded the eight-hour day to his employes. He believed its universal
adoption would result in a broader intelligence and a higher standard of life for the
masses and insure the more general progress of society.

I have quoted thus freely from Mr. Schilling because such tributes
from workingmen to men of large wealth are well-nigh unknown. It
was written after Mr. Kent's death and more than twelve years after the
first great battle for the eight-hour day. The writer of it spoke out of a
grateful heart and voiced the feelings of the workingmen. It is, there-

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT 91

fore, a tribute most eloquent and significant. It throws a wholly new
light on the character of this modest millionaire, whose heart was wide
open to the demands of his employes, who entered into the completest
sympathy with them, who believed in and sought co-operation instead
of conflict with them, and who, a full generation in advance of the great
mass of employers, recognized the propriety, necessity, and justice of a
shorter working day. The reduction of the ten-hour day to eight hours
with undiminished pay was felt by employers to be revolutionary.
They fought against it, for the most part, with great bitterness. When
the issue was presented to Mr. Kent, however, he only asked whether
his employes demanded it, and on being assured that they desired it said
that he would confer with them. This he immediately did, encouraging
them to express themselves freely. He submitted to them his proposals,
and when they came back with an amendment in favor of unskilled
labor he promptly accepted it. In other words, he treated them as
though he recognized them as partners in a great co-operative business
in which, so far as hours, wages, and general working conditions were
concerned, they had a clear right to be heard. This was a very long
step to be taken a full generation ago in the democratization of industry,
of which in this later day we hear so much.

This intelligent and sympathetic attitude toward men who worked
with their hands presents Mr. Kent in a very attractive light. He had
himself started life as a poor man and he never lost his understanding of,
and sense of comradeship with, men who worked for a living. Mr.
Schilling says, "The humblest workman in his employ could approach
him with ease and unconcern." He was not only without any of the
arrogance of wealth, but he felt and manifested a living sympathy with
workingmen. He thus commanded their confidence and good- will.
Employer and employes met each other halfway. And thus simply they
discovered the basis of all industrial peace and prosperity — co-operation
inspired by mutual understanding and sympathy and a purpose on both
sides to deal fairly and justly.

Mr. Kent remained unmarried until he was thirty years old. At that
age he was already a successful business man. It was on September 25,
1864, that he married Stella A. Lincoln, of Newark Valley, New York.
Mrs. Kent was the daughter of Congressman W. S. Lincoln. For a
number of years they lived on Park Avenue. Later they made their
home on Michigan Avenue, and after 1884 at 2944 Michigan Avenue.

It is said that in one of his large speculative deals, when he was
extending himself to the limit and putting up every available dollar,
Mr. Kent sold one Michigan Avenue residence at a great sacrifice for

92 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

>,ooo, being confident that the final outcome would make up his loss
many times over.

The children of Mr. and Mrs. Kent were two daughters, Helen L.
and Stella A. Kent. The former married Andre Massenat, and the latter
A. K. Legare. Mr. and Mrs. Massenat later made their home on Pequest
Farm, Bridgeville, New Jersey, and Mr. and Mrs. Legare in Washington,
D.C. Sidney Kent Legare conducts the ancestral farm in Suffield, which
has been developed into a splendid country estate with multiplied
attractions.

Mr. Kent was a good deal of a traveler. He made three trips abroad ;
but most of his journeys were made in this country, and these carried
him all over the Union. He used to say, with much satisfaction, that he
had visited every state and every territory in his own country, not
excepting Alaska. Many of his earlier journeys were made in the prose-
cution of his business, but later he traveled for pleasure, evidently
making it an object to visit every section of his own country.

Mr. Kent continued in business until 1892 or 1893, retiring, before
he was sixty, with an ample fortune. Forty years had passed since he
had left the place where he was born and bred ; but his love for it con-
tinued. Suffield had been the home of the Kents for two hundred years
or more. Mr. Kent loved it. He had never lost touch with it. His
remembrances of his boyhood and youth must have been delightful, for
they drew him back to Suffield to spend the evening of life where its
morning had been so happily passed. His father's farm, which had been
in the family a hundred and fifty years or more, had come into his hands.
From time to time he added to it till it contained two hundred and six
acres. He seems to have had a reverent regard and love for the house
of his fathers in which he was born. This ancient "house he built over,
retaining all possible of the original," in the words of an old Suffield
friend. And another adds that it is "a spacious, attractive, and com-
pletely furnished house." Here he spent much of his time during the
last seven or eight years of his life. In 1899 he made his last trip abroad.
His health was failing and for it he visited Carlsbad. Returning home
the following spring, he was prostrated by an attack of influenza. This
was followed by other complications and he died April i, 1900, at his
Suffield home. Mrs. Kent survived him and continued to make her
home in Suffield during the rest of her life. She died in 1913, and the
old home of the family descended to Mrs. Legare, her daughter.

For nearly forty years, the period covering his business activity,
Mr. Kent had lived a busy life, always full of interest and often of great

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT 93

and prolonged nervous strain. He had conducted large business enter-
prises with conspicuous success. After his death Murry Nelson, a well-
known business man of Chicago, said that P. D. Armour once declared
that "he considered Mr. Kent the shrewdest man in the packing fra-
ternity." It was said of him that "he enjoyed throughout his business
career in Chicago a unique reputation — that of a man who made fortunes
by his brains, by shrewd speculation for the most part, his deals being
marked by almost invariable success." It was this element in his career,
the speculative, that filled it, first of all, with interest, then with a variety
of sensations, hope, fear, anxiety, confidence, panic, assurance, dis-
appointment, exultation, and that, with these alternating sensations,
brought mental and physical strain. Mr. Kent always acted on his own
judgment, quite independently of the opinions of others. The weight
of opinion on the Board of Trade was often opposed to his view, "but
generally he was right and the majority wrong." And "always," it was
said, "he was reserved, silent regarding contemplated transactions,
unostentatious in the conduct of his business and modest in his successes."

Mr. Kent was a member of various Chicago clubs. Of these the
Washington Park Club, which maintained a racing course south of
Washington Park, and the Calumet Club, which was the club of the
old settlers, have ceased to exist. The Union League remains the great
club of the city.

Mr. Kent was a quiet man. He talked little. There was nothing
self-assertive in his manner. He was essentially modest and his bearing
was the farthest removed from the arrogance of wealth. It has been
said of him that his four chief characteristics were "his love of home,
reticence, great persistency, and indomitable energy." But this descrip-
tion of him is most imperfect and incomplete. It cannot be doubted that
he possessed business abilities of a very high order. And his business
capacities were of two differing, almost contradictory, kinds. He organ-
ized and conducted great, conservative enterprises in the line of ordinary
business — what might be termed legitimate business, such as his com-
mission house, packing companies, banks — with prudence, skill, and
success.

But he was equally at home in the field of speculation. He was not
a reckless plunger. But, having looked over the situation and decided
what the probabilities were, he was not afraid to take chances, sometimes
risking great sums when the prize to be won was big enough. Once con-
vinced that a venture would succeed and deciding to enter on it, no
amount of adverse opinion could dissuade him from making it. He did

94 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

not invariably succeed. But he so generally succeeded, and particularly
in his greatest speculative deals, as to give him his reputation as the
shrewdest trader of his day and to add largely to his wealth.

It is said of Mr. Kent that he had determined, early in his career, to
become rich. It was, perhaps, this purpose that led him into those great
ventures that made him known, not only as an ordinary business man,
but as an extraordinary speculator. The interesting and rather remark-
able fact is that he was equally successful in both these lines of activity.

Mr. Kent's purpose to accumulate large wealth, as wealth was
reckoned before our day of enormous fortunes, did not prevent him
from being a man of unusual liberality. It has been said of him: " The
list of Mr. Kent's public benefactions would be too long to recount.
There was hardly a charity in Chicago to which he did not subscribe and
no one can ever know the approximate of what he modestly gave to
relieve private want." He was particularly interested in the needs of his
native town. To its Literary Institution, now known as Suffield School,
he made contributions, as did Mrs. Kent after his death. His great
contribution to Sumeld, however, was the Kent Memorial Library.
For the erection of the building, the purchase of books, and the endow-
ment of the library he provided nearly or quite $100,000.

But the greatest of his contributions was made to the University
of Chicago. The University was being founded while Mr. Kent was
preparing to retire from active business and make Sumeld his place of
residence. This makes it the more surprising that he should have con-
ceived so liberal an interest in this new Chicago enterprise. The writer
of this sketch well recalls the day in the spring of 1890 when Mr. Kent
made his first subscription to the University of Chicago. In con-
nection with Mr. F. T. Gates I was soliciting funds for the founding
of the University. We were trying to complete a million-dollar condi-
tional subscription. We had reached the last hundred thousand dollars,
but subscriptions were coming very slowly and we were in a state of great
discouragement. It was at just this time that we called on Mr. Kent in
his LaSalle Street office. He knew neither of us, but received us cor-
dially, listened to our plea, and immediately said: "I am interested in
what you are doing and will give you two thousand five hundred dollars."
We had received larger subscriptions than this, but it was given so quickly
and freely, and at a time when we so much needed encouragement that
my associate was quite overcome and was more extravagant in his
expressions of appreciation than in receiving any other promise of help
during that strenuous year. When Mr. Kent, instead of putting us

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT 95

off and asking us to come in again later, said at once, " I will help you."
Mr. Gates's surprise and relief were so great that he exclaimed impul-
sively: "Mr. Kent, for this encouragement I could almost fall down and
worship you." Perhaps it was the very extravagance of our gratitude
that contributed, a little later, to the interest he began to manifest in
the development of the University.

More than six months before the new institution opened its doors to
students Mr. Kent informed the trustees that he had "decided to erect
and furnish a building to be located on the University grounds and to
be known as the Kent Chemical Hall." He wished to give the Uni-
versity not a sum of money, but a building. His purpose was to build a
laboratory and present it completed, fully furnished, and perfectly
equipped. This he did. The plans were laid before him for approval.
The details connected with the work of construction were submitted to
him. He paid the bills as they came in, authorizing and approving all
expenditures. The laboratory was dedicated in connection with the
Fifth Convocation, January i, 1894, the service being held in the Kent
Theater, the auditorium of the building. A letter was read from Mr.
Kent in which he said: "I hereby give this building, fully furnished
and completely equipped, to the University of Chicago as a chemical
laboratory, for the use of this and succeeding generations." In receiving
the building President Harper said of the growth and development of
Mr. Kent's idea:

At first $100,000 had been considered a sum sufficient for the purpose. Before a
definite conclusion had been reached the sum was fixed at $150,000. When the con-
tracts were made for the erection of the building the sum designated was $182,000.
When the bills came to be paid, including furnishings, the sum was $215,000, and to
this Mr. Kent generously added $20,000 for equipment, making in all $235,000.

At the Convocation proper the President again spoke of the new labora-
tory, and of the indebtedness of the University and of chemical science
to its builder. Mr. Kent was present and at the close of the President's
quarterly statement sent to Dr. Harper the following note which was
read to the audience:

If in any small measure the work of my life can contribute to the advancement of
knowledge and the greater happiness of men; if this can be done in the city where my
busy days have been spent and where my heart is; and if, as I believe, we, who have
aided in the work of erecting this great University, have helped to lay the foundations
of what can never be destroyed, I feel in this work a pride and happiness that have never
been equalled in my life.

It is interesting to recall that Mr. Kent's older brother and former
associate in business, Albert E. Kent, had before this date presented a

96 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

chemical laboratory to Yale, and that his example may have moved the
younger brother in making a like contribution to the new University of
Chicago and even inspired him to outdo the other's generosity.

On the wall of the entrance to the Kent Chemical Laboratory is a
bronze tablet in the center of which is a bust of Mr. Kent in bas-relief
with the following inscription below:

THIS BUILDING IS DEDICATED TO A FUNDAMENTAL
SCIENCE, IN THE HOPE THAT IT WILL BE A FOUN-
DATION STONE LAID BROAD AND DEEP FOR THE
TEMPLE OF KNOWLEDGE IN WHICH AS WE LIVE
WE HAVE LIFE.

SIDNEY A. KENT

The Laboratory is a three-story and basement building about one
hundred and eighty feet in length, with an addition in the rear, known
as the Kent Theater. It fronts south on the central quadrangle of the
original University group. It is a commodious and attractive structure
of blue Bedford stone, like the other buildings of the University of English
Gothic architecture, and built to endure for centuries.

The buildings of the University have been much admired. Their
attractiveness is, without doubt, very largely due to the munificence of
Mr. Kent in the construction of the Chemical Laboratory. He set the
example which later contributors of buildings have followed. President
Harper in the address accepting the building said:

Everything was planned, and it was necessary to plan it upon a large scale. Mr.
Kent would not in any case consent to the use of material that was not of the best.
.... In all this the standard was fixed for the other laboratories of the University.
Had the Chemical Laboratory cost $100,000, the Physical Laboratory likewise would
have cost $100,000. The Chemical Laboratory, however, cost $235,000, and so the
Physical Laboratory when finished will cost its donor $230,000. With such pro-
vision for the Departments of Physics and Chemistry, it followed naturally that
Astronomy, when the matter was taken up, should be treated in a manner equally
magnificent.

Kent and Ryerson were the first of the University's laboratories and
they set a standard which could not be lowered.

It must be remembered that this was at the very beginning of things.
The only buildings under way were the divinity dormitories and the
classroom building which came to be called Cobb Lecture Hall. There
was no money for any others. The University was absolutely depend-
ent for the character of its future buildings, whether, indeed, it was to
have other buildings of any sort, on the generosity of donors. Had it

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT 97

been impossible to find givers who would put more than $50,000 into a
building for an institution whose future was then quite uncertain, build-
ings costing that amount only must have been constructed. The
standard established by these first builders would have been for many
years the accepted standard. When, therefore, Mr. Kent put nearly a
quarter of a million dollars into the first scientific laboratory he redeemed
the architectural future of the University from meanness and insignifi-
cance and gave it permanently that commodiousness, richness, impres-
siveness, and beauty which have given it distinction throughout the
educational world. It may be said with truth that the universities of
the whole country are indebted to Mr. Kent. It has been said that
Kent was the first of the great laboratories of our country devoted
entirely to chemistry. Like the Ryerson Physical Laboratory, built at
almost the same time, it was the envy and despair of other universities.
But with these fine buildings to stimulate them to effort, they, too,
found generous friends, and the era of great scientific laboratories began.
That era may fairly be said to have been introduced by Sidney A. Kent
and Martin A. Ryerson.

The Fifth Convocation of the University, held January 2, 1894,
fifteen months after the opening of the institution, centered about the
dedication of Kent Laboratory. Professor, later President, Remsen
had a year before been brought from Johns Hopkins to assist the archi-
tect in planning an ideal laboratory. He now returned to Chicago as
Convocation orator to dedicate the building into which he had put his
best thought, taking for his theme "The Chemical Laboratory." The
occasion was made memorable by a conference of the teachers of chem-
istry representing forty-one institutions, which resulted in the organiza-
tion of an annual conference for the discussion of methods of chemical
instruction.

When the Laboratory was built it was more than ample for the
students of the new institution. As has been indicated, it was a large
building, but twenty-five years have passed since its erection, the annual
attendance of students in the University has increased more than ten-
fold, from less than 1,000 to more than 10,000, and the Laboratory no
longer accommodates the great and growing multitude. It was built
to provide for 300 students, but by subsequent changes its capacity
has been increased so as to give adequate facilities for the care of 500
students. The registration during the last five years has much exceeded
that number, resulting in most serious overcrowding. It became
necessary in the Autumn Quarter of 1919 to restrict the number of

98 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

registrations to 750, which is 250 more than the building can adequately
accommodate.

Professor Julius Stieglitz, Chairman of the Department of Chemistry
and Director of Laboratories, writes me:

In the course of years this beautiful laboratory has become quite inadequate in
size, both for the housing of vital branches of instruction in chemistry and for the
care of the vast number of students attracted to chemistry by the recognition of its
extraordinary importance in so many varied branches of science and to the life of the

nation Since the planning and building of the Kent Chemical Laboratory,

two great new fields of chemistry, physical chemistry and the chemistry of radio-
active substances, have been developed and have taken a place in chemistry as funda-
mental as the three branches, inorganic, organic, and analytical chemistry, for work

in which the Laboratory was planned and constructed The most serious feature

of the overcrowded conditions in Kent is that the development of its research facilities
has been very seriously impaired and its usefulness .... jeopardized. There are
not enough private research laboratories even for all the members of the enlarged
staff [which is five tunes as great as it was at the beginning], and the 30 to 35 students
engaged in research for the Ph.D. degree are crowded either into an already over-
crowded large laboratory, or into rough basement rooms which were never designed
for research work and which are poorly lighted and poorly ventilated.

The department is pleading therefore for largely increased facilities
for its important and growing work, either in an enlargement of Kent,
or "a new laboratory which will give adequate space and facilities for
the crowded research workers, for the proper housing of physical chem-
istry and of radio-activity work — and, if it is large enough, possibly for
graduate work in industrial chemistry"- —but that is another story.

All this is said to emphasize the importance of the great contribu-
tion Mr. Kent made to the University at the very beginning of its history.
Well did he say in the inscription on the tablet of dedication in the
entrance of the Laboratory, "This Building is Dedicated to a Funda-
mental Science." So fundamental is it that the saying is current that
chemistry won the Great War. Mr. Kent builded even better than he
knew. Since his day, though that day closed so recently, chemistry has
made for itself a new and vastly greater place in the world's life. He
helped to introduce the new era. In doing this he made a great contri-
bution, not only and not chiefly to the University of Chicago, but to
mankind. He believed he was making adequate provision for the study
and teaching of chemistry in the University for generations to come.
If he were still living, no one would rejoice more than he that the great-
ness of his contribution aided in that extraordinary development in the
scope of chemistry and its value to the world which, before a single

SIDNEY ALBERT KENT 99

generation passed, overcrowded Kent Laboratory with eager students
and made its extension or duplication imperative.

Mr. Kent's interest in the University and in the great building he had
given it continued unchanged. The writer of this sketch recalls a
day in 1897 when he and President Harper, entering the Corn Exchange
Bank, met Mr. Kent coming out. He stopped us and said: "I am glad
to meet you, for I have something to tell you which will interest you both.
I am just making my will and am leaving the University $100,000 for
the care of the Laboratory." He died three years later, leaving a very
large estate. It turned out that before finally executing his will the
bequest to the University was made $50,000. A similar amount was
left to the Art Institute of Chicago. The bulk of the estate was left to
Mrs. Kent and his two daughters. The will provided that, in the event
of certain contingencies, a very large sum should go to the University as
an endowment for scholarships. But the Kent stock maintains its
virility, and his fortune goes, as he intended it should, to his children's
children. This contingent provision is mentioned here to show the con-
tinuance of his interest in the institution for which he had done so much,
and his benevolent thought of the coming generations of the young people
of our country.

In concluding this sketch I cannot refrain from quoting two very
pregnant sentences from the pen of the Honorable William Kent, late
member of Congress from California, the son of Mr. Kent's older brother,
Albert E. Kent.

Sidney A. Kent was a man of remarkable business judgment and ability, and was
characterized by a great gift of human kindliness. He showed quickness and aptitude
in every one of the many lines of business he took up, and had the warm affection of
many people in all walks of life.

What has impressed me in these two sentences is this — neither of them
could close without referring to Mr. Kent's human kindliness and power
to inspire affection in people "in all the walks of life." He was a very
able business man, but, after all, the things that gave the greatest value
and significance to his life were the human interest he felt and mani-
fested in his fellow-men who worked with their hands, his thought for the
welfare of the young in his eastern and western homes, and his munificent
gifts for their education and advancement.

-

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER

Like most of the men of whom these sketches treat, George C. Walker
was of Puritan or Pilgrim ancestry. His more remote forefathers be-
longed to that hardy race who, in the county of Northumberland along
the Tweed and the Tyne, defended the English border, and under the
discipline of trying conditions became men of endurance, courage, and
power. That the Walkers built their name into the history of the coun-
try is made evident by the fact that one of the populous cities of the coal
region bears their name, and several of the lesser towns, as Heaton
Walker, Low Walker, and Walker Quay, repeat it.

Members of the family were in Massachusetts within a few years
after the landing of the Pilgrims. One of them made his way to New
Hampshire, and a son of his, later known as Colonel W. W. Walker,
enamored of the wilderness, found his way in the closing years of the
eighteenth century to central New York and made his home in Plain-
field, Otsego County, living to a great age and bringing up on his farm,
not only his own, but in part his son's sons as well.

Colonel Walker was but twenty-one when he sought a home in that
wilderness. There he found a wife, and being only a few miles from
Cooperstown, we may well suppose he bought his farm from Judge
Cooper, the father of James Fenimore Cooper, who owned this country,
or at least some eighteen thousand acres of it.

On the Plainfield farm was born, in 1802, Charles Walker, who be-
came one of the big men of early Chicago. He was a member of that
memorable group including William B. Ogden, Judge Drummond,
Tuthill King, George Armour, Julian S. Rumsey, and J. Young Scam-
mon, who first saw Chicago in 1835 and had much to do with its early
development. Charles Walker was the peer of any of these men. It
was he who made the first shipment of wheat from Chicago to the East,
sending in 1838 seventy-eight bushels to his own mill in Otsego County,
New York, and the time came when he was the largest shipper of grain
in the United States. In 1848 he was one of the organizers of the Chicago
Board of Trade, of which he was made vice-president and was later twice
elected president. He was one of the builders and owners of Chicago's
first railroad, the Galena and Chicago Union, in 1848, and in 1856 acting
president of the Chicago, Iowa, and Nebraska Railroad, which was

IOI

102 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

intended to be a continuation of the Galena line. At the opening of the
Illinois and Michigan Canal, which was the great event for Chicago in
1848, he was chosen to deliver the address which was the chief feature
of the celebration. Chicago was then a little town of about twenty
thousand people, and he made the astonishing forecast that, if permitted
to live to a good old age, he expected to see its population increase to a
million. Twenty-five years later, although the city then numbered four
hundred thousand, a Mr. A. H. Walker made a forecast of its probable
growth and ventured the prediction that the million mark would be
passed by the end of the century. As a matter of fact that mark was
passed in 1889. If Charles Walker had lived to the good old age of
eighty-seven he would have seen the city of a million people whose future
growth he had so accurately foretold.

Charles Walker was one of the founders of the old University of
Chicago. It is related of him that, being present at a dinner when Senator
Stephen A. Douglas expressed the purpose of offering a site for a univer-
sity to any denomination that would establish such an institution, Mr.
Walker rose from his seat and after walking up and down the room for a
few minutes stopped and said, "Judge Douglas, I will accept your offer
on behalf of the Baptists of Chicago." Whether the story is true or not,
he became one of the leaders of his denomination in receiving from Mr.
Douglas the gift of the site of the University in 1856 and remained one
of the leaders of the University movement and vice-president of the
Board of Trustees as long as he lived.

The unfortunate failure of his health compelled his retirement from
the active control of his largest business enterprises in the early fifties,
though he lived active and influential many years longer, till 1869.
These things were said of Charles Walker: "He was the foremost gram
merchant of America." There was "no man whose commercial standing
was higher." "No other man living or dead ever did more toward
building up and beautifying our city, or for the moral and social prosper-
ity of this community, than he did." So said the Evening Journal.
The Republican, another Chicago paper of that day, said: "Mr. Walker
was a citizen of noble type. Believing in Chicago as the future home of a
million people and the fact destined to be realized within the period of
his own lifetime, or its possible span, all his devisings were for that future
city which he saw beyond the straggling and temporary buildings about
him." Able, public-spirited, far-sighted, successful, devout, embodying
the virility, the uprightness, the religious zeal of his ancestry — such was
the father of George C. Walker.

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER 103

He was twice married and had five children. His first wife was Mary
Clarke of a neighboring township in Otsego County, New York, whom
he married in 1827, and her children were Charles H., Mary C., and
George C. Walker. After the death of his first wife he married in 1841
Nancy Bentley, of Lebanon Springs, Columbia County, the sister of
Cyrus Bentley, well known to all early Chicagoans, and her children
were WiUiam B. and Cornelia Walker. These children all came to be
well known in the business and society world of Chicago. In the middle
of this group of five children was George C., having an older brother and
sister and a younger brother and sister, he forming the link binding the
two groups together. He was born at Burlington Flats, Otsego County,
New York, November 5, 1835, the same year in which his father first
went to Chicago and began business in that city. Being already engaged
in several business enterprises extending from Otsego County to New
York City, Charles Walker did not transfer his home to Chicago till
much later. In 1839 he was a member of the New York legislature.

No state or country has more attractive places in which to be born
and live than New York. George C. Walker had the good fortune to be
born and spend his boyhood in one of these favored regions. No reader
of Cooper's Leather Stocking stories can doubt the natural attractiveness
of the Otsego country. So enthralled was the youthful Deerslayer by its
attractions that they are said to have drawn him back to it after half a
century. It is no longer the wilderness he loved, but when George C.
Walker was a boy it was still not only the same land of brooks and rivers
and lakes, hills and mountains and valleys, but extensive forests still
covered the hills and it remained the paradise of the hunter and the fisher-
man, a land of enchantment for boys who feel the lure of the wild.

Fortunate in the place of his birth, he was unfortunate enough to lose
his mother when a child of only three years. The grandparents, Colonel
W. W. Walker and his wife, took the child, little more than an infant, to
the old farm in Plainfield, a few miles north of Burlington, and were father
and mother to him till after his father's second marriage. These were
strenuous years for the father. He was a legislator for his native state.
He was doing business in Chicago and the East. At first Albany, and
later New York City, Otsego County, and Chicago claimed part of his
time each year. He was laying the foundations of his fortune, branching
out in new directions, forming new connections, and finally in 1845 estab-
lishing a new home in Chicago. It is said that on the removal of the
family to the West, George was left for a year or two with his grand-
parents. He was a great lover of the forests and streams of the Otsego

104 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

country. It was during these years of his early boyhood that he con-
ceived the passion for hunting and fishing that remained with him through
life. The hearts of his grandparents were bound up in him and they were
reluctant to give him up.

The father had bought three lots of the old Fort Dearborn Reserva-
tion at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Water Street, paying $85 for
the three. On one of these he built a house and made his home, and in
the autumn of 1847 brought George, then twelve years old, to Chicago.

There were no railroads from the East to Chicago in 1847, none
indeed for five years thereafter, and at Buffalo they took a steamboat for
the boy's new home. The trip through the lakes took seven days, but
its monotony was broken by one interesting incident. The mind of the
boy was very alert, keenly susceptible to external impressions. When
the boat arrived at Mackinaw the annual distribution of blankets,
ammunition, etc., to the Indians was taking place. The red men had
gathered from far and near and the spectacle was one of great interest to
the boy. The captain delayed the voyage for several hours that the
passengers might enjoy an incident to most of them so new and strange.
No one was more interested than the twelve-year-old boy, who never
forgot the events of the day.

On arriving at his new home and investigating his surroundings he
found that the garden behind the house ran down to the shore of Lake
Michigan, so near was the lake in that day to Michigan Avenue. On
the north the river was just as near. All this led to a joyous adventure
in which he had a part that was naturally unforgettable. The winter
after he reached home, a deer, swimming in the lake, landed exhausted
at the foot of the Walker garden, and to the great delight of the boy was
captured alive.

Chicago in 1848 was still a part of the Western wilderness. Fort
Dearborn was still standing just north of the Walker residence and was
a place of great interest and frequent resort to George and his brothers.
The population of Chicago was then less than 17,000. There were no
railroads east or west, though Charles Walker, with William B. Ogden,
J. Y. Scammon, and others was making plans for the Galena and Chicago
Union. It was in 1847 that the Chicago Tribune was established. There
was no high school in the young city.

The first home of the Walkers on Michigan Avenue was number 42,
on the east side of the avenue and immediately south of South Water
Street. One is interested to learn that the first school George Walker
attended was the private "academy" of a young man named Benjamin F.
Taylor. The school was a temporary expedient of the brilliant young

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER 105

teacher who later became an editorial writer and literary critic and war
correspondent on the Chicago Evening Journal and acquired a national
reputation as a poet and the author of many volumes of poetry and prose.
During the school year 1847-48 the boy George profited by the instruction
of this teacher who was to become a light in the literary world.

The First Presbyterian Church of that day was located on the south-
west corner of Washington and Clark streets and in its basement a school
was conducted called Temple's Academy. I have not been able to learn
whether or not this school was one of the many enterprises of Dr. John T.
Temple, who was a most notable man of early Chicago, the chief founder
of the First Baptist Church and one of the organizers of Rush Medical
College. Nor do I know how long it continued in existence, but George
Walker enjoyed its advantages during his second school year in Chicago.
To keep him from idleness through the summer his father employed him
about his lumber yard, this being one branch of his varied business
interests.

Perhaps the father introduced the boy thus early to business because
he recognized his natural aptitude for a business life. One suspects that
he had developed unusual abilities in business affairs while still with his
grandfather, who in the forties was beginning to be an old man and may
have well depended on his small grandson for help in his affairs. It cer-
tainly is evident that the boy developed at a very early age a sense of
responsibility, self-reliance, independence, and powers of initiative very
rarely found in one so young. And yet, granting this, circumstantial
accounts are related of his early achievements in business that are almost
unbelievable.

It is said, for example, that in the spring of 1849, or possibly 1850,
when he was thirteen or fourteen years old, his father provided him with
$3,000 in currency and sent him to Kenosha, Wisconsin (then known as
Southport), instructing him to purchase wheat and ship it to Buffalo on
one of the company's vessels which would meet him at Kenosha. Every-
body in those days wore boots, and he stuffed the money into the high
tops which came nearly to his knees and drove along the lake shore to
Kenosha, a journey of about sixty miles. Within four days he bought
eight thousand bushels of wheat, a full cargo for the schooner "Charles
Walker." The wheat had cost him thirty- three cents a bushel and was
sent on for sale to Buffalo and the eastern market.

The next story belongs to the summer of the following year, 1850 or
1851, when he was fourteen or fifteen years old. His father furnished
him with a canal boat and a cargo of hard coal and dressed flooring, and
he started for St. Louis by way of the newly completed Illinois and

106 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Michigan Canal, and the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. The journey
was made in safety through the canal and the Illinois River, but just
above St. Louis a Mississippi steamboat ran into the canal boat and
almost wrecked it, carrying away the cabin. The cargo was saved, how-
ever, and sold in St. Louis for nearly or quite twice as much as it had cost
in Chicago. The boat was repaired, doubtless at the cost of the steam-
boat company, and the fifteen-year-old merchant invested the proceeds
of the sale of the coal and lumber in a full cargo of sugar and New Orleans
molasses, luxuries which sold readily in Chicago for twice what they had
cost him in St. Louis.

It seems strange that a boy with such a pronounced gift for business,
who was sure to be needed and to find the largest scope for his powers
in his father's widely extended affairs should have looked forward to any-
thing but a business career. But for some reason his life began to be
shaped for a college education and a legal career. Opportunities for a
liberal education were few in the West, but in 1847 Beloit College had
been organized and to its preparatory department young Walker was
sent in the autumn of 1849. His people, however, were Baptists, and
after one year's work at Beloit he was sent to New England to continue
his academy work preparatory to entering Brown University, then the
leading institution of the country under Baptist auspices. His studies
were brought to an end by illness in the family. In 1851 his father's
health was so shattered that the responsibilities of his great business fell
upon his oldest son Charles, then twenty-three or -four years old, and the
father soon after retired from the firm.

In 1853 George's sister Mary, who was four years older than himself
and who had become the wife of S. C. Griggs, the well-known bookseller
of that day, was seized with what proved to be a fatal illness. She was
taken to Mackinaw and George and his mother went with her in the hope
of nursing her back to health. The hope was vain and she died in the
spring of 1854.

When Charles Walker retired from the great business he had founded
and developed, he was little more than fifty years old, at the height of his
business ability, and head of widely extended and successful enterprises.
But though he recovered his health he did not return to the grain and
forwarding business, finding in his other interests ample scope for his
activities.

Charles H. Walker inherited the business abilities of his father. He
had been connected with the business for some years, growing more and
more into active control as his father's health gave way. He was already

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER 107

prominent in the mercantile life of the city. His standing was indicated
by his election in 1856 to the presidency of the Board of Trade.

Knowing the business abilities of his younger brother, Charles H., on
the retirement of the father, called on George to come to his assistance,
give up his college course, and take his natural place in the business. The
father adding hL persuasions, the young student surrendered his scholarly
ambitions and his purpose to follow the law and in 1855 entered the firm
when he was not yet twenty-one years old. Charles Walker and Son now
became Charles Walker and Sons, Forwarding and Commission Mer-
chants, 472 South Water Street. It is said that the firm did the largest
grain and provision purchasing and forwarding business in the United
States. They were also very extensive dealers in lumber, having lumber
yards not only in Chicago but also at Peoria, La Salle, Morris, and other
places. The firm built one of the early large grain elevators, continuing
the elevator business for about ten years.

George C. Walker was the embodiment of energy and enterprise. He
had an alert, eager mind. It was not long after his entrance into the firm
that the partners established the first through freight line from the sea-
board to the Mississippi. They had barges on the Hudson River and
Erie Canal, propellers on the Great Lakes, boats on the Illinois and
Michigan Canal, and steamboats on the Illinois and Mississippi rivers,
all under -the ownership or control of Charles Walker and Sons, and
partners located at the principal points on the line. They were thus
able to give bills of lading and through prices on freight which they
transported on their own boats from New York to St. Louis and inter-
mediate points.

It was a year or two after Mr. Walker's entrance into business that
an event occurred that had far-reaching consequences in his future life.
Of a very social nature, he entered with zest into the life of the young
people of the little city. He was at the same tune a member of the First
Baptist Church of Chicago, the house of worship then standing on the
southeast corner of Washington and La Salle streets, where the Chamber
of Commerce Building now stands. There the first church wedding in
Chicago was solemnized September 24, 1856, when Mr. and Mrs. Arthur
B. Meeker were married, and young Walker, cousin of the bride, Miss
Griggs, was one of the ushers. A craze for dancing, unusually intense,
seems to have seized upon the young people of the town and so alarmed
the churches that severe measures were adopted to moderate the frenzy.
One dance in particular was made the occasion for bringing young Walker
and others up for discipline. The demand that they must give up dancing

io8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

or surrender their church membership was acceded to by some, but
George Walker refused to submit to compulsion and was excluded. We
shall see before we end that gentler and wiser treatment would have saved
to his church a man of tremendous capacities for good. I mention the
incident for the sake of the sequel appearing on a later page.

It was only two years after Mr. Walker entered the partnership that
the panic of 1857 prostrated the business of the country. The firm
weathered the storm successfully, as its founder had weathered preceding
financial tempests but it led to important changes in George C. Walker's
life. It happened that a firm in Buffalo to which a large consignment of
grain was in transit became involved in the failure of a trust company.
This took him to Buffalo, as he supposed for a few days or a few weeks
at most. In the end, however, to protect the interests of the company
and care for their great shipments of grain through that city he found
himself compelled to open an office and settle in Buffalo till he could find
someone to whom he could safely commit so important a trust. This
took more than two years. But at the end of one year he found what he
had not gone to Buffalo to seek — a wife. This was Miss Ada Chapman,
whom he married December 8, 1858. Not many months later the health
of Mrs. Walker began to fail. On their return to Chicago they made
their home with the rest of the family at the new home of the father,
Charles Walker, at 201 Michigan Avenue. The unity of the family was
well illustrated by the fact that all of its members continued to live under
the same roof. But in 1861 the health of Mrs. George C. Walker became
so precarious that her husband was advised to take her abroad. She
continued however to fail and died in France in October, 1861. He had
married Miss Chapman when he was twenty-three and lost her just before
his twenty-sixth birthday.

For about twelve years, from 1858 to 1870, the Walker family lived
at 201 Michigan Avenue in what was known to all Chicago as Terrace
Row, a very handsome stone block of residences, four stories in height,
extending from Van Buren Street south, covering the space now occupied
by the Chicago Club, the Fine Arts Building, and the northern part of the
Auditorium Hotel. It was the most famous block of houses existing in
Chicago before the fire of 1871 and was sometimes called the Marble
Terrace. In the biographies of the men who made their homes in Terrace
Row, could they be fully written, would be found the history of early
Chicago. Here is the list, beginning at No. 199 and running south to
No. 209: Denton Gurnee, P. L. Yoe, Charles Walker, William Bross,
P. F. W. Peck, S. C. Griggs, Tuthill King, Hugh T. Dickey, General Cook,

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER 109

John L. Clark, and J. Y. Scammon. This famous block was destroyed
in the great fire, marking the southernmost limits of the confla-
gration on Michigan Avenue. It was in the Terrace Row home that
Charles Walker, the father, died in 1869 at the age of sixty-seven.

In 1866 the oldest brother, Charles H., had withdrawn from the
business and become a sugar planter in Louisiana, seventy or eighty
miles west of New Orleans. The firm which had been C. H. and G. C.
Walker became George C. Walker and Company, the place of the oldest
son of the family being taken for a time by the youngest, William B.
Walker.

Though George C. Walker had surrendered his college career because
duty called him into business he manifested throughout the whole course
of his life a quite unusual interest in higher education and in the progress
of science. This will appear constantly as this story goes on. The first
public exhibition of this interest appeared in his twenty-second year when
he served on the committee of arrangements for laying the cornerstone
of the building of the first University of Chicago, which took place July 4,
1857. His interest in that institution thus early manifested never
ceased. His father was first vice-president of the Board of Trustees from
its organization to his own death in 1869. Immediately after his death
his son George was elected to fill his place as a trustee, and continued in
that position as long as the old University lived and its Board of Trustees
maintained an existence, a period of more than twenty years.

Mr. Walker was one of the founders and the earliest promoters of the
Chicago Academy of Sciences. He was the warm personal friend of
Robert Kennicott, the first director of the Academy. In 1864 he was the
chief factor in raising $62,500 for the purchase of collections, and for thirty-
four years he was a trustee. He was secretary and treasurer for more
than twenty years and president for three years. When the new Univer-
sity of Chicago was founded he made strenuous efforts to bring about a
union between the Academy, which was then practically defunct, though
possessing valuable collections, and the new University. The terms of
union were agreed upon by the representatives of both institutions when
opposition developed. For the first time in many years a popular inter-
est in the Academy of Sciences was aroused. The plan of union fell
through, but the efforts of Mr. Walker resulted in recalling the Academy
to new life, securing for it a building in Lincoln Park and launching it
on a new career of enlarged and enduring usefulness. Dr. Edmund
Andrews, president of the Academy, said of him:

Mr. Walker has been the moving spirit of the Chicago Academy of Sciences
from the beginning. He was the man who by his personal activity first raised the

no BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

money to put the Academy on a sound financial basis, giving liberally himself and
inducing others to do likewise. He has been the active guiding spirit in the board
of trustees and in the Academy itself, not as a scientist, but in the administration of
its business affairs, and he has been from first to last a mainstay of that institution.

In 1869 he was one of the incorporators of the Illinois Humane
Society, in the work of which he took an enduring interest. Originally
known as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, it extended
its work to the protection of children and in 1882 became the Illinois
Humane Society. Mr. Walker was a very tender-hearted man, sym-
pathizing with suffering, and ready in its relief. He was a many-sided
man with interests reaching out in many directions. In 1867-69 he was
one of a committee of twelve men who originated the South Park system
of Chicago. It was in his home in Terrace Row that the final plans for
the park system were adopted. Through the efforts of Mr. Walker and
his associates in 1869 acts of incorporation were secured from the legisla-
ture, and during the next few years the lands constituting Washington
and Jackson parks and the Midway Plaisance were purchased. I do not
intend to suggest that Mr. Walker was the leading spirit or the principal
actor in this great public movement, but simply that he was one of the
group of far-sighted men who led the way in an improvement, then bit-
terly opposed by many, but now universally recognized as an inestimable
benefit to the people.

One of the interesting things in the life of Mr. Walker was his connec-
tion with Graceland Cemetery. The Cemetery Company was incorpor-
ated in 1 86 1. One of its officers proposed to Mr. Walker that he should
buy a lot. He replied that if the company would set aside 10 per cent
of the price of each lot to establish a fund for the perpetual care and
maintenance of the cemetery he would not only buy a lot but would pay
the additional 10 per cent or 100 per cent for the assurance of the per-
petuity of its dedication to burial purposes and the care of the lots. The
thought and plan grew and were followed up with his accustomed eager-
ness and determination and with most interesting results. In the first
place, a new corporation was organized, charged with the perpetual
improvement and adornment of the cemetery, and in the second place,
in 1865 the act of incorporation of the cemetery was amended, requiring
it "out of the proceeds of all lots sold .... to set apart 10 per cent
thereof as a reserve fund." The same act incorporated the "Trustees
of the Graceland Cemetery Improvement Fund," and provided that
these trustees should receive the above-named 10 per cent and any other
funds contributed to them to be used under the direction of the trustees
"in the improvement, ornamentation, preservation, and maintenance of

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER in

the grounds, walks, shrubberies, inclosures, structures, monuments and
memorials" of the cemetery, "so that the same may be properly kept,
adorned, and preserved, and said grounds be and continue as cemetery
grounds forever." Mr. Walker was one of the charter members of this
corporation. For many years he was its treasurer and for more than
thirty years its secretary. He was deeply interested in the objects it had
in view; he had seen graves desecrated in the removal and destruction
of cemeteries and hoped that in this organization he had provided for the
perpetual perservation of Graceland. He labored for the increase of the
Improvement Fund which now amounts to a million dollars. The trus-
tees have always been and continue to be leading citizens of Chicago.
Among the first trustees were William Blair, E. W. Blatchford, James
H. Bowen, Erastus S. Williams, Van H. Higgins, and George C. Walker,
and among its latest are Martin A. Ryerson, Charles H. Walker, Henry
A. Blair, Charles L. Hutchinson, Chauncey Keep, and Ernest A. Hamill.
I imagine that few things in Mr. Walker's life gave him greater satisfac-
tion than connection with this movement in the inception and progress
of which he was so important a factor.

In 1869 the Chicago Club was organized. It was the beginning of
the era of clubs. This one came into being in a peculiar way. At a meet-
ing of a few gentlemen a committee was appointed " to select a hundred
men to form a club to be known as the Chicago Club." The Committee
carefully picked out one hundred of the leading men in the business and
social life of the city. Among those selected were the three brothers,
Charles H., George C., and William B. Walker.

Two notable clubs came into existence in Chicago in 1878. The
Calumet was a purely social organization and rendered a real service to
the city in gathering up and preserving much of the early history of
Chicago through a series of old settlers' receptions. Mr. Walker was one
of its early members. In the same way he was almost from the beginning
a member of the Commercial Club which has always been made up of the
leaders in the business life of Chicago. He was not a great politician, but
his connection with the Iroquois Club would indicate that his political
affiliations were democratic.

It is said of Otsego County, New York, where Mr. Walker was born
and spent his boyhood, that it "was a superb hunting ground in early
days, the home of the deer, elk, moose and bear, the otter, martin, wolf,
fox and squirrel and of many waterfowl, while salmon, trout and many
other fish abounded in the rivers and lakes." In that sportsman's para-
dise he learned while a boy to love the woods and water, and this love for

112 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

the open and the sports of the open he never lost. He was one of the
founders of the Tolleston Club which hunted ducks on the Calumet and
Kankakee marshes. It is said that he was also one of the constituent
members of the Nee-pee-nauk Club on Puckaway Lake, in Wisconsin.
Throughout his life he delighted in field sports. He was a devotee of
golf. His summer home was at Lake Geneva where he had a fine yacht,
was largely instrumental in organizing the Golf and Country Club, and
found exercise and enjoyment on the golf links. It was always a joy to
him to get away from business to the marshes, lakes, or streams for recrea-
tion with rod or gun. At Lake Geneva Mrs. Walker interested herself
in the Fresh Air Association which gave to five hundred poor boys and
girls and young working women from Chicago an annual fortnight's out-
ing. During these weeks the yachts of Mr. Walker and other summer
residents about the lakes were very busy.

During the sixties he was active on the Board of Trade. He played
the leading role in at least one of the great wheat deals which were so
common during the later half of the last century. A business associate,
going over Mr. Walker's old papers many years later tells me that he came
on a canceled check of that deal for a million dollars. A pool of dealers
got together $1,250,000 for the purpose of forcing him to the wall, and
themselves reaping the profits of the deal. They went to a bank to
borrow $250,000 more so as to make assurance doubly sure. The banker
told them that Mr. Walker had $2,000,000 on deposit in his bank and
they wisely concluded to abandon their purpose. He was at that time
one of the rich men of Chicago. He was not always so fortunate and
probably in the long run lost on the Board of Trade more than he made
and finally he gave up speculation and retired from the grain business.

In 1 86 1 Mr. Walker entered on one of the great business undertakings
of his life, one indeed which took much of his time and attention through-
out the rest of his life, a period of thirty-seven years. As he engaged in
this enterprise only twelve or thirteen years after his entrance into busi-
ness, and when he was not yet thirty-three years old, it will be seen that
it occupied nearly half his life. This enterprise was the Blue Island Land
and Building Company, a corporation which, with a few associates, he
organized into one of the greatest of Chicago's real-estate undertakings.
The company purchased, twelve miles south of the city, fifteen hundred
acres of land, paying for it $150,000 or $100 per acre.

This great tract they subdivided, laid out streets along which they
planted thousands of trees, built sidewalks, and sought in every way to
make it attractive to people who preferred a suburban life. The main

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER 113

lines of the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad ran through the
eastern part of the subdivision. Half a mile west the land rose in what
was known as the Blue Island Ridge, which is perhaps eighty feet above
the level of Lake Michigan. This ridge running south from about nine-
tieth Street to Blue Island, a distance of five miles, was beautified by
natural groves of oak. Alongside this ridge the land company by
arrangement with the railroad built what was called a "dummy line"
which left the main line near Ninetieth Street and rejoined it at Blue
Island. This line served the people above and below the ridge along its
entire length. In the western part of the tract the village of Morgan
Park was built. For the first four years Mr. Walker was secretary and
treasurer of the company. In 1872 he became president and so remained
till the expiration of the company's charter, when he became trustee of
that part of the tract still unsold.

It was his ambition to make Morgan Park an educational center. He
encouraged and assisted the founding of the Morgan Park Military Acad-
emy. He put up a building in which the Chicago Female College was
conducted. He assisted the Baptist Union Theological Seminary to
secure lands and buildings which led to the transfer of the Seminary from
the city to Morgan Park. It was in connection with this removal that I
became acquainted with Mr. Walker. This was in 1876-77, and from
that time I came to know him better every year to the end of his life, a
period of nearly thirty years. He was a masterful man, quick in his deci-
sions, strong in his convictions, sometimes abrupt in manner, and at the
outset, being seven years his junior and an obscure individual, I was a
little afraid of him. But as I came to know him well I found him to be so
warm-hearted, cordial, gentle, generous, and considerate that I conceived
for him a strong affection. I did not come into close touch with him,
however, until ten years after our acquaintance began.

The old University of Chicago closed its doors in 1886. What then
seemed an irremediable disaster led me with others to begin to lay plans
and institute efforts to establish a new institution to take the place of the
old one. It was this that brought me into more intimate relations with
Mr. Walker. He took an immediate and, as time went on, a more and
more liberal interest in establishing a new University in Morgan Park.
The offers of help from Mr. Walker and the Company finally aggregated
more than $100,000, and in the year 1888 there seemed to be every proba-
bility that the new University of Chicago would be established at Morgan
Park. As soon, however, as it came to be known that John D. Rocke-
feller was proposing to give a large initial subscription toward the found-

114 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

ing of the University, not in a suburb, but in the city itself, the Morgan
Park project was laid aside and all joined in the larger undertaking.

Mr. Walker had the project of establishing the University at Morgan
Park very much at heart. It would not have been strange if his inter-
est had ceased when his liberal proffers were set aside and new and larger
plans adopted. But he was a big man, sincerely interested in the re-
establishment of the University work with which he had been connected
for twenty years as a trustee, and he entered whole-heartedly into the
greater undertaking. I cannot show this more convincingly than by
quoting a letter I wrote to him in June, 1889. I happened to be the
secretary of a meeting held in the Grand Pacific Hotel, Chicago, which
inaugurated the movement to increase the $600,000 subscribed for the
new institution by Mr. Rockefeller to $1,000,000. This meeting ap-
pointed a committee which nominated a college committee of thirty-six
men to take the work in charge. As secretary I wrote to Mr. Walker as
follows: " .... After the committee of nomination was appointed and
before it had retired to prepare its report, the Conference excused it from
naming two men and itself elected them by acclamation. These two
were yourself and [Mr. E. Nelson] Blake, so earnest and unanimous was
the desire that you should serve on the committee."

Mr. Walker sent us a subscription of $5,000, manifested deep interest
in our success, and on the completion of the $1,000,000 subscription that
founded the University was made a member of the first Board of Trus-
tees and continued a Trustee to the end of his life. I think it may be
truly said of Mr. Walker that during all of his later years the University
of Chicago was, outside his home, the chief interest of his life.

I have before me as I write a large morocco-bound, gilt-lettered book
of three hundred pages, prepared with the utmost care by Mr. Walker —
"The University of Chicago Scrap Book." In this book he placed every-
thing that concerned the University project and his relation to it, every-
thing in his correspondence, and everything that he could find in print
relating to the institution that seemed to him of value. This volume
with its original documents is a source book for the University Historian,
but it also speaks eloquently of his profound interest in the institution to
which during the last fifteen years of his life he devoted thought and tune
and money.

During the twenty years following the beginning of the Blue Island
Land and Building Company Mr. Walker was active in many directions.
The operations of the company were remarkably successful. Their lands
had cost only $100 per acre. Large sums were spent in improving them.

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER 115

A liberal policy was pursued toward those making their homes in Morgan
Park in the earlier years. When, for example, I followed the Theological
Seminary there in 1877 Mr. Walker gave me half an acre of ground, a
large lot 100 feet front by 200 feet deep on which to establish my home.
This was my first experience in owning any real property and was the
foundation of any savings I have since made. Somewhat slowly, but
none the less surely, did the subdivision fill up. The lands were sold at
a large advance. The city steadily extended southward and finally what
I knew as a countryside or a small village became part of the great
metropolis.

During all these years, but particularly the earlier of them, Mr.
Walker was influential in the Board of Trade and in the Chamber of Com-
merce, an organization formed for the purpose of erecting the Board of
Trade Building on the southeast corner of Washington and LaSalle
streets. This building was consumed in the great fire of 1871. Mr.
Walker was made a member of a building committee of three to erect a
new building. It was needed in a hurry. Chicago was so impoverished
that the temptation was great to rebuild, not only hastily, but cheaply.
Mr. Walker strongly urged that in putting up the new building for the
Board of Trade they should set a pattern for finer, more enduring con-
struction. This view prevailed and there followed an extraordinary
achievement. The old building was burned October 9, 1871. On Octo-
ber 14, " while the stone and brick were yet warm," the clearing away
of the debris began. "The first stone in the foundation was laid No-
vember 6, the first brick in the wall December 6, and the first cut stone
December 12." On October 9, 1872, the anniversary of the Great Fire,
the new building was dedicated. Accepting it for the Board of Trade,
the vice-president declared it to be "a structure which for the use in-
tended is not surpassed in size, beauty, and convenience by any other on
this or on the eastern continent." It had its influence in causing a
vastly improved new Chicago to rise from the ashes of the old.

In 1880, more than eighteen years after the death of the wife of his
youth, Mr. Walker again married. On February 10 of that year, in New
York City, Mrs. Mary M. Keen became his wife. He had no children of
his own and welcomed those Mrs. Keen brought to him, both sons and
daughters, treating them as his own and loved by them as a father.
Their home was and continued to be at 228 Michigan Avenue, where the
Congress Hotel now stands.

By this time Mr. Walker's business interests had been both curtailed
and extended. The multiplication of railroads had greatly modified the

n6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

transportation business and other changes in his affairs followed. In
1880 he became a member of the New York Stock Exchange, of the New
York Cotton Exchange, and later of the Chicago Stock Exchange.
Among many other pieces of city real estate, he owned a number of lots
on the shore of the lake contiguous to Twenty-fifth Street. Noting the
large population in the neighborhood it seemed to him that it would be a
boon to the people to have free access to the water and he gave the use of
his water front to the city for a bathing beach. Never content to do
things by halves he assisted in providing bath houses that the people
might have every facility for the use of the beach.

His benevolence was almost unbounded. I am assured by one who
had immediate knowledge of these things that for years he took upon
himself the partial or entire support of a dozen families in which he be-
came interested. Every month regularly checks of $100, $150, $200, and
in one or more cases $250 were made out and sent to them. And this was
done not only when he was abundantly able, but also during years when
he could ill afford it.

In 1886 Charles H. Walker, the older brother who had retired from
the business in 1866, died at his sugar plantation in Louisiana. Charles
was barely past middle age and his death was unexpected. It took Mr.
Walker to Louisiana as administrator of the estate and compelled him to
spend much of his time there for several years. His friends were often
reminded that he was in the south by receiving from him southern fruits
or nuts. My own family cherishes grateful memories of such friendly
remembrances. Mr. Walker was a friendly man. He loved to express
his friendliness and to address his friends in endearing forms of expression,
not common among men. There were within him deep wells of feeling.
He loved his friends and they could not fail to give him a tender affection
in return.

One of the most graceful acts of Mr. Walker was his provision of a vil-
lage library for Morgan Park. In 1889-90, on a lot above the ridge in the
center of the village, he built a small but very attractive stone library
building and filled it with books. A library association was formed, a
librarian appointed, and the Walker Library has been a feature of the
community life for the past thirty years.

The story of the gift of the chemical laboratory to the University
of Chicago in 1892 by Sidney A. Kent has already been told in these
sketches. But in telling it no reference was made to Mr. Walker's part
in it. How much he had to do in leading Mr. Kent to make his great prof-
fer I do not know. The two were warm friends. They began their active

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER 117

careers in Chicago at about the same time and a business acquaintance
of nearly forty years had grown into intimacy and friendship. When Mr.
Kent was ready to make his proposition to build the laboratory he chose
Mr. Walker to communicate it to the trustees. The relations between
the two men were so intimate indeed that the proffer of the laboratory
was made in Mr. Kent's behalf over Mr. Walker's signature. Mr.
Walker submitted this letter to the Board of Trustees March 7, 1892.
Himself a Trustee, he had been from the beginning a member of the Com-
mittee on Buildings and Grounds, and had been deeply engaged in
enlarging and rendering more compact the University site, in securing the
plans for the earlier University structures, and considering the location
of the first and future buildings on the site then consisting of twenty-
four acres. All these things had been matters of importance. Con-
sidering the smallness of its funds, the temptation of the University was
to content itself with a small site and small and cheap buildings. There
can be no doubt that Mr. Walker often talked these matters over with
Mr. Kent. The Committee and the Trustees adopted the larger view,
and Mr. Kent indicated his approval of their decision by authorizing Mr.
Walker to communicate to them his offer to build the Kent Chemical
Laboratory, which eventually cost him $235,000.

The way was thus opened for that audacious attempt of the Univer-
sity which soon followed to raise a million dollars in ninety days. In
this effort Mr. Walker was profoundly interested. He first put into it
the Female College Building and two acres of land at Morgan Park as an
addition to the University's Academy plant in that place. The gift was
estimated at $30,000.

He had for many years cherished a purpose to erect a building for the
Academy of Sciences. This purpose had been in his mind when he
sought to bring the Academy into connection with the University. He
now began to feel his way toward carrying out this long-cherished plan in
connection with the University itself. He informally broached it to the
Trustees. They encouraged his purpose. Although it would require a
large contribution, his purpose rapidly matured and on July 7, 1892, he
wrote to the Trustees: "As heretofore informally suggested, I will fur-
nish the means to erect the Museum Building in accordance with plans to
be approved by your Board and myself, said building to be of fireproof
construction, and to cost one hundred thousand dollars."

This great proffer came in the closing week of the campaign for the
million dollars in ninety days. It closely followed a subscription of
$150,000 from S. B. Cobb, the father-in-law of William B. Walker, the

n8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

younger brother. Three days later President Harper wrote the following

letter:

Sunday, July 10, 1892
Mr. George C. Walker

DEAR SIR : Will you permit me to express to you just a little of the overwhelming
sense of gratitude which I feel toward you and the other noble (you will allow me to
use that word) men who have done the great work finished yesterday. Nothing like
it was ever known in the history of education. And when I think of the important
part which you have performed, no words seem strong enough to describe my feelings.

Your contribution to the Academy at Morgan Park, your generous gift for the
Museum, one of the most needed buildings, your help in securing Mr. Kent's gift
without which it would not have come, your aid, also, in connection with your brother
to whom we are indebted for Mr. Cobb's gift — all this, and besides your many encour-
aging words in the Board and out of the Board, have contributed, need I say how largely,
toward making this year's work of the University the great success it has become.

Personally and officially I am very, very grateful to you, and I think that my
sense of gratitude will grow deeper and deeper as the years go by, and as we begin

to see what it all means.

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM R. HARPER

Walker Museum was completed in 1893, and was dedicated in connec-
tion with the fourth University Convocation on October 2 of that year.
In presenting the building to the Trustees Mr. Walker made the following
quotation from the address of his father at the opening of the Illinois and
Michigan Canal in 1848, to which I have referred in the early part of this
sketch: "That portion of the earth's surface which can support the most
human life, will, in the end, have the most human life, and nowhere on
the earth's surface is there so much good land and so little waste land as
in the territory known as the Mississippi Valley of the Northwest." He
went on to say: " This made a deep impression on my young mind, and I
have lived to see our city grow from a little over fifteen thousand then to
over fifteen hundred thousand now, and today the evidences are stronger
than ever of the final and full realization of my father's confident predic-
tions." After speaking of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, and his pro-
found interest in it through many years he continued: "During all these
years I never could relinquish the idea that here in our city was the best
location west of the Alleghany Mountains for a great museum of natural
history," and he had come to believe " that it would be of the most value
in connection with some great institution of learning." He said there
was one reason why the University should have the building without
delay. The great Columbian Fair was going to be held here, and of
necessity there would be a large amount of scientific material which could

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER 119

be retained here if there was a suitable fireproof home provided and the
proper effort made to secure it. At the conclusion of the World's Fair
much valuable material for the Museum was received and the collections
have constantly grown.

With the donor's consent the museum building was, for many years,
used also as the recitation and lecture hall of the Departments of Geology,
Geography, and Anthropology, owing to the imperative demand for
rooms for classes. Mr. Walker fully appreciated this need, but he de-
sired earnestly to see the building devoted to museum purposes only. In
the best spirit he kept this before the Trustees. Collections were being
accumulated and stored in the basement. This chafed Mr. Walker's
ardent spirit and at the close of 1902, nine years after the completion of
the museum, he addressed his fellow-trustees on the subject in a formal
statement. He said, among other things:

The housing of no other department has crowded out the original intention of a
building. The use that has been made of the Museum Building has been a great
help to the growth of the University and I am very glad indeed that this has been
the case and realize most fully that in no other way could it have been so useful —
in fact I do not see how the University could have otherwise made provision for the
classes that have been located there up to this date.

I urgently suggest that suitable appropriations be made in the present budget
so that now the work can go forward as originally planned, and so that I can see more
of the good results in my own lifetime.

Four months later the Board of Trustees, though carrying at that
time overwhelming burdens, made the following response to Mr. Walker's
appeal, resolving, among other things,

That the Trustees will provide as soon as possible other quarters for the classes
now being held in Walker.

That the Committee on Buildings and Grounds be requested to form plans for the
extension of the Museum and the erection in connection with such extension of a build-
ing for Geology and Geography.

The Trustees at the same time expressed their warm appreciation of
Mr. Walker's generous consent for the use of the building for classes
through so many years and their earnest wish that arrangements could
soon be made to carry out the original plan.

For the years immediately following 1903, however, their hands were
tied. The health of President Harper was failing, and he died January
10, 1906. Another year passed before the election of President Judson.
Meantime Mr. Walker himself had most unexpectedly passed away in
1905. If he could have lived seven and a half years longer he would have
known of the splendid contribution of Mr. Julius Rosenwald which pro-

120 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

vided $250,000 for the erection of Rosen wald Hall, the great classroom
building for Geology and Geography. Built in immediate connection
with the Museum it exactly met the wishes and fulfilled the hopes Mr.
Walker had expressed in his appeal for a building "to accommodate per-
manently the departments of Geology, Geography, and kindred sciences,
so that they may continue to use portions of the building of the General
Museum for their own specimens and collections."

Mr. Walker's later years were not so strenuous as those of his early
and middle business life. He gradually contracted his activities, devot-
ing himself largely to conducting toward a conclusion the business of the
Land and Building Company whose affairs had occupied him for more
than thirty years.

His interest in and labors for the University, however, suffered no
diminution. In 1894 he gave $2,500 for new cases for the Museum col-
lections. Soon after he was requested by the President to ask Silas B.
Cobb in a special exigency for $15,000 and immediately reported that
Mr. Cobb would give the money. He frequently added to the Museum
collections and library. Mrs. Walker gave lots at Morgan Park valued at
$3,000. He was busy on the plans for the house of the President of the
University. He spent much time in securing the vacation of streets on
the observatory site at Lake Geneva, in building houses for the astrono-
mers, and in locating and erecting the Observatory. He particularly
concerned himself with the University's system of accounting, with its
investments, and with the management of its funds.

Mr. Walker's death occurred on April 12, 1905. He had spent the
preceding months in the south and at Atlantic City. Reaching home he
presented himself the same day at his office. He was in good spirits and
in apparently good health, telling Mr. J. F. Connery that they would
undertake no serious work that day, but that he would return the next
day ready for business. On reaching the office the next morning, Mr.
Connery was called to the telephone and told that Mr. Walker had
passed away. He had died suddenly, but quietly, of heart failure. I
have spoken on a previous page of Mr. Walker's early connection with
the church and of his exclusion for refusing to agree to give up dancing
parties. He regarded himself as having been treated foolishly and
unjustly, became alienated from the church and for many years may,
perhaps, be said to have led a worldly life. But during the last twenty
years of his life we find him again closely connected with the church of
his youth. He never ceased to feel that he had been hardly dealt with
and could not bring himself to ask for or accept restoration. He was the

GEORGE CLARKE WALKER 121

warm friend and generous helper of Dr. George C. Lorimer. He had a
pew in the Immanuel Baptist Church and was a regular attendant on the
morning service, though he lived nearly two miles away. When Dr.
Johnston Myers came to the pastorate, Mr. Walker told him that when-
ever he needed anything for the work of the church to come to him and
sometimes rebuked him for not coming oftener. For fifteen years the
pastor felt fortified and safe in his large work by the knowledge that Mr.
Walker was behind him. The sermons that interested and pleased him
were the most spiritual gospel messages the pastor could preach. On
hearing one of them he would seek the minister out and say, "That was
most helpful." His pastor tells me that it was his custom to read a chap-
ter of Scripture with his wife every night and pray before retiring. I
well recall a statement he made to me which was this: "I never lay my
head on my pillow at night without earnestly praying for God's blessing
on President Harper and the University." His last act was this of
prayer. On the last night of his life he read a chapter and prayed with
his wife, as his custom was, and retired to his own room to sleep. As he
did not appear in the morning, they went to his room and found him
apparently sleeping quietly with his hand under his head. An hour later
they found him in the same easy position. It was difficult to believe
that he was dead. Thus quietly, in the hours of sleep following his last
prayer, he passed away. This is the sequel to the story of his early pro-
fession of religion, and demonstrates how certainly wise treatment then
would have given Mr. Walker's whole life to the church and the Kingdom
of God.

On hearing of his death the Administrative Board of the Museum
of the University held a meeting and adopted a warm tribute of admira-
tion and affection, saying, among other things:

Mr. Walker became, in a special sense, the founder and patron saint of the Uni-
versity's museums.

We desire to record our admiration of the many other noble sympathies and gener-
ous endeavors that characterized the life of our patron. We rejoice that three score
years and ten were allotted to him for active participation in the world's higher work
and that these were crowned by so many enduring tokens of his broad interest in the
welfare of his fellow-beings.

While we profoundly mourn his loss, we are gratified that generous health and
unrestrained activity were granted him to the last, and that the end came as a peaceful
sleep.

It will ever be a source of grateful remembrance that we have been permitted to
be, in some sense, associates and participants in the noble endeavors of a noble life.

A special meeting of the Board of Trustees of the University was held
on the day following Mr. Walker's death, April 13, 1905. Perhaps this

122 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

sketch may appropriately close with the statement which I then
wrote and which was adopted and entered on the record and sent to
Mr. Walker's family.

The Trustees record with profound sorrow the death of Mr. George C. Walker, a
member of the Board for nearly fifteen years. From the very beginning of the effort
to establish the University in 1889, Mr. Walker manifested a warm and generous
interest in the undertaking. The very first $5,000 contribution was made by him.
He was one of the men with whom those charged with seeking subscriptions counselled,
and from whom they received helpful suggestions.

When the tune arrived for choosing a Board of Trustees for the University, his
name was one of the first agreed upon. His standing in the business community, his
liberal spirit and profound interest in the work of higher education all pointed him out
as one of the men to whom the care of the new University should be intrusted.

As a Trustee, his devotion to this great public enterprise has been sincere, gener-
ous, and ever increasing. He gave to it the library property and Walker Hall at
Morgan Park, and afterward the Walker Museum on the University Quadrangles,
and many minor contributions. The total of his gifts to the University exceeds
$150,000. But large as have been Mr. Walker's gifts of money and property, his
contributions of time, thought, attention, counsel, and effort have been of still greater
value.

He has given to the accounts and finances the long-continued and most useful
attention of an expert.

For several years he was chairman of the Committee on Buildings and Grounds.

In every effort to secure funds he has given the President most valuable advice
and active assistance, securing gifts from his friends by personal solicitation or adding
his own contributions.

He carried the University constantly in his heart. It would be difficult to over-
state his interest in its welfare. It was his own declaration that he never laid his
head on his pillow at night without earnestly invoking the blessing of God on the
University of Chicago.

In Mr. Walker's death the University has lost an invaluable friend and bene-
factor. The Board of Trustees has lost one of its most zealous, faithful, and useful
members. His memory will long be cherished by his fellow-trustees as a genial and
faithful fellow-worker, and by all the friends of the University as one who gave the
institution most liberal benefactions and most unselfish and useful service.

b'roin an engraving by Geo. E. Perine, New York

CHARLES JEROLD HULL

CHARLES JEROLD HULL

This is a strange story of an unusual sort of man. It will seem a
fiction of the writer's imagination, but it is, in fact, an authentic record
of the life of Charles J. Hull, for whom Hull-House is named. The
story is told because, as will appear, the name of Mr. Hull is written
large in the history of the University of Chicago.

He traced his ancestry back to Rev. Joseph Hull, graduate of
Oxford, rector in the Church of England, whose leanings toward dis-
sent brought him with "a considerable flock of his people" to the New
World in 1635. This body of immigrants, known as "Hull's Colony,"
received a grant of land on the south shore of Boston Bay. The town,
in memory of the old home from which they had come, soon exchanged
its Indian name of Wessaguscus for that of Weymouth. A century
and a quarter later descendants of Joseph Hull were people of substance
living on the large island of Conanicut in Narragansett Bay, and it
is said that a house still stands on this island, burned by the British
in the Revolutionary War, but later rebuilt, and known as the "Old
Hull Place." A small neighboring island known as Prudence was owned
by the Slocums, but this was so devastated by the English that the
family never returned to it. A son of the Hulls, Robert, and a daughter
of the Slocums, Sarah, married, and these were Charles J. Hull's grand-
parents. His father, Benjamin, married Sarah Morley, and Charles
was born March 18, 1820, "in a little, rough house once a cooper shop"
on the corner of his grandfather Morley's farm in Manchester, Con-
necticut, twelve miles east of Hartford. The mother died a few weeks
after his birth, and the father migrated to Ohio, which was then a
far west and pioneer country. The family, on both sides, seems to
have fallen on evil times. The grandfather, Robert Hull, with his
wife, had settled on a farm near Castile, Wyoming County, New York,
about fifty miles southeast of Buffalo. To them, it does not appear
just when or how, the young Charles was committed, perhaps by the
father on his migration westward. The son saw him but once there-
after, in 1839, and then had to seek him out in his Ohio home, where
he died in 1853.

The orphaned boy was welcomed into the home of his grandparents,
who lavished upon him the tenderest affection and the most devoted

123

124 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

care. This love and devotion he returned in full measure. The grand-
mother was evidently the forceful member of the family. They were
all curiously illiterate, but Mr. Hull always spoke of his grandmother
in terms of extraordinary appreciation, as beautiful, physically, men-
tally, and morally, a noble woman.

At seventy-five her movements were graceful, her voice clear and musical, her
hair glossy and soft, her eyes large, dark, and bright, and her skin as white, soft, and

beautiful as a child's She scarcely learned to read, yet she had strong sense,

was a faithful wife and good mother; she was strong-willed, courageous, and lion-
hearted, and yet she was always tender and motherly Her influence is always

with me and blessed be her name forever. I owe her for my very life.

The grandfather was an honest, kind, hard-working farmer, who, to
add to the insufficient income from the farm, made his house a country
tavern in which, as was the universal custom, whiskey was sold. The
boy was brought up on the farm and behind the bar.

When he was fifty-six years old Mr. Hull wrote an account of his
early experiences in school:

Fifty years ago this summer, I think, I was sent to school to learn the Alphabet .
I was a wild, rough, barefooted, bare-headed, restless, human animal. Being placed
on a slab bench, without back .... I soon forgot the dignity of the place and
whistled. The crime was charged upon me and a cloud of small witnesses stood

ready to testify I indignantly denied the accusation. But the proof was

conclusive .... and I was flogged. I went home, reported, and was told that
I need not go to school any more. I had a rest then for about three or four years,
when it was decided that I must be taught to write. A sheet of foolscap paper was
purchased, folded and pinned together so as to make four leaves, and I was sent to
school with instructions to write two pages a day. At the end of four days I returned
the paper for inspection and it was nearly a solid ink blot. The ruling member of
the family then decided that it was wholly useless to send me to school; that I never
could learn anything, and I was put into the tavern to tend bar. But fate seemed
determined that I should not be let off in that easy manner, and when I was about
fourteen another spasm to educate me took possession of my dear old grandmother,
and my grandfather's Bible, the only book I ever knew him to own, was put into
my hand, and I was sent back to the log schoolhouse to get an education.

As he had a Bible he was called up with the Testament class. The
boy was naturally ashamed to confess that he could not read and when
called upon was silent. The teacher, who was a "fiery Irishman,"
gave him two or three chances and, knowing nothing of his utter illit-
eracy, supposed him simply obstinate and defiant and, after threat-
ening to whip him within an inch of his life if he did not obey and read
his verse, gave him still another chance, going so far as to read the

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 125

verse and ask him to repeat it. He could not remember it even then
and received the worst kind of a licking. He went home and showed
his arms and back. He says, "That was the last day I was sent to
school. Two years later I pushed out on my own account in pursuit
of knowledge."

Meantime, however, he had developed a remarkable aptitude for
business. The bar of the tavern had been turned over to him two or
three years before this time, and he had conducted the business of
selling whiskey with so much success that when he reached the age of
fourteen the sign of the tavern was changed to his name. The farm
had unfortunately been mortgaged, "and it was only by the aid of
his tireless zeal that the old people were able to redeem it." He was
the business manager of farm and tavern. This continued for three
years, until he was seventeen.

Then came a change of which he wrote :

The old "Hull Tavern" in Castile, near Perry, was the resort of horse-traders,
horse-racers, drunkards, and gamblers on a small scale. In 1837, while it was con-
ducted without a license, in my name, a horse trade and a row occurred one night in
the bar-room. One of the parties feeling aggrieved, the next day had me arrested
for selling liquor without license. I paid his claim for damages, his attorney's fees,
court costs, etc., and was released. From that day until this (1875), I have been a
teetotaler, including tea and coffee.

All this so disgusted him that, despite the protests of his grandparents,
he tore down the sign which bore his name. Not only did he become a
teetotaler, but he entered on a life-long temperance crusade. Nearly
forty years later he wrote, "I immediately began to think and work
in a feeble way for the rescue of others. I do not remember a single
week since that time in which I have not done some work in that direc-
tion."

That was, however, not the only or the principal change wrought
in him in that momentous year. His mind seemed to have a new birth.
He was illiterate, and all at once his intellectual needs became revealed
to him and drove him into a passion of mental application. It was the
transforming crisis of his life and almost overnight changed the boy into
a man and awoke in him an unquenchable ambition for an education.
Having unusual natural endowments, he quickly taught himself reading,
writing, and spelling, and then applied himself to mathematics. The
arithmetic of that day he mastered in fourteen weeks, carrying a copy of
the multiplication table— while following the plow — in his hat, for
easy reference. He then entered the district school and applied him-
self with such diligence that at the end of three months he was engaged

126 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

to teach a nearby country school. The attainments of some of his
pupils were in advance of his own, and he worked early and late to
meet their needs. He engaged a private instructor to hear his recita-
tions in new studies and assist him in advanced work. During several
years of teaching, his private studies included algebra, surveying, Latin,
and law. His grandfather was now, in 1840, seventy-five years old,
and much of the heavy work of the farm fell on the twenty-year-old
grandson. He was accustomed to rise very early, do the chores, go
to the house of his tutor and recite to him, often before he was out of
bed, and hasten to the schoolhouse, where he made the fire and swept
out before the pupils arrived. " Having taught the lessons, mended
the quill pens, and kept order with an ingenuity and gentleness of dis-
cipline unusual in those days, he hurried home, took the horses which
his grandfather had hitched to the plow for him, and worked till dark."
Or, if plowing was not needed, other work kept him busy as long as he
could see. This was followed by study or by speaking in the country
debating societies, in which he was a conspicuous figure for ten miles
round.

In 1841, at the age of twenty-one, he began a contract as teacher
of the village school in Perry, "to teach the school summer and winter
for three years consecutively." Perry was ten or twelve miles from
his grandfather's home. He began with fourteen pupils and ended
the first term with sixty-five.

At the close of this period of teaching he entered the academy at
Lima in the adjoining county of Livingston, where he continued his
studies for a year and a half. His experience at Lima gave conclusive
evidence of the extraordinary progress he had made in the six years
since he first awoke to the value of an education. After a few months
he was teaching some studies in the academy while still being taught
in others. Part of his support while at the academy was earned by
doing odd jobs about the village.

In the summer of 1839, when nineteen years old, Mr. Hull had
made a curious journey. What moved him to make it is uncertain.
Did he wish to meet his father, whom he had not seen since his infancy ?
Did he desire simply to see something of the world beyond his home
county? Or was the lure of the New West beginning to exercise its
fascination over him? However strongly he was moved by any or
all of these things, the journey was undoubtedly the result of that
intellectual and spiritual awakening which had begun the year before
and was still the controlling force in his life. Providing himself with a

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 127

horse, doubtless from the farm, he rode south into Pennsylvania and
west through Ohio, where he saw his father, through Indiana and
Illinois, finally reaching Chicago. Although at that time Chicago was
only a village of about 4,000 people and had not yet recovered from
the disastrous panic of 1837, young Hull, with the unerring business
instinct he possessed, at once decided that it should be his future
home.

It was while he was in the academy at Lima that he met the young
woman who was to become his wife, Melicent A. C. Loomis, of whom
it was said: "She seems to have had all her life that nameless charm
which takes captive all hearts." Long after her death friends spoke
of her as "the loveliest of women." The young man himself was
a personable, gifted, and ambitious youth. They were mutually
attracted, became engaged, and were married in 1846.

Carrying out the purpose formed seven years before, Mr. Hull
took his wife to Chicago and there made his home for the rest of his
life. He was twenty-six years old. Though Chicago as a real town
was younger than he was, it had been incorporated as a city. Its
population, however, was only 14,000. It was still only an overgrown
village with few public improvements. No railroad from the east had
yet reached it. The western terminus of the Michigan Central was
sixty-six miles east, at New Buffalo, and the road was not extended to
Chicago until six years later. Fort Dearborn with its reservation still
occupied what is now the most valuable business part of the city. The
public schools employed only thirteen teachers. No real estate boom
had yet followed the disastrous panic of 1837. The city was in the
stage of arrested development, waiting for the coming of the railroads.

It will be sufficiently evident from the story as already told that
when Mr. Hull reached Chicago he was without means. It does not
appear how he raised the funds to marry a wife and transport her and
himself to their new home, nor by what route they came, whether by
boat from Buffalo or by rail to New Buffalo and thence by stage. One
cannot but admire the courage of a man who, without means, could
take his wife seven hundred miles to a new and strange city, where no
business opening awaited him, but where he must immediately find
employment in order to live. Quite illiterate up to eighteen, a farmer
boy and a bartender, with the slenderest preparation a country-school
teacher for a few years, a student in a village academy for a year and a
half, the prospects could hardly be called bright for him in a small
western city whose future was still uncertain. While he felt absolute

128 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

confidence in himself he does not appear to have had any definite
plan of procedure. At this period of his life he was an opportunist
and proposed to avail himself of whatever offered. He accepted the
first opening that presented itself and became clerk in a hardware
store while looking for something better.

Mr. Hull had an extraordinary aptitude for business. His employer
quickly discovered this and at the end of the first month proposed to
double his salary; but Mr. Hull's alert intelligence had already dis-
cerned a business opening, and he began merchandising in a small
way. It must have been a very small way at the outset, as he was
quite without means, and he must very soon have begun to take large
chances and have branched out in more than one direction. He con-
ducted a store for general merchandise on Lake Street, but he also
bought grain and shipped it east. In the course of three or four years
he had accumulated a small fortune, amounting, it is said, to $40,000,
and seemed to have every prospect of large success. In 1849, however,
disaster overtook him. Fire destroyed his store and his entire stock
of goods. He had a cargo of grain in Buffalo and, compelled to sell
by the Chicago disaster, a sudden fall in the price of wheat made the
wreck of his business complete. Turning his assets into cash and
collecting what was owing him, he paid his obligations and was ready
to begin again, though once more without means.

He then made a surprising but entirely characteristic change.

Children had come to him, three of them, two boys and a girl.
During these years he had given such time as he could find for it to
the study of law, and after his business reverses he opened an office
and began the practice of law, acquiring sufficient business for the sup-
port of his family. At the same time, feeling that a knowledge of
medicine would be useful to him in legal practice, and being moved
also by the fact that the members of his family were of delicate consti-
tutions, he attended lectures in Rush Medical College, went through
the course of study and in 1851 received the degree of M.D. from that
institution. It is evident that the five years that had passed since his
arrival in Chicago, devoted to business, to the study and practice of
law, and to compassing a complete course in medicine, had been a period
of extraordinary toil. And then came the surprising change. Having
paid his debts and got his medical degree, instead of going on with his
law practice he took his wife and three children, went to Cambridge,
and entered the Harvard Law School. There he remained two years,
working with his characteristic zeal and energy and enjoying the large

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 129

opportunities of self -improvement which that center of learning offered.
As he had saved almost nothing from the wreck of his Chicago business
the most rigid economy was necessary, and one wonders how he man-
aged to support his family of five during the two years the law course
required. He afterward referred to the Harvard experience as "a
scuffle with poverty." But Mr. Hull was an unusual man and with-
out doubt found methods of adding to his income of which other men
would not have thought. He graduated from the Law School in 1853
at the age of thirty-three. He then did another surprising and char-
acteristic thing. He proceeded to Washington and applied for admis-
sion to the bar of the United States Supreme Court and was admitted
on motion of the Hon. Reverdy Johnson. Returning to Chicago he
resumed the practice of law with such immediate success that within
a few months, by March, 1854, in addition to supporting his family
and paying a small debt incurred at Harvard, he had saved a thousand
dollars. This thousand dollars has a peculiar significance in the story
of his life from the fact that the use he made of it eventually diverted
him from the law to real estate and to the career of buying and improv-
ing and selling land. He had purchased a piece of land in the west
division of Chicago for $10,000 and, with his savings making the first
payment on it, he subdivided and sold it almost immediately. He
then bought a second tract, which within three days after its purchase
was also subdivided and on record and offered for sale. Real estate
was still a side issue, however, and the law was his real business, with
an evidently increasing practice. With all these irons in the fire he
must have been a busy man. He had an extraordinary faculty for
turning off business without seeming absorbed by it. During the period
in which all these things were occupying his time and attention, a lady
was visiting at his house and relates that "there was no talk of busi-
ness, but that she was entertained, taken to drive," and received
every attention.

Mr. Hull much enjoyed the practice of law, and, though he gave
it up as a calling, his real estate business sometimes gave him important
cases of his own, which he himself conducted. In 1872 he wrote:
"I have spent the entire week in court watching the R. R. Co. in its

efforts to appropriate by condemnation They have not reached

our Block 34 and if our cases are not disposed of soon I don't know but
I shall resume the practice of the law, for the old love returns and
breaks out all over me." From all the evidence that can be obtained
it seems clear that Mr. Hull had gifts that would have made him very

130 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

successful in the legal profession; but he had equal or greater gifts
for business, and he finally devoted himself to the latter.

The writer of these pages saw Mr. Hull only once or twice and does
not recall any acquaintance with him, but his remembrance of him
corresponds, in some degree, to the following description of him by one
who knew him well:

Mr. Hull was five feet eleven inches in height and seemed taller; of fine propor-
tions, erect and broad shouldered; of most elastic step and motion, with massive
head, very fair skin, perfect white teeth, brown hair, beaming, brown eyes, and a
mouth where tenderness and mirth softened the expression of unconquerable firm-
ness. Some years later than this he was — as he continued through all the changes
wrought by years — the grandest-looking man the writer has seen. There was, more-
over, a largeness of nature, a buoyancy, an unspoiled simplicity of heart, an air of
being invulnerable to petty annoyances or fears, and of indifference to low aims which
made his presence strongly tonic.

It is not impossible that this is the description of a friend prejudiced
in his favor, and that one who saw him once or twice without really
knowing him would receive a slightly different impression of him;
but he certainly was of a striking and imposing appearance. He would
have attracted attention in any company. There was about him an
air of distinction, and it is not too much to say of him that his abilities
were as pronounced as his appearance suggested they would be.

I have called Mr. Hull an unusual man. He was more than that.
He was uniquely unusual. He cannot be classified. He was sni generis.
There was no one like him.

The first Sunday after he arrived in Chicago in 1846, without means
and without employment, he found his way to the old log jail in the
courthouse square that he might meet, instruct, and encourage any
prisoners he might find there. The authorities refused him admission.
Not being the sort of man to be daunted by difficulties he spoke to the
imprisoned men through a hole in the door, gave them a message of
encouragement, and promised to return the following Sunday. How
soon the doors were opened to him does not appear, but his Sunday
visits continued. Then and ever afterward he took a deep interest
in criminals. He became known as their friend. While men were
confined he visited, taught, sympathized with, and encouraged them,
and when they were released, advised them, helped them, and found
employment for them. After the Bridewell was built he made his way
to it every Sunday morning for many years and gave systematic moral
and religious instruction to the inmates. These visits continued until
the destruction of the Bridewell by fire in 1871, soon after which his

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 131

business took him to Baltimore for some years and later to other places,
where the same work was done by him for many years thereafter.
Dr. Collyer, the well-known pastor of the Unitarian Church on the
North Side, Chicago, wrote of Mr. Hull:

I've got a collegiate pastor, if that is the right name. He preaches for nothing
and "finds" himself; also, to some extent finds his congregation, and altogether,
for a poor church in want of cheap but most capital preaching, is as desirable a man
as can be found. He called and settled himself and this is the way he did it. Two
or three years ago I began to notice him in church. He always came late, always
appeared as if he had been running, got in generally as sermon time came, and so —
as I knew no facts to account for this peculiarity — I naturally got up a theory — that
he was one of your modern philosophers, who had got beyond such trifles as prayer
and singing — not to mention the Bible lesson — intended to get in just when what
the Scotch sexton called the " preleemoneeries " were over, but being in addition to
his other excellencies a superb sleeper, especially of a Sunday morning, rather overdid
it every time, and so had to run for it. It is no matter how I found out my mistake
and that I had a colleague. What I have to repeat is a sketch of one of his sermons.
In laying out work for the Liberal Christian League, started in Unity Church a short
while ago, one committee was to see after the cause and cure of intemperance, and
my friend was put on it. When they met it was found this man's little finger was
thicker than all their loins upon that question. It was determined therefore to ask
him to speak to the church. He spoke on Sunday night and the first sentence in his
address cleared up the mystery of his being late at meeting. He said : "I came to this
city twenty-one years ago. The day after I arrived I went to visit the public schools
and the prison. On the Sunday I went to the Bridewell and spoke to the inmates
— a custom I've kept up steadily down to eleven o'clock this morning." For the last
eight years he has been absent from his post only a dozen times. Every Sunday
morning he goes to the Bridewell bright and early, has his meeting, gets through
about eleven, and then has to run to reach church in time for the sermon.

For a time about twenty teachers labored with him in the Bridewell,
but gradually all dropped off till John V. Farwell and Mr. Hull alone
were left to divide the work between them.

Mr. Hull did not preach to the prisoners. He spoke to them on
such subjects as,

"Fate and Luck," on "Self-Reliance," on "Compensation," on "Law," on
"Poverty," on "Secrets," as wisely and well as if judges and savants sat before him,
not as if they were branded men. If he referred to their past it was to say, for instance,
"My mission among you is not to pry into your antecedents, not to talk of what has
taken place heretofore. For, we are dead as to yesterday and not born as to tomor-
row. I am here to talk to you of today. We must take advantage of today to
learn lessons which will benefit us when tomorrow comes." He implored them to
"be men all over — head, heart, will, and conscience."

In the Baltimore prison, where for years he continued the same sort
of work, he said to audiences: "Not a man in Maryland is poorer than

132 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

I was twenty years ago. I had not so much as would buy a cracker
for my wife and child. Will you change your condition when you
emerge from here?" He told them to come and see him on their
release, and he would do what he could for them. They were fed,
lodged, helped. Mr. Hull became known as "The Prisoners' Friend."
He was sometimes imposed upon, once robbed by men he had befriended
in prison, yet many times he had the joy of knowing he had encouraged
and helped men to a new start and a better and happier life.

He began this self-denying and heroic service and continued it
through the years when fortune smiled upon him and he was a man
of large wealth, because he felt that it was a work to which God had
called him.

His interest was not confined to inmates of prisons. He was just
as deeply and sincerely interested hi the victims of intemperance. He
was sometimes called the "Father" of the Washingtonian Home.
This refuge for the intemperate was founded in Chicago in 1863. Its
aim was to reclaim and save. Mr. Hull is said to have been the first
contributor to its funds. When it was organized, with some of the
leading men of the city among its trustees, he was made chairman
of the Board. Lots were purchased and a building erected on Madison
Street looking north on Union Park. At the end of five years, in 1868,
Mr. Hull wrote:

When I stated at the opening of the last anniversary exercises at the Washing-
tonian Home that at the Anniversary of this year the association should be free from
debt, I was told by several directors that the promise was too great, that it would
be impossible to pay the debts in one year I have been censured for redu-
cing the number of inmates and for enforcing such rigid and ceaseless economy, but
I now offer in defense of my program $20,000 worth of unencumbered real estate,
$4,000 worth of furniture, and a state endowment, which, together with the regular
income of the institution .... will maintain an average of seventy-five patients.
I have labored fully five years to get the home into this condition. It has done good
work and will be a great blessing in the future. May I not at the end of this year
cease to be its father and turn my attention to some other enterprise ? I desire to
do something for the colored people .... of the South.

Prisoners, drunkards, emancipated slaves — these three classes seem to
have offered a rather large field for the philanthropic labors of a man of
business ; but they were far from exhausting the sympathies of this quite
extraordinary man. I find him nowhere so attractive as in the interest
he manifested in newsboys and bootblacks. He not only conducted
a very large real estate business but grew rich in doing it. The glimpses
we get of the circumstances under which he carried it on make us wonder

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 133

how he did it at all; for it was in his office that he gathered the boot-
blacks and newsboys and there became their friend, instructor, and
financial adviser and helper. "For many years the apple barrel,
crackerbox, and store of gingerbread stood open to the fraternity, as
well as to the ex-convict and other unfortunates, and they were emp-
tied fast, as the personal entries show. One item I have noted of $13,
on one day for gingerbread alone." Many a hungry newsboy who had
heard the rumor thrust his face inside the door and asked, "Be this
Hull's Hash House?" Mr. Hull brought in benches to accommodate
his visitors. In the evening, with the help of the ladies of his family,
he taught the boys arithmetic, singing, and the like. The list of these
pupils and wards showed so often the residence "nowheres" that he
was moved to help them to their first lodging-house. This was one
of the beginnings of the Chicago Newsboys' Home.

Their liability to "get broke" at times led to his establishment of
a loan fund. Not only in Chicago, but in Baltimore, where he spent
several years, his office was the headquarters of these waifs of the street.
Incidents like the following happened, without doubt hundreds of times:

Three newsboys are playing marbles under the table, and a little Italian match-
seller is drying her clothes at the heater. She has lost ten cents and dare not go
home. I will make her cash account right. How much children do suffer! Is there
no remedy? One of the boys under the table is extremely cross-eyed, ill shaped,
chews tobacco, cheats, lies, swears, and is generally devilish. I hardly know how to
manage the little fellow, but I believe I am gaining on him. He is sharp in busi-
ness and hardly ever gets broke. When he does fail I give him money enough to
buy a new stock. Today one of my smallest boys came in entirely "strapped."
I gave him four cents and induced "cross-eyes" to loan him one. He bought ten
penny papers, paid off the loan and has nine cents for the evening trade. My ill-
fated boy has no confidence in anybody, and he would not let the money go out of
his hand until I promised to repay it if Jack did not. Maybe I can reach him in this
way, induce him to make loans to the other boys until he has faith.

And this was a man involved in vast transactions, conducting a great
business in half a dozen cities, and accumulating a fortune! The
story of this man's life is well-nigh incredible, and I have not exhausted
the record of his philanthropic interest.

His heart went out toward the emancipated colored men. The
Civil War was hardly over before he began to make his plans to help
them. The scene of his most prolonged and ambitious effort was
Savannah, Georgia. Shanties not worth $50.00 were rented to negro
families for $10.00 a month. "No one would sell a lot to them." Mr.
Hull bought tracts of land in the outskirts of the city and began to

134 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

encourage colored men to buy and build and own their own homes. It
is said that he gained the respect and good-will of prominent business
men and citizens of the city and state. An assistant in his office writes:

He began with the very poorest and most ignorant. Scarcely a man to whom
he sold a lot this first winter (1869-70) had a dollar when he made his purchase. But
with the loan of courage and money from Mr. Hull many got up comfortable cot-
tages Mr. Robt. C. when Mr. Hull met him on the street and took

him to his office, had not a dollar; his old coat and pants hung in strips and were

skewered together with wooden pins Mr. Hull helped him with his own

hands to build the little house Shortly after R. C. was earning $60 per month,

his daughter was in school, his wife well dressed, and the house enlarged Mr.

Hull went one morning, a mile from the office, paint pot in hand, to R. C.'s house
and painted the front door and casing before R. C. was up. Paints, a brush, and lime
were offered to all who would paint or whitewash their houses and fences. They
were advised how to purchase and repair their shoes and clothes, and when he showed
them how to use the trowel, the hammer, and the paint brush his energy showed
them how to put three days' work into one. No payments were required till the
lumber and workmen's bills were paid, then weekly or monthly installments, often

less than the man's previous house rent, were expected Before spring he had

the pleasure of seeing about thirty families in their own homes. A long college
vacation enabled his daughter to spend the winter, as she did once again, zealously
helping him. At other tunes the cousin, Miss Helen Culver, did the same. Indeed
these ladies .... whether there or elsewhere, were his main dependence, working
in the same spirit with him. In 1871 two night schools were established, one at the
office with 365 names on the roll, five nights a week, taught three nights by Mr. Hull
and Miss Culver alone; the other two, with the assistance of Mr. Hull's local agent,
who the first three nights conducted another school in the suburbs. The schools
were free and all necessary implements were furnished.

This most philanthropic missionary work resulted in ''the first free
colored school ever established in the state." Mr. Hull in telling of

the meeting which established this school wrote: "Mr. Robt. C.

in his black broad-cloth suit, as Chairman of the meeting and President
of the Board of Education, has greatly changed in appearance since

you first saw him Miss Culver reports 91 houses on these

places." In January, 1872, he wrote:

Our schools are prosperous The office is closely seated with short benches

that we stow away during the day, but we are not able to accommodate all that come.
There are more than three hundred names on the roll and a clamor for new admissions.
The schools increase the labor of the enterprise very much, but it is all most cheer-
fully borne. Miss Culver and Mr. T. work at the business during the day and five
nights each week in the school. The school is one of the best thoughts in our work here.

He also worked five nights in the school each week. I call attention
again to this man of large wealth and this cultivated woman, Miss
Culver, toiling all day in the business of helping these poor and ignorant

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 135

black men to acquire a piece of ground and a home of their own and
then giving their evenings to teaching them and their children.

This work for colored people became a permanent part of Mr.
Hull's business in Savannah and other southern cities. As a result
of it many hundreds of families in Savannah alone owned their homes.
The time came when one of the city papers stated that a larger pro-
portion of blacks than of whites own their homes in Savannah, and a
larger proportion than anywhere else in the South.

Mr. Hull wrote in 1878: "I have always had faith in a division of
property. I have tried to bring a slice of the earth within the reach
of the poorest family. This I have done as far as possible." And
again in 1880 he wrote:

Can paupers be good citizens ? Can a landless people be patriotic ? Is it safe
for a nation to allow the masses of the people to remain non-landholders ? Is not
land the natural heritage of the tiller of the soil? If he cannot own a homestead,
will he not become a restless, troublesome citizen? .... Land is the natural
wealth of a nation and when it is not distributed discontent and revolution will
come.

It was these convictions that determined and directed the life-
business of Mr. Hull. In the choice of the business he would follow
and in the conduct of it he was moved by philanthropy and patriotism,
both alike sincere and enlightened. I find no other explanation of
his extraordinary career. He did not fall into that business by acci-
dent. He had a profession for which he had prepared himself at great
cost, and for success in which his prospects were unusually bright.
He loved it and deliberately left it, left it for a business to which he felt
called by convictions he did not wish to resist. That business was in
its nature the same which we have seen him conducting in Savannah.
The Savannah enterprise was only an illustration on a small scale of
the work to which he gave his life for thirty-five years.

That work was to encourage and assist poor men, laboring-men,
to become property owners, to secure homes of their own. For their
own sake and for the sake of their country he wanted to help them
to become landholders and householders. After living for a time in
a house on the corner of State and Adams streets, Chicago, and later
on the site of the old Chamber of Commerce, corner of Washington and
La Salle streets, in 1855-56 he built a handsome house on the block
at the corner of Polk and Halsted streets, the old Hull homestead,
which later became a part of that famous Chicago institution, Hull-
House.

136 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

In Twenty Years at Hull-House Miss Jane Addams writes :

Sunday afternoon in the early spring (1889) on the way to a Bohemian Mission
in the carriage of one of its founders, we passed a fine old house standing well back
from the street, surrounded on three sides by a broad piazza, which was supported
by wooden pillars of exceptionally fine Corinthian design and proportion. I was
so attracted by the house that I set forth to visit it the very next day.

This was the old Hull homestead which, by the death of his wife and
children, had ceased to be a home and had passed to business uses.
Miss Addams found that the lower part of it was being used for offices
and storerooms in connection with a factory back of it. "Before it
had been occupied by the factory it had sheltered a second-hand furni-
ture store, and at one time the Little Sisters of the Poor had used it
it for a home for the aged."

The tract of land on which Mr. Hull built his home, acquired in
1854, was one of the first purchases he made in beginning the great
enterprise of his life. It was followed in the course of years by many
others in various parts of the city. These subdivisions, about twenty
in all, he divided up into small lots and sold to poor men who wished
to build homes, or he built the houses and sold them the houses and
lots on easy terms. He conducted active campaigns among them to
persuade them to make the great venture of becoming owners of their
homes. He achieved immediate and large success and was encouraged
to extend his operations. In 1856 he was thirty-six years old. He
had little capital and slight business experience. Young, of a sanguine
disposition, urged on by high hopes of accomplishing a great mission,
and encouraged by large temporary success, he apparently went to the
limit of his credit in purchasing lands and making new subdivisions
in Chicago. In the midst of these very large operations he was over-
taken and overwhelmed by the disastrous panic of 1857. Mr. Colbert,
in Chicago and the Great Conflagration, says:

The effects on the real estate market were fearful, and the building business
suffered correspondingly. The depreciation of prices in corner lots was great in the
winter of 1857, but it was much greater in 1858 and 1859, as payments matured which
could not be met. A large proportion of the real estate in the city had been bought
on "canal time," one-quarter down and the balance in one, two, and three years.
The purchasers had depended on a continual advance in values to meet those pay-
ments and found that they could not even sell at a ruinous sacrifice. Great numbers
of workers left the city for want of employment, and those who remained were obliged
to go into narrowed quarters to reduce expenses. This caused a great many resi-
dences and stores to be vacated and brought about a reduction in rents on those still
occupied, which impoverished even those who were able to hold on to their property.

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 137

Many hundreds of lots and houses were abandoned by those who had made only
partial payments, and the holders of mortgages needed no snap-judgment to enable
them to take possession. A stop was at once put to the erection of buildings.
Several blocks were left unfinished for years and some were never finished by the
original owners.

This panic brought down on Mr. Hull an avalanche of debt. A
business associate of after years writes: "He held a large amount of
unencumbered property, but his outstanding notes for later purchases
amounted, I think he has said, to $1,500,000 — more than the whole
would bring at the current valuation." He was urged by his creditors
and lawyers to go into bankruptcy, but he abhorred repudiation of
debts in all its forms and refused to get rid of his obligations in any
other way than their payment in full. He struggled on under crush-
ing burdens, selling at almost any sacrifice, getting his notes extended,
and at the end of five years was able to write:

I have now my business matters in shape so that I can see my way clear through
them. Within the last twelve months I have paid nearly $400,000 of my indebt-
edness. I sold rather more than $1,000,000 worth of real estate in order to pay
that sum. I owe about $150,000 still, which I am endeavoring to pay.

This struggle lasted nearly or quite ten years before he freed himself
from debt and once more got fairly on his feet. He often said that
those ten years took the hair off his head.

They may well have done this, for in addition to these business
disasters they brought him the most grievous domestic afflictions.
The youngest of his three children, Louis Kossouth, born in 1852,
died in childhood. In 1860, in the darkest days of his struggle against
bankruptcy, he lost his wife. The oldest child was a son, Charles
Morley. He entered the first University of Chicago in 1862 and gradu-
ated in 1866, just as he was entering manhood. He was a fine, cap-
able, promising youth from whom his father hoped great things. In
the fall of 1866 Chicago was visited with an epidemic of cholera, and
the bright young life was ended in the course of a single day. A
daughter remained, Fredrika Bremer, amiable, devout, talented. She
was in full sympathy with her father's work and aided him in it; she
was a student, traveled abroad, was given every advantage, and was
most dear to her father's heart. She was his comfort and strength
during the dark decade from 1857 to 1867 and lived until 1874.

During the dark years of combined bereavement and commercial
disaster one great piece of good fortune came to Mr. Hull. His cousin
Miss Helen Culver became a member of his family and eventually
an associate in his business. Her childhood had been spent in Cat-

138 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

taraugus County, New York, only a few miles from the village where
Mr. Hull passed his early years.

After graduating from Randolph, New York, Academy she had
migrated to Sycamore, Illinois, where for a year she conducted a private
school. In 1854 she became principal of one of the primary schools
of Chicago and continued to teach, advancing to the grammar and high
school, until 1861. Forming a close friendship with Mrs. Hull she
was constrained by that lady, who saw her own death drawing near
in 1860, to promise to give up her teaching and assume the care of the
children so soon to be left without a mother. This promise she faith-
fully kept, abandoned a profession in which she was most successful,
and took charge of Mr. Hull's household. The call of patriotism took
her in 1863 to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where for some time she repre-
sented the United States Sanitary Commission in the military hospitals.
Her genius for business soon revealed itself to Mr. Hull, and she became
his business adviser and associate. Few men ever had a more com-
petent one, a fact which he lost no opportunity to recognize. In review-
ing the past in a letter to her dated December 20, 1874, he wrote:

Our work closes its minority today. It is twenty-one years since we bought
block six, corner Polk Street and Center Avenue. The old organization is still work-
ing on the same principle as at its birth It has done a large work, and is

capable of increase almost without limit. As far as I know, and to the best of my
knowledge and belief, this is the only effort ever made to benefit and permanently
elevate the poor generally, without contribution or taxation. It has behind it an
idea or principle, which, if put in general operation, would entirely abolish pauperism
and nearly uproot crime.

The intention of the enterprise is simply to distribute the unoccupied and now
waste lands among the poor, and aid in their improvement. Upon the carrying
out of this idea depends the general welfare of the whole people, and the stability of
our government. The popular religion of the times, aided by our charitable insti-
tutions and benevolent associations, cannot counterbalance the mischievous results
of concentrating the wealth of the country in a comparatively few families. If this
process of concentration goes on extensively the poor will join in riot (their revolu-
tion) and level down from the top, by destroying the property of the rich. Our
idea is to level up from the bottom, by giving the poor a fair chance to rise.

The great success of the undertaking is largely due to your energy, your steady,
persistent labor, and your never-failing faith. You have stood hard at the helm,
when I was almost tempted to go in out of the storm. Your keen womanly instinct
and long-range spiritual vision caught the glimmer of the lighthouse, in the mist
beyond my sight, at the end of the pier. Without your faith the work must have
failed. I bless you; God will and the poor ought to.

Their joint work was conducted in many parts of the country.
Miss Culver was with him in Savannah, where, as has been already

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 139

told, she toiled for the success of the enterprise literally day and night.
Shortly after 1871 Mr. Hull established the business in Baltimore,
where he spent much of his time for the next ten or twelve years, Miss
Culver managing the manifold operations in Chicago. The business
was extended to other parts of the country and was remarkably suc-
cessful. Many thousands of poor men secured homes of their own,
and Mr. Hull became more and more prosperous. The great object
he had in mind was accomplished. The home owners, having a stake
in the country, became more patriotic, desirable citizens. They added
appreciably to the strength and solidarity of the Republic.

Inevitably, however, this question suggests itself: How did it
happen that a business the objects of which were altruistic, philan-
thropic, patriotic, made its projector rich? There are two or three
answers to this question. It was conducted on business principles.
Mr. Hull did not believe that the way to help the poor was to give them
something for nothing, to dispense charity to them. He wrote in 1877:
"Gifts and loans demoralize and weaken the poor; they need tonics;
their salvation is in providing for themselves. Work and economy
are the needs of the poor." He believed that every man should pay
par value for every dollar he got. His aim in life was to help the poor
to help themselves. He expected them to pay full value for what
he sold them. He did everything he could to enable them to do this.
He encouraged them in industry and economy, gave them ample time
to make payments, took no snap judgments on them, but insisted,
for their sake as well as his own, that they should faithfully observe
their covenants with him.

This does not account, however, for his own ultimate success in
full. There was another element in the explanation. It was this.
He had an extraordinary perception of real estate values. He knew
when and where to buy and make an investment profitable. In 1868
he wrote from Nebraska:

I worked five days at Lincoln, "among the real estate," and one day for the
benefit of the Church and Sabbath-school. I purchased forty acres adjoining the city
on the south, ten acres extending within twelve hundred feet of the Capitol grounds
on the east, and twenty acres near the University square adjoining the city on the
north and eleven lots at the state sale.

The next year he visited Lincoln again and wrote:

I have been here at the state sale of lots and lands; the property has sold readily

and at good prices The prices are a large advance over those of the fall sale,

in some localities several hundred per cent more.

140 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Such things as this explain his prosperity. In 1882, writing from
Baltimore, he gave, without intending to do so, a luminous explanation
of his business success :

How differently men see Two neighbors on Sunday afternoon wander

into the suburbs of the city for an airing, and come upon an open block of ground.
The one says he would like to have it as a pasture for his horse. The other calculates
carefully its distance from the center of the city, and sees that the main avenue,
when extended, will run through this ground. On Monday he buys it. Soon he
gets the avenue extended, puts up a block of brown-stone fronts and makes a fortune,
while his neighbor is still hunting a pasture for his horse.

It was this sort of prevision that led Mr. Hull to make purchases in
Chicago of prairie lands through which such business streets as Halsted
later ran. It was this sort of prevision as to land values that, while
he was pursuing aims of noble altruism, led Mr. Hull to fortune.

The closing years of his life were shadowed by an insidious disease
that did not incapacitate him for business but gave him assurance
that he had not long to live. He busied himself in his affairs in various
parts of the country. "He disregarded physicians' warnings that he
must rest, met suffering, when it came, with heightened cheer and
attentiveness to others, and so forbore all notice of it that near friends
half doubted the marks of sickness which they saw." To one of these
friends he wrote in December, 1886:

For your sake I wish your commission to me to be healed could be executed.
But I think it cannot be done. I made up my mind some time ago that the thorn
in my side is permanent, that it cannot be removed, and the less said about it the
better. It ought to make me more patient and make me do better work.

He continued in the business harness, as he had desired to do, to the
last. A sudden and, to his friends, quite unexpected change in his
malady resulted in his death in Houston, Texas, February 12, 1889,
just before his sixty-ninth birthday.

Mr. Hull left an estate of some millions of dollars. It had been
accumulated during the period of Miss Culver's association with him
in business. She had shared, perhaps equally with him, in the success
that had been achieved. She had a perfect understanding of his pur-
poses and plans. She sympathized with his ideals. There was no one
else to whom he could bequeath the business with any hope of its con-
tin uing. He had unbounded confidence in her loyalty and ability.
He was perfectly assured that she would make such use of the estate
as he would approve, and he recognized the fact that she had had so
large a part in acquiring it that it belonged to her as much as to him.

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 141

It fell therefore quite naturally to her, and the business, after his death,
went on as before.

Mr. Hull regarded Chicago as his home, but his widely extended
business kept him in other cities most of the time during the last
twenty-two years of his life. The writer of this sketch is not able,
from any personal acquaintance, to speak of his characteristics. He
said of himself in 1868: "Want of education, unfavorable associations
in early life, a resolute struggle with poverty, and an unconquerable
will have brought me to this age with unpleasant characteristics."

Those who knew him best, however, said:

No notice of Mr. Hull would be complete which did not mention the radiant
breakfast- table face, the regal courtesy of home, where an unkind or indifferent word

or look was unknown His character was positive. His faults were virtues

carried to excess His characteristics were all strongly marked. He had

indomitable will, dauntless courage, absolute self-mastery, tireless persistence, pa-
tience, unqualified truthfulness and integrity, and the utmost openness and frankness
in all relations, together with constantly bubbling humor and tenderness. He neither
felt nor affected reserve regarding his emotions, laughing and weeping as readily as

a child He passed through a strenuous business career entirely free from

rancor Unusual as were his intellect and his energy — his benignity and all-
embracing benevolence were his most marked traits — not the less so that his views
and methods sometimes differed from those of other benevolent persons.

In line with the last clause of this quotation it may be said that
Mr. Hull was deeply and sincerely religious, but in his religion also
he differed from others. His whole life seems to show that he possessed
the spirit of Jesus which is the essence of true religion, but he was
far from holding the views he supposed the "orthodox" cherished.

One most interesting incident in Mr. Hull's life, not yet mentioned,
belongs just here. Toward its end he published a book which he called
Reflections from a Busy Life. I regret that it was not Reminiscences
of a Busy Life, but it was what the title indicates — reflections. The
reminiscences are valuable, but they are few and far between in the
320 pages of the book. The reflections seem to be excerpts from his
letters — letters written for the most part to members of his family.
They touch upon a thousand topics, are often very acute, and make
an interesting book. He was an abolitionist who acted for the most
part with the Republican party, being at one time mentioned for nomi-
nation as lieutenant governor of Illinois. He was a prohibitionist,
advocating as early as 1867 what our country now has, national prohi-
bition. He believed in woman suffrage when few others had thought
of it.

142 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

He had pronounced opinions on the best way to help the poor,
saying:

All charities, public and private, for the support of the poor, increase pauperism.
They are nurseries of poverty and crime. If they were all blotted out of existence
at once, our vast, idle, worthless population would soon become self supporting.
Men cannot be helped by donations. It cripples a man to make him a receiver of
favors. Make him work or starve.

Yet he invited his prison audiences to come to him when they were
discharged, and they were fed, lodged, helped. At the same time he
told them plainly: "If I give a strong, healthy man a dollar before
he has earned it I do an injury to his very soul. I have done this
hundreds of times, but I now know it was a wrong. I have no right to
take away a man's incentive to work and help himself." Mr. Hull
thoroughly tested both ways of helping the poor. His office was for
years the recognized feeding-place of the hungry, with constant whole-
sale provision for them. His cellar was filled with coal which the needy
were invited to take. The scale of his steady outlays, at one period
of his life, is illustrated by the payment of $95 at a time for hauling
coal for the poor. He came through long experience to feel strongly
that the only way really to help a man in need was to help him to help
himself.

Mr. Hull had very pronounced views on theology. He attended
Dr. Robert Colly er's Unitarian Church, was an admirer of Professor
David Swing, and sympathized strongly with Dr. H. W. Thomas in
his separation from the Methodist church. He had no use for what he
understood to be orthodox views. In the Reflections he gave frequent
expression to his views on questions of theology. In 1876 he wrote:

Teach men everywhere that the Universe is governed by law, and that the doc-
trine of substitution is a fable, and that there is no such thing as the forgiveness of
sins; that our highest good demands that wrong doers should suffer, and thereby
be made wiser and better; that we are now building day by day for the future, and
that neither angels nor God can lift us out of ourselves, that grace and growth are
elements of the soul, and never can be external.

In particular he combated the doctrines of substitution and the forgive-
ness of sins; and yet he writes: " Our Father in heaven is fast becoming
to me a substantial, unseen, unchanging, quiet reality, beyond whose
influence and parental care no child can wander. All are His, and
none can ultimately be lost." Again he writes on faith: "There is
promised to those who believe that their names shall be written in the
Book of Life; blessed believers. Those who believe nothing, have no
faith, hope for no future, must travel a dreary, dusty road."

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 143

In the later years of his life Mr. Hull became a trustee of the first
University of Chicago and a vice-president of the Board of Trustees.
It will be recalled that his son was a graduate of that institution. Mr.
Hull became so much interested in the University that he arranged for
a considerable bequest to it, and it was not until the institution had
closed its doors finally in 1886 that these benevolent provisions were
changed. Almost immediately after Mr. Hull's death Miss Culver
began to form benevolent plans for the use of the estate which she
knew would be approved by him. The first of these plans resulted in
the organization of that world-famous institution, Hull-House. Miss
Jane Addams began her settlement work in 1889, the year of Mr. Hull's
death. Miss Culver recognized the value and promise of that work
and in 1890 gave the settlement a lease of the house and the lots on
which it stood, rent free for thirty years. The settlement took the
name Hull-House, and a few years later Miss Culver gave the property
to the Hull-House Association and has added from time to time contri-
butions aggregating about $170,000. To all this she has added her
personal services as one of the trustees of the Association. Her gifts
to good causes have been widely distibuted, amounting since Mr. Hull's
death to more than $600,000 in addition to the great donation now
to be mentioned.

At a meeting of the trustees of the University of Chicago held
December 19, 1895, President Harper submitted a letter from Miss
Culver in which she said :

It has long been my purpose to set aside a portion of my estate to be used in
perpetuity for the benefit of humanity. The most serious hindrance to the immedi-
ate fulfillment of the purpose was the difficulty of selecting an agency to which I
could entrust the execution of my wishes. After careful consideration I concluded
that the strongest guaranties of permanent and efficient administration would be
assured if the property were entrusted to the University of Chicago. Having reached
this decision without consulting the University authorities, I communicated it to
President Harper, with the request that he would call on me to confer concerning
the details of my plan. After further consideration, I now wish to present to the

University of Chicago property valued at $1,000,000 The whole gift shall

be devoted to the increase and spread of knowledge within the field of the biological

sciences Among the motives prompting this gift is the desire to carry out

the ideas and to honor the memory of Mr. Charles J. Hull, who was for a consider-
able time a member of the Board of Trustees of the Old University of Chicago. I
think it appropriate, therefore, to add the condition, that, wherever it is suitable,
the name of Mr. Hull shall be used in designation of the buildings erected and of the
endowments set apart in. accordance with the terms of this gift.

The property deeded to the University by Miss Culver consisted
of a large number of pieces of real estate, some of it vacant, but most

144 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

of it improved with dwellings, or with buildings used for business pur-
poses. These properties, as they were sold, did not always realize the
prices anticipated and the generous donor from time to time added
considerable sums to her original donation, these sums aggregating
$253,700. From July i, 1897, to June 30, 1913, the net income of
the Fund was added to the principal. This addition amounted to
$294,201 .34.

Four biological laboratories were erected: Botany, Zoology, Anat-
omy, and Physiology, forming an attractive quadrangle, the four
buildings being connected by cloisters. These four laboratories are
thus in effect under a single roof. Their cost, including equipment,
was $340,000, and was borne by the Helen Culver Fund. At the time
this is written, the Fund, including the cost of the buildings, amounts
to above $1,100,000, about $800,000 being endowment. The labora-
tories are called the Hull Biological Laboratories.

The University has not restricted its work in biology to the resources
provided by the Helen Culver Fund. When, on account of the growth
of the institution, the four laboratories of the Biological Group became
inadequate to meet the demand for space, the Howard Taylor Ricketts
Laboratory was built and equipped from other resources, at a cost of
$60,000, for the use of the Departments of Pathology and of Hygiene
and Bacteriology. While the income from the Fund amounts to
about $35,000, the University expends above $150,000 annually in
conducting the work of the biological departments. About a thousand
different students are enrolled each year. More than three hundred
of these are pursuing graduate courses.

A member of the staff writes :

Besides providing a place where many thousand students have taken under-
graduate courses in biology and thus prepared themselves for the study of medicine
and other useful work, these laboratories have provided opportunity for the training
of investigators who are devoting their lives to the advancement of science. Two
hundred and forty-two students have here done work which has led to the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy [March, 1919]. Each one of these has accomplished some
piece of original investigation.

Very many investigators [more than a hundred are named] have found in the
group of buildings around Hull Court the means of conducting extended researches
which have constituted definite advances in our knowledge of biological, including
medical, science.

Among these is Dr. Alexis Carrel, who began here the series of researches
on surgery of the blood vessels and transplantation of organs which
later resulted in the award to him of the Nobel prize, and who in the

CHARLES JEROLD HULL 145

Great War made discoveries in the treatment of wounds which are
recognized as of the highest importance.

The Hull Biological Laboratories were dedicated on July 2, 1897.
In presenting them to the University, Miss Culver, after referring to
the desire of some strenuous natures that, as a result of their lives,
power might "be transmitted to succeeding generations and an immor-
tality of beneficent influence be secured," went on to say:

It was in obedience to such a driving power that provision for these buildings
was made. Since it has fallen to me to conclude the work of another, you will not
think it intrusive if I refer to the character and aim of the real donor. During a
lifetime of close association with Mr. Hull I have known him as a man of tenacious
purpose, of inextinguishable enthusiasm, and above all things dominated by a desire
to help his kind. Much of his time for fifty years was spent in close contact with
those most needing inspiration and help. He had also profound convictions regarding
the best basis for social development in our country, and these directed the energies
of his life. Looking toward the close of activity, it was for many years his unchang-
ing desire that a part of his estate should be administered directly for the public
benefit. Many plans were discussed between us. And when he was called away,
before he could see the work begun, I am glad to know that he did not doubt that
some part of his purpose would be carried out. He would have shared our joy in
this great University, could he have foreseen its early creation. And it would have
been a greater pleasure could he have known the wide diffusion of its benefits sought
by its management

I have believed that I should not do better than to name, as his heirs and repre-
sentatives, those lovers of light, who, in all generations and from all ranks, give their
years to search for truth, and especially those forms of inquiry which explore the
Creator's will, as expressed in the laws of life and the means of rendering lives more
sound and wholesome.

This sketch began with a boy orphaned, poor, illiterate, his
youth passed under the most unpromising conditions. It has been an
extraordinary story of intellectual and spiritual development and
philanthropic service, ending in large material prosperity. It has
been the high privilege and noble service of Helen Culver to discover
and with splendid munificence to employ the means through which
from Charles J. Hull's life "power may be transmitted to succeeding
generations and an immortality of beneficent influence be secured."

SILAS BOWMAN COBB

SILAS BOWMAN COBB

Silas B. Cobb was one of the picturesque figures of Chicago for
nearly seventy years. He arrived in what was so insignificant a hamlet
as to be hardly worthy to be called a settlement, among the earliest
comers and lived to see it grow into the inland metropolis of the nation,
with a population of nearly two millions. He came without education
in either books or business, without a penny in his pocket, and without
any apparent prospects, and within a few years became a leading
capitalist and, ultimately, one of the wealthiest men in the city. Even
down to old age he was noticeable for the briskness of his walk, and it
was a point with him, well understood among his acquaintances, to
allow no one to pass him on the street.

Mr. Cobb was born in Montpelier, the capital of Vermont, January
23, 1812, when that now thriving little city was a small village of little
more than a thousand people. It was a wonderful boy's country, and
no doubt this alert, vigorous, enterprising boy got his share of youthful
enjoyment out of it; but it must have been done by main strength, for
his was not a pampered youth. The father, Silas Cobb, was apparently
a not altogether unprosperous business man. In the records of Mont-
pelier it is said that in 1806, six years before the birth of Silas B., the
father established "an extensive tannery." About 1820 Goss and
Cobb built a paper-mill which they "carried on a long time." It was
burned in 1828 with a loss of $4,000, but was rebuilt by the two partners
and later sold. These activities would seem to place the elder Cobb
among the leading business men of the village, but they did not result
in privileges for his children. There was a large family of these, and
Silas B. was the youngest. The family was augmented still further
when the father married a second wife with children of her own. It
may well be that all these children kept the family poor. What is
certain is that young Silas had next to no educational advantages and
early in life was bound out as an apprentice to a shoemaker. He
seems to have wished to learn a trade, but not that of making boots
and shoes. He was of too active a temperament to sit on a shoe-
maker's bench all day, and soon managed to break away from this
sedentary occupation and returned home. He was not welcomed there
and his father again apprenticed him, against his will, to a mason. He

147

148 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

probably concluded that there was slight prospect of success for a mason
in the Vermont of that day and, in some way, released himself from his
apprenticeship and again returned home. It is to be inferred that his
father now washed his hands of his youngest son and gave him to under-
stand that he was at liberty to carve out his fortunes in his own way.
Thus encouraged to choose his career, he apprenticed himself to a
harness-maker and entered with interest on the learning of that trade.
He was now seventeen years old and worked faithfully and with daily
increasing facility in an employment which he liked. At the end of a
year, however, his master sold out his business, and with it the services
of his apprentice. The purchaser claimed the apprentice as a part of
the transaction. It was then that young Cobb showed the independence
and acumen that go far to explain his later success. He was a mere
boy, but he said at once to the new owner: "In this case the nigger
don't go with the plantation," and insisted that if he continued with
him it must be for the payment of satisfactory wages. It is evident
that he had so far mastered the trade that his services were valuable,
for he carried his point and continued in the same shop as a paid appren-
tice. Filling out the period of his apprenticeship and becoming master
of his trade and of himself, he continued to work as a journeyman
harness-maker in Montpelier, South Hardwick, and other places.
Wages must have been very small. Mr. Cobb was not a money spender,
yet when he reached the age of twenty-one his accumulations reached
the sum of only sixty dollars.

His father and Oliver Goss had sold their paper-mill and Mr. Goss
had been west and invested in lands, and, returning to Montpelier, had
awakened such an interest in that new world just opening to settlement
that a company of adventurers was preparing to accompany him in a
migration to the prairies of Illinois. It was, perhaps, in this very year,
1833, that the movement from the middle and eastern states to the
new West began to assume real magnitude. What caused this move-
ment is an interesting question. Perhaps the greatest cause of all was
the powerful appeal of the boundless, fertile fields of a new world to
the imagination of the adventurous. It was their country, unoccupied,
inviting settlement, and with unknown possibilities of material success.
Indiana and Illinois had recently been admitted to the Union. The
northern sections were without white inhabitants and invited pioneer
settlers. The Black Hawk War had, in 1832, opened the northern half
of Illinois to safe and unrestricted settlement. Vague rumors about a

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 149

hamlet called Chicago, which had a promise of possible future develop-
ment, appealed with increasing power to adventurous young men.

When, therefore, his father's old partner returned from his exploring
expedition in Illinois with glowing accounts of the country and of the
new settlement near the foot of Lake Michigan and began to gather a
company to make their homes on the lands he had selected forty miles
southwest of Chicago, young Cobb caught fire and determined to make
his way to this new world. But it was not the fertile prairies that
attracted him. He was not a farmer, but a harness-maker, and his
eye was fixed on the village by the lake, where he believed there might
be a promising opening for a man of his calling. He learned that Chicago
was on the main line of travel by which immigrants entered the new
state, that it was the place where they refitted for their farther progress,
and was already a center of trade for the surrounding country. It
ought to be a good place for a man who was master of an industry so
essential to such a town and country as harness-making. To Chicago,
therefore, he determined to go. His father strongly opposed his purpose;
but he was now of age, his own master, making his own way, and he
would not be dissuaded from carrying out his new plan. His father
refused to assist him, and sixty dollars was the total amount of his
savings. There was no time to earn more, as Mr. Goss and his company
were ready to start. With the recklessness of youth he decided to
enter on this "hazard of new fortunes" and undertake to make his way
through the thousand miles of travel and all the difficulties of starting
life in a strange place with this pitifully inadequate capital.

The company must have started early in April. They made their
way first to Albany. Apparently they were traveling by wagon, being
farmers who would need horses and wagons in their new home. At
Albany young Cobb left them and went by boat on the Erie Canal to
Buffalo. On the way some thief stole part of his money, and when he
applied for passage to Chicago on a lake boat he had only seven dollars
in his pocket. He made known his circumstances to the captain of
the schooner "Atlanta," who finally agreed to take him to Chicago as a
deck passenger if he would board himself and, after purchasing necessary
food, turn over for his passage all the money he had left. Thereupon
he bought a small ham, six loaves of bread, and secured a bedtick
which he filled with shavings and, thus provided for the voyage, turned
over every penny he had left, being four dollars, to the captain. It is
probable that he also engaged to make himself useful about the ship

150 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

when the captain needed such help as he could give. The voyage
ought to have taken about three weeks; but stormy weather came on
and the ship was delayed. The voyage was prolonged to five weeks.
How young Cobb survived the cold and storms in his bed on deck
during the last week in April and the whole of May, it is hard to under-
stand. He could hardly have been rigidly restricted to the open upper
deck. It is quite impossible to understand how one small ham and
six loaves of bread, intended to last three weeks, could have kept a
young fellow of twenty-one, with a healthy appetite, alive for thirty-
five days. Perhaps the explanation may be found in the fact that the
ship encountered such a succession of storms that the Green Mountain
landsman did not crave food. Or, there may have been more than one
— we know there was one — good Samaritan on the "Atlanta."

The ship reached Chicago on the twenty-ninth of May. There was no
harbor, and a sand bar across its mouth prevented ships from entering
the Chicago River. The " Atlanta" therefore came to anchor, perhaps
half a mile offshore, and the passengers and their baggage were taken
ashore in canoes and lighters. One can imagine the dismay of young
Cobb when told by the captain that he would not be allowed to land
till he had paid three dollars more for his passage. He had already
given the captain his last cent, and one cannot help but wonder why
he was detained. He probably could have reached shore at night by
swimming. But he had in his baggage a valuable kit of tools which
now formed his entire capital, the only means by which he could make
his way in this wilderness country. This precious possession he could
not leave. He had doubtless told the captain that he had the tools
of his trade with him. They could readily be exchanged for money.
Perhaps the captain coveted them and offered to set the boy ashore if
he would leave his tools. But this he could not do. He was held a
prisoner for three days, with the promised land in sight and no way to
reach it in possession of his few but invaluable goods.

As he looked toward the shore during those long days, what did he
see? Just two years later the Gale family, from their ship anchored
in about the same place, saw this: "Within sight of those on the vessel
were countless numbers of Indian wigwams and their dusky occupants,
while dark-skinned braves were paddling hi the lake. Along the shore
was to be seen a succession of low sand hills, partly covered with a

scrubby growth of cedars, junipers, and pines About opposite

where the brig lay, not far from the north bank of the river," was the old
Kinzie house, a small one-story building. "Near the south bank of

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 151

the river, but a few hundred feet from the lake, stood Fort Dearborn,
consisting of some half-dozen barracks, officers' quarters, and other
buildings, with a blockhouse in the southwest angle, all constructed of
wood and surrounded by high, pointed pickets placed closely together,
which, with the buildings, were well whitewashed. Adjoining the fort,
near its northwest corner, was a small, circular, stone lighthouse. Around
these clustered a few cabins." Such was the far from inviting or promis-
ing view of Chicago which the prisoner saw from the deck of his prison
ship. On the third day his good Samaritan appeared. A fellow-
passenger seems to have revisited the ship for some purpose, and, see-
ing him still on board and finding out what the trouble was, loaned the
necessary three dollars and saw him and his baggage safely ashore.
The bed of shavings was taken along. Nothing could more convincingly
prove the poverty of the owner, his economy, his habit of saving, and
his purpose to get on, than the fact that this continued to be his bed,
with occasional replenishings, no doubt, for the next two years.

Mr. Cobb landed in Chicago on the first day of June, 1833. Judge
John Dean Caton, who was of the same age as Mr. Cobb and who
arrived in Chicago only a few weeks later, about the end of June, the
town having, however, grown considerably meantime, says of the
village when he first saw it: "There were then not two hundred people
here. I was an old resident of six weeks' standing before two hundred
and fifty inhabitants could be counted to authorize a village incorpora-
tion under the general laws of the state Chicago had no streets

except on paper; the wild grass grew and the wild flowers bloomed
where the courthouse square was located; the pine woods bordered
the lake north of the river, and the east sides of both branches of the
river were clothed with dense shrubbery forests to within a few hundred
feet of their junction. Then the wolves stole from these covers by
night and prowled through the hamlet, hunting for garbage around
the back doors of our cabins."

A few weeks after Mr. Cobb's arrival in Chicago a Mr. J. P. Hathe-
way made a survey and took a census of the hamlet, and reported that
there were 43 houses and less than 100 men, women, and children in
them. John S. Wright also took a census in 1833 and his statement
agrees with that of Mr. Hatheway. During the months of June, July,
and August, 1833, there was an unprecedented increase in the number
of buildings and of inhabitants in anticipation of the great treaty council
with the Indians arranged for September of that year. It is estimated
that, at the date of young Cobb's arrival off the bar, May 29, there

152 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

were not 50 permanent white inhabitants in the place. There were a
few soldiers, a very few, in Fort Dearborn, and many Indians and half-
breeds living in their temporary camps. Charles Fenno Hoffman was
in the village during the early autumn, and he wrote to his paper, the
New York American, "Four -fifths of the population of this place have
come in since last spring: the erection of new buildings during the
summer has been in the same proportion"; so that the coming of
Mr. Cobb marked the beginning of the evolution from a mere frontier
settlement into a growing town. He found a few log houses, three or four
of which were used as stores, and in two or three of which travelers could
find entertainment. There were no sidewalks. On the north side of
the river was the log house of the Kinzies, the pioneer settlers, with the
huts of two half-breeds and others near by. On the west side, at the
forks of the river, where some insisted the town ought to be built,
were a few log structures. East of State Street was the government
reservation, at the north end of which, near the river, stood Fort
Dearborn. The few stores were on or near South Water Street.
Madison Street was out on the prairie, and no one then lived so far
from the town, which, what there was of it, clung to the river. There
was not a frame building in the place, though some of the log houses
had been covered with split clapboards.

The first frame house built in Chicago seems to have been the Green
Tree Tavern, and James Kinzie was just starting it when young Cobb,
without a cent in his pocket, landed in the village. This was also the
first hotel originally intended and planned for a hotel, and, strange to
say, it was built on Lake Street a block west of the south branch of the
river. It presented an opportunity for immediate employment, and
the impecunious stranger, crossing Mark Beaubien's floating bridge at
Lake Street, applied for work. He was hired to boss the job and in
this way began at once to earn enough to discharge his small debt to
the good Samaritan who released him from imprisonment on the ship,
to pay his board, and to accumulate a small fund for the next step in
his career. So many myths have grown up around this first job of Mr.
Cobb's that it is now quite impossible to tell the story as it occurred.
All accounts agree that he knew nothing of carpentering, but in his
dire need of a job said nothing of this to Mr. Kinzie. All agree that
Mr. Kinzie made no complaint when he. paid him off. But whether he
earned $1.75 a day or $2.75 and board, and whether Mr. Kinzie paid
him $40 or $60, whether the building was finished under his super-
intendence or whether a real carpenter came along and superseded him

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 153

by convincing the owner that Cobb was no carpenter and offer ing to
take his place for fifty cents a day less, these things are uncertain.
I have a suspicion that, like every other Vermont boy, part of whose
life had been spent on a farm, he was able to wield a hammer, saw, and
plane with some skill, though he was not a carpenter; and all his sub-
sequent life proved that he knew how to "boss" a job. But his first
venture proved his resourcefulness, temporarily set him on his feet,
and gave him a little time to study his surroundings.

His second venture illustrated his unusual talent in discovering
chances for profitable business and his courage in improving them.
It must be remembered that he was a boy, just turned twenty-one, that
his early advantages had been few, and that he was a working man who
had never been in business for himself. He had no means for setting
up a harness-shop, but was intent on finding ways and means to begin
that business which he saw would be profitable. Immigrants were now
beginning to pass through Chicago in increasing numbers. Mr. Cobb
found that they came stocked up with articles they had been assured
they could sell to the Indians at a large profit. By the time they
reached Chicago, however, they needed money, were anxious to dispose
of these stores, but could not afford the time to go out and look for
Indian customers. This was one fact hi the situation. The other fact
was that a great council with the Indians had been arranged for Sep-
tember of that year, 1833, at which the government proposed to pur-
chase their lands and arrange for their transfer beyond the Missouri.
A large gathering of Indians was in prospect. In these two facts the
young man saw his opportunity.

As the wagons of the immigrants came in, he met them and, offering
cash they greatly needed for what he had learned Indians would buy,
found willing sellers. The Indians were already present in considerable
numbers, and others came in a rapidly increasing multitude. They
gathered from every point of the compass — Chippewas, Ottaways, and
Pottawatamies — till thousands were assembled in and about the hamlet.
Some estimated their numbers as high as seven or eight thousand. And
they had money from the annual government payments. They were
further enriched by a generous distribution of the new annuities arranged
in the treaty. Young Cobb, with the remarkable versatility he pos-
sessed, turned auctioneer, and, instead of peddling his stores about,
auctioned them off to eager crowds of natives and half-breeds. The
Indians remained for a month or six weeks, and the young trader
reaped a golden harvest. This successful venture illustrates the genius

154 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

for business with which nature endowed him. What his profits were is
not known, but they were such that he decided to build his own shop
and begin business as a harness-maker. Seeing that the day of log
stores was over in the now growing town (there were 153 frame build-
ings erected in 1833), he would have a frame store of his own.

Meantime important changes had taken place in the little settlement.
In August, 1833, the citizens decided by a vote of eleven to one to
incorporate the "village" of Chicago. On August 15 an election for
officers of the new village was held and twenty-eight votes were cast.
It was in this election that the twenty-one-year-old young man, if
Mr. Gale is right, cast his first vote. Thirteen of the twenty-eight
voters were candidates for office.

The nearest sawmill was at Plainfield, about forty miles southwest
of Chicago, and there Mr. Cobb went and bought the lumber for his
store. This was in the autumn of 1833. He hired a wagon and three
yoke of oxen in Plainfield and, driving himself, started with his lumber
for Chicago. When night came on, he slept in the wagon under a shelter
of boards. Before morning heavy rain began to pour down. It con-
tinued after he started on his way. The road became deep with mud.
He threw off part of his load and went on. The rain continued. He
threw off more lumber and struggled on. The rain settled down into
a three days' storm. The prairie became a morass. When on the
fourth day he reached the Des Plaines, it was an impassable torrent.
Here, twelve miles from Chicago, he threw off the rest of his load,
turned the oxen toward home, and left them to find their way back —
which they did. Later he recovered his scattered lumber and built a
two-story house and store on West Lake Street, opposite the Green
Tree Tavern, where he had learned enough carpentering to enable him
now to oversee his own construction work, if not to do most of it him-
self. Renting the upper floor, he prepared to open his harness-shop.

To begin in a small way did not require much capital, but his build-
ing had cost so much that he did not have the little that was required.
He had made a rule, to which he adhered through life, not to borrow
money nor go in debt. It is believed that he broke this rule only two
or three times in the course of his long life. Its observance helped to
make him the rich man he came to be, but it was sometimes incon-
venient and costly. It was costly at this juncture. At Plainfield he
had again met Oliver Goss, his father's old partner, the man with whose
company he started west. The two now formed a partnership under
the firm name of Goss and Cobb. Reports differ as to the amount of

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 155

money Mr. Goss invested. One story fixes it at thirty dollars. The
highest sum named is sixty-five dollars. This will indicate the very
humble beginning in business Mr. Cobb made. The business was really
his. Mr. Goss, though mentioned first in the firm name, was only a
silent partner, living forty miles away, near Plainfield, probably anx-
ious about his investment. He need not have been. The stream of
settlers increased in volume. The harness-maker prospered exceed-
ingly and at the end of a year dissolved the partnership, returning to
Mr. Goss the full sum of his original investment and two hundred and
fifty dollars' profit, "the best streak of luck he [Mr. Goss] ever had."

I think it may be considered a part of the story of Mr. Cobb's life
if I try to tell here what the year 1833, the year of his arrival, meant to
Chicago. In the first place, it was the year of its incorporation as a
village and the appointment of village officers who began to lay out
streets and plan for the improvements of civilized life. Next, the
great council with the Indians provided for their removal and the
immediate opening to settlement of 20,000,000 acres of the richest
land in the world, in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, assuring
a future for the new village, of the greatness of which no man then
dreamed. In this year also the general government began the im-
provement of the harbor, cutting through the sand bar at the mouth
of the river, this work being so furthered by a great flood in the
spring following that for the first time lake commerce found entrance to
the Chicago River. In 1833 the first newspaper, the Chicago Democrat,
was established. The year was, therefore, a year of unusual impor-
tance as well as interest in the history of Chicago.

Very few men who became prominent in the future of the new
community were residents of the town when Mr. Cobb arrived. Among ,
them were Gurdon S. Hubbard, George W. Dole, P. F. W. Peck, and
Philo Carpenter. Eli B. Williams preceded him by a few weeks, and
John D. Caton, afterward Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court,
came a few weeks after Mr. Cobb. During that busy summer came
also Jabez K. Botsford, Charles Cleaver, Edward H. Haddock, Walter
Kimball, and a dozen other men who rose to prominence. They found
themselves in very crowded quarters. In the first old settlers' reception
given by the Calumet Club in 1879, Judge Caton said: "I think I can
count twenty, at least [present] who were here forty-six years ago, at

that memorable birth There were seven beds in the attic in

which fourteen of us slept that summer Edward H. Haddock

knows who slept with me in that attic."

156 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Mr. Cobb had not been a year in business before it became apparent
to him that the center of trade in the new town would be on the south
side; and not long after the dissolution of his first partnership, he
prepared to move east across the river. But before he did so, an
interesting incident occurred which he has himself related:

I arrived at Chicago in the spring of 1833. In October of the same year I was
occupying my new shop opposite the hotel, in the building of which my first dollar
was earned in Chicago. Standing at my shop one afternoon talking with a neighbor,
our attention was attracted by the arrival at the hotel of a settler's wagon from the
east. With my apron on and my sleeves rolled up, I went with my neighbor to greet
the weary travelers and to welcome them to the hospitality of Fort Dearborn, in
accordance with the free and easy customs of "high society" in those days. We
learned that the travelers were the Warren family, from Westfield, New York, bound
for the settlement of Warrenville, Illinois, where a relative had preceded them about
six months previously. There were several young women in the party, two of them
twin sisters whom I thought particularly attractive, so much so that I remarked to
my friend, after they had departed, that when I was prosperous enough so that my
pantaloons and brogans could be made to meet I was going to look up those twin
sisters and marry one of them or die in trying.

The sequel of this story is told by E. 0. Gale in his reminiscences
and may as well come in here as later.

As soon as he was able to support a wife he married one of the twin daughters of

Colonel Daniel Warren Jerome Beecher married the other sister. Cobb

thought that he married Maria and Beecher always believed that he himself married
Mary, but they only knew what the girls told them, for the sisters so closely resembled
each other and dressed so exactly alike that it required intimate acquaintance to
distinguish them. They purchased their millinery of [my] mother, and she never
could tell whether she was waiting on Mrs. Cobb or Mrs. Beecher.

For the latter, Beecher Hall at the University is named.

It was perhaps in 1835 that Mr. Cobb transferred his growing
business to more commodious quarters at 171 Lake Street, which was
near the business center on the South Side. He remained in the new
location for many years, devoting himself to his business with a dili-
gence and skill that not only attracted wide attention but commanded
growing success. He was interested in the life of the new community
and entered into every phase of it with all the earnestness of his alert
and energetic nature. On October 7, 1835, S. B. Cobb, P. F. W. Peck,
J. K. Botsford, and four others signed their names as the first members
of the Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company, and Mr. Cobb was always
one of the first at every fire. In the first Chicago directory, issued in
1839, his name appears as saddle, bridle, harness, and trunk maker,
171 "lake st." He made about everything the town and country

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 157

needed that could be made of leather, except boots and shoes. Among
other things he made the fire buckets which every householder was
required to keep in the front hall of his dwelling. There were to be
two, at least, in every building. They were to be present also at every
fire. They were all made by Mr. Cobb. Sometime after 1879 Mr.
Gale's father took one of the two he had left from those ancient days
to one of the old settlers' receptions at the Calumet Club. "Alighting
from the carriage with it, Mr. Cobb, who was one of the reception
committee, rushed to father and took it from him with the remark,
'I made that, Gale, and I am glad to see it.' 'I am happy to present it

to you, Mr. Cobb,' said father Cobb took as much pride and

satisfaction in displaying his handiwork to his friends and the guests
as a young lady would in showing a pretty pattern of embroidery."
The sign above his shop read:

SADDLE AND HARNESS MANUFACTORY

Cash Paid for Hides

S. B. COBB

"In front, on a post, was a white horse in a full canter, headed for the
prairie." The proprietor was so full of activity and energy that young
Gale "named our hustling harness-maker 'Steamboat Cobb.' "

Chicago celebrated the Fourth of July, 1836, by officially "breaking
ground" for the digging of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. A party
went down to Bridgeport on a small steamboat, Mr. Cobb being one of
the passengers. On the return trip a crowd of hoodlums, disgruntled
at being refused passage on the crowded boat, attacked the excursionists
with a shower of stones, breaking cabin windows and injuring some of
the passengers. The captain drew as near to the shore as possible and
a number of citizens, some of whom later became prominent men,
landed, attacked their assailants, arrested some, and dispersed the rest.
Among the foremost in the counter attack were Ashbel Steele, later
made sheriff, S. B. Cobb, Gurdon S. Hubbard, S. F. Gale, Mark
Beaubien, and John H. Kinzie.

When there was anything doing, Mr. Cobb was usually on hand.
A few years later the Chicago Cavalry was organizing and he was
made third lieutenant. He was indefatigable in his business, but his
superabundant vitality led him to throw himself ardently into the
larger life of the town. Long John Wentworth, in one of his diverting

158 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

addresses on early Chicago, gave the following illuminating character-
ization of Mr. Cobb. Answering the question whether Chicago had no
society men in the early days, he said:

Our early settlers were generally society men, but they never let society interfere

with their business I notice a gentleman here who was a model of a society

man. He was at his place of business promptly every day and at parties every
night. After sunset he would go farther to attend a party, dance longer, and be back
at his place of business earlier the next morning than any man in the city. He has
lived in pleasure and to profit. He brought nothing here; his notes never went to
protest; and now he has nearly means enough to pay the debts of almost all our
modern society men. If the society men of these days would but follow his example,
work as well as play, save as well as earn, to use a granger phrase, they would find a
great deal more corn on their Cobb.

But Long John in another address gave quite another side of
Mr. Cobb's life and activities, saying:

Not feeling able to sustain the expense of a whole pew, I engaged one in partner-
ship with an unpretending saddle- and harness-maker, S. B. Cobb, who, by a life of
industry, economy, and morality, has accumulated one of the largest fortunes in
our city, and still walks our streets with as little pretense as when he mended the
harness of the farmers who brought the grain to this market from our prairies. The
church building in those days was considered a first-class one and we had a first-class
pew therein, and the annual expense of my half of the pew was only $12.50 more
than it would have been in our Saviour's time.

Mr. Wentworth evidently believed in a free gospel. The addresses from
which I have quoted leave it uncertain just where he and Mr. Cobb
attended church together. The connection points plainly to the First
Baptist Church, which Mr. Wentworth often attended and of the
pastor of which, Rev. M. G. Hinton, he speaks highly. This is rendered
still more probable by the fact that Mr. Cobb married the daughter of
a Baptist family. He found means to cultivate the acquaintance of
the fair Warren sisters and in 1840 married Maria, and, probably,
became with her an attendant at the Baptist Church. He was, how-
ever, later an adherent of the Second Presbyterian Church and, for a
time, one of its trustees.

The hamlet which in 1833 presented "a most woebegone appearance,
even as a frontier town of the lowest class," and which became an in-
corporated village toward the end of that year, grew so amazingly that
four years later, in 1837, it was reorganized as a city. Speculation in
real estate became rampant. Booms grew and flourished and burst.
Good tunes, making speculators rich, were succeeded by panics which
reduced most of them to poverty. Few men were able to escape the
speculative craze of that first quarter of a century; but Mr. Cobb was

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 159

one of that fortunate number. His rule not to borrow money and not
to go in debt stood him in good stead. He had, by nature apparently,
a keen business mind. The untrained harness-maker was being trained
very rapidly by what he saw about him in the meteoric rise and the
sudden and usually irretrievable fall of the hordes of speculators who
crowded the city. He continued to attend with growing business skill
to his expanding trade; but the amazing growth of the city made a
profound impression on his mind. He believed in the future of Chicago,
and as often as a boom burst and prices fell to the vanishing point, he
invested the growing profits of his business in what he believed to be
choice pieces of property. He bought what he had the money to pay
for, so that panics had no terrors for him. He did not buy real estate
to sell. He came to believe in a great future value for Chicago property.
He made his purchases, therefore, when the speculators were compelled
to sell their holdings, and he made them as permanent investments to
be improved, as he was able, with substantial blocks of buildings.

The original school lands of Chicago, beginning at State and Madison
streets, ran west twelve blocks to Halsted Street, and south twelve
blocks, comprising one hundred and forty-four blocks. They are worth
today more than $100,000,000, but were practically given away in 1833,
when one hundred and forty blocks out of the hundred and forty-four
were sold for almost nothing, the amount realized from the sale being
$38,865. In 1835 the immensely valuable wharfing privileges were also
"sold for a song," the leases extending till the year 2834, nine hundred
and ninety-nine years. These operations, which made many investors
rich, took place while Mr. Cobb was still in poverty and was taking the
first steps to establish himself in business. One of his earliest opportu-
nities for profitable real-estate investment came in 1839. In that year
the general government subdivided the Fort Dearborn Reservation into
lots, the greater part of which were immediately sold for what they
would bring. Chicago had hardly begun to recover from the disastrous
panic of 1837, and real-estate values were greatly depressed. Buyers
were few; but there were men who had confidence in the future of
Chicago, and among them was Mr. Cobb. He was beginning to get
on his feet, and, having some money in the bank, bought two of these
lots on the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Lake Street for
$516. On these lots he built his first residence, and the directory of
1843 records him as living at 75 Michigan Avenue. A few years later
this corner was no longer residence property and he removed a block
or two farther south.

160 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Though devoted to his business, Mr. Cobb was not unmindful of
his political duties. He was an enthusiastic Whig in politics and in
1840 took an active interest in the election of General Harrison to the
presidency. He was appointed a delegate to the great Whig conven-
tion of that year at the state capital. A delegation of about seventy
made the journey from Chicago to Springfield. In telling the story
Charles Cleaver, who came to Chicago the same year with Mr. Cobb
(1833), says:

Great preparations were made. We secured fourteen of the best teams in town,
got new canvas covers made for the wagons, and bought four tents. We also bor-
rowed the government yawl — the largest in the city — had it rigged up as a two-
masted ship, set it on the strongest wagon we could find, and had it drawn by six
splendid gray horses. Thus equipped, with four sailors on board and a six-pound
cannon to fire occasional salutes, making quite an addition to our cavalcade of

fourteen wagons, we went off with flying colors Major General, then

Captain, Hunter, was our marshal, and the whole delegation was chosen from our
best class of citizens.

Political excitement ran very high, and it was known that the
progress of the delegation might be resisted by force. But this prospect
did not make the project any less attractive to men like Gurdon S.
Hubbard, Mr. Cleaver, Mr. Cobb, and Captain Hunter. At the cross-
ing of the river south of Joliet the expected trouble came. They were
armed, and the future major general directed every shotgun and pistol
to be loaded, but also ordered that no one should fire a shot till he gave
the word of command. Mr. Cleaver continues:

When we reached the ford we found a party of two hundred or three hundred
men and boys assembled to dispute our passage. However, we continued our course,
surrounded by a howling mob, and part of the tune amid showers of stones thrown
from the adjoining bluff, until we came to a spot where two stores were built — one
on either side of the street — and then we came to a halt, as they had tied a rope

from one building to the other Seeing us brought to a stand, the mob redoubled

their shouts and noise from their tin horns, kettles, etc. General Hunter, riding to
the front, took in the situation at a glance. It was either forward or fight. He
chose the former, and gave the word of command, knowing it would be at the loss of
our masts in the vessel. And sure enough, down came the fore-and-aft topmast
with a crash, inciting the crowd to increased violence, noise, and tumult. One of
the party got so excited that he snatched a tin horn from a boy and struck the marshal's
horse. When he reached for his pistols the fellow made a hasty retreat into his store.
After proceeding a short distance, we came to the open prairie, and a halt was ordered
for repairs. It took less than half an hour for our sailors to go aloft, splice the masts,
and make all taut again. Then it became our turn to hurrah, which we did with a

will, and were molested no further This was democracy in '40 — we were

Whigs.

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 161

However, Mr. Cleaver acknowledges that, "with the exception above
mentioned, we met with nothing but kindness the whole of our trip."
But on the return journey they went by another route.

In 1847 Mr. Cobb was still a young man. But at that time almost
all the business men of Chicago were young. Perhaps thirty-five,
which was Mr. Cobb's age, would be a fair average for the whole body.
These young men, bent on the improvement of the shipping facilities of
the city, interested themselves in arranging for the holding of the great
River and Harbor Convention of 1847. It was held under a great
tent in the courthouse square of Chicago. Mr. Cobb was a member of
the Committee of Arrangements. The work of the committee was
extraordinarily successful. Though the city's population did not reach
17,000, it was estimated that 20,000 strangers gathered to attend the
convention. The number of delegates alone is variously reported at
from 3,000 to 10,000, and among them were many who then or later
were the leading men of the nation. It was declared to be the largest
deliberative body ever assembled. Its object was the improvement of
the rivers of the new west and the harbors of the Great Lakes. It was
a movement of the highest importance to a vast region and, indeed, to
the whole country.

In 1848 Mr. Cobb had been fifteen years in business as a harness-
maker. He had prospered. Whether he continued to work in his shop
with his own hands during this entire period does not appear. It is
probable that as his business increased he found himself more and more
occupied with the management and accounting. He liked to keep his
business in his own hands and to keep his own books. At the end of
fifteen years, seeing an opening for bettering his fortunes, he disposed
of his old business and formed a partnership with William Osbourne in
a boot and shoe and hide and leather house. The only thing now
known about this venture is that at the end of four years, when he was
only forty years of age, he had been so successful that he retired finally
from manufacturing and merchandising with a competency. Begin-
ning with nothing in 1833 in a miserable little frontier hamlet an in-
experienced boy, nineteen years of hard work, devotion to business,
avoidance of debt, strict integrity, refusal to enter into any of the
orgies of speculation that repeatedly prevailed in the Chicago of these
years, but as rapidly as his increasing profits permitted investing his
surplus in central real estate and promising public utilities — nineteen
years had made him in 1852 one of the leading capitalists of the pros-
perous young city of 20,000 people. This does not mean that he was

162 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

in 1852 a very rich man. But it does mean that at forty years of age
he had laid a solid foundation on which to build the superstructure of
his fortune. He had not yet lived out half his days. He looked back
on forty years; but had he been a seer, he would have looked forward
to forty-eight which he had yet to live.

But this date marked an entire change in his business activities.
The reason for so radical a change does not appear. A merchant is
the slave of his business. He is chained to his oar. He must keep
pulling ceaselessly or his boat will begin to go downstream or run ashore.
Mr. Cobb had worked very hard for nineteen years and had achieved
such success that he was able to break his bonds. He seems to have
become enamored of liberty and decided to be a free man for the rest
of his life.

He did not, indeed, intend to spend his time in idleness. He pur-
posed to continue as active a life as ever. His enterprising tempera-
ment would not permit him to be idle; but he was free and could
employ his tune as he liked. One of the first things he did was to dis-
charge an obligation of friendship. He accepted an appointment as
executor of the estate of Joseph Matteson, the original proprietor of
the Matteson House, and as guardian of his five children. Mr. Cobb
continued in the duties of these positions for fourteen years, discharging
them with his customary fidelity and success.

He interested himself with other leading capitalists in the first of
Chicago's railroads, the Galena and Chicago Union, which, launched
and got under way with extraordinary difficulty, was in the end a most
successful enterprise. William B. Ogden, J. Y. Scammon, John B.
Turner, Benjamin W. Raymond, and men of like character and standing,
were leaders in the undertaking. -Mr. Cobb was one of the directors
of the new road and also of the Beloit and Madison. These roads
were later merged in the Chicago and North Western system. It is a
curious reflection on the foresight of ordinary business men that the
merchants of Chicago, for the most part, opposed the building of rail-
roads out of that city on the ground that it would interfere with their
trade by diverting it to the country stores to which the roads would
carry merchandise. It was fortunate for the early rapid development
of the city that there were, among its own citizens, men of vision who
realized that the one great need of Chicago was railroads, railroads
running east, west, north, and south, and to every other point of the
compass, men who were ready to back their views with their fortunes.
These were the men who made Chicago. They built the railroads, and

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 163

the railroads built the city. These men did not profess that in providing
Chicago with railroads they were moved entirely by altruism. They
were farsighted men of business, but in making what they believed
were good investments for themselves, they promoted at the same time
the public welfare. Mr. Cobb was one of these men, promoting his own
interests while conferring unspeakable benefits on the public. It was
this same farsighted business policy that led him to take a substantial
interest in the Chicago Gas Light and Coke Company and the street-
railway companies, which made ample returns to him, but which were,
at the same time, indispensable public utilities and a boon to every
citizen. Of the Gas Company he became a director in 1855 and later a
member of the board of managers, continuing in this position till 1887,
when the merger took place with the Peoples Gas Light and Coke
Company. When various street railways were consolidated into the
Chicago City Railway Company, he was one of the principal capitalists
among its managers.

He was long a director in the West Side Street Railway Company
and president of the Chicago City Railway Company during the seven-
ties when the underground cable system superseded the use of horses.
He was a director of the National Bank of Illinois and of one of the princi-
pal insurance companies of Chicago. A propos of his connection with the
street railways he made it a point to see that passengers were treated
courteously, particularly women. One who frequently saw him riding
on the cars relates that he would never permit a woman to stand. If
the seats were full, he would invariably rise when a woman entered
and insist on her taking his seat.

When Fort Sumter was fired on in April, 1861, the patriotic citizens
of Chicago assembled in great mass meetings in Bryan and Metropolitan
halls, and, in the presence of the total lack of arms and equipment in
the state arsenals, determined that they would themselves arm and
equip the Chicago volunteers who were already besieging the recruiting
offices. Mr. Cobb was one of the citizens who immediately raised a
fund of $40,000 for this purpose and sent a force of nearly a thousand
men to seize and hold for the Union the one strategic point in Illinois—
the city of Cairo. He became a member of the first company of the
Chicago Home Guard and was secretary of its executive committee.

Among the other activities of Mr. Cobb, after retiring in 1852 from
manufacturing and mercantile pursuits, was the improvement of his
valuable business properties. On the site of his old home at the south-
west corner of Lake Street and Michigan Avenue he built Cobb Block.

1 64 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

In 1865 he erected another building on Washington Street between
Dearborn and Clark streets. Just around the corner from this he put
up a third block called the Cobb Building. This was 120-28 Dearborn
Street, and in this building he had his private office for many years,
perhaps to the end of his life.

I am indebted to William Bross, one of the proprietors of the Chicago
Tribune, lieutenant governor of Illinois, but popularly known in Chicago
as Deacon Bross, for a picture which vividly presents the striking con-
trast between the boy of 1833, just landed in the miserable hamlet
without a friend in the place or a cent in his pocket, and the prosperous
citizen of the great city of 1870. In a lecture, "What I Remember of
Early Chicago," delivered in 1876, Deacon Bross said:

Standing in the parlor of the Merchants' Savings, Loan, and Trust Company,
five or six years ago, talking with the president, Sol. A. Smith, E. H. Haddock, Dr.
Foster [whose widow later built Foster Hall at the University of Chicago], and per-
haps two or three others, hi came Mr. Cobb, smiling and rubbing his hands in the
greatest glee. "Well, what makes you so happy?" said one. "Oh," said Cobb,
"this is the first day of June, the anniversary of my arrival in Chicago hi 1833." "Yes,"
said Haddock, "the first tune I saw you, Cobb, you were bossing a lot of Hoosiers
weatherboarding a shanty-tavern for Jim Kinzie." "Well," Cobb retorted, in the
best of humor, "you needn't put on any airs for the first time I saw you, you were
shingling an outhouse!"

Mr. Bross then went on to tell something of the arrival in Chicago of
Mr. Cobb, whom he referred to as "our solid president of the South
Side Horse Railway," and continued:

Mr. Haddock also came to Chicago, I think, as a small grocer; and now these
gentlemen are numbered among our millionaires. Young men, the means by which
they have achieved success are exceedingly simple. They have sternly avoided all
mere speculation; they have attended closely to legitimate business and invested
any accumulating surplus in real estate. Go ye and do likewise, and your success
will be equally sure.

In choosing a place in which to make his home Mr. Cobb retreated
southward slowly, apparently with reluctance, before the onflowing tide
of business. Perhaps the overflow of Michigan Avenue by business
houses may be historically traced by his successive removals. We have
seen how he first made a home on the corner of Lake Street and Michigan
Avenue in 1843. Thirteen years later, in 1856, he was residing at 135
Michigan Avenue perhaps a little north of Monroe Street. In 1859,
after only three years, he retreated to No. 148, just south of Monroe.
Ten years later he had been driven to No. 241, just south of Congress
Street. Happily for him and his family, he then abandoned the struggle

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 165

to retain a home on Michigan Avenue and found refuge at 979 Prairie
Avenue. I say "happily" for he thus escaped the destruction of his
home by the great fire of 1871.

Mr. Cobb's theory of business was subjected to two supreme tests.
The basis of that theory was the avoidance of debt, the making of
investments, whether in stocks, lands, or buildings, only as he was able
to pay for them. His investments hi great public utilities were large
and varied, but he was no speculator. They were made only after the
most careful consideration and were solidly based on the growth of
Chicago, of which he, who had been a part of its development from the
beginning, was absolutely assured.

The first test came in the panic of 1857, which was one of the most
severe and disastrous in the history of the country. , Great numbers of
men in Chicago were irretrievably ruined. Even the failure of
William B. Ogden, Chicago's ablest financier, seemed inevitable and
he escaped only by the considerateness of his creditors. Mr. Cobb
passed through the storm unshaken. He had no creditors, and his
financial position was strengthened rather than weakened by that great
catastrophe.

The second test came in the fire of 1871, which destroyed entirely
the business district of Chicago, as well as the whole of the north side
of the city. The total losses were estimated at nearly or quite $300,-
000,000. Mr. Cobb's losses were very great. All his buildings in the
business district were totally destroyed. Hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of men were ruined; but again he was unshaken. He had no creditors.
A year and a half after the fire he was again in his office in the newly
constructed Cobb Building at 120-28 Dearborn Street, and his other
business blocks were quickly rebuilt and as quickly rented.

At the time of the Great Fire Mr. Cobb was president of the Chicago
City Railway Company and continued in that position several years.
In 1877 the sons of Vermont formed an organization, and in 1883 made
Mr. Cobb vice-president. He was socially inclined and was for years
chairman of the reception committee of the gatherings of the old settlers
conducted by the Calumet Club.

I am indebted to a Chicago banker for the following personal glimpse
of him when he was approaching eighty years of age. The banker was
then a young man earning fifty dollars a month and took his daily
noon lunch in a restaurant where you sat at a long counter on a high
stool. His regular lunch cost him fifteen cents. Next to him ordinarily
sat an old man, rather plainly dressed, who, as his neighbor noticed

1 66 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

with some regret, seemed able to afford only a ten-cent lunch of dough-
nuts and a cup of tea. Meeting almost daily, they fell into a speaking
acquaintance. The young man finally got a raise in salary to seventy-
five dollars a month, and said to the old man: "I am afraid we shall
not continue to lunch together. I have received a raise in pay and I
am thinking of going to a restaurant where I can sit in a chair at a table
with a table cover on it." "Let me advise you," said the older man,
"not to do it. Continue to economize; save your increased pay; live
simply, and when you become an old man you may be a rich one."
When the young man paid his bill he asked the cashier who his aged
adviser was, and was surprised to hear, "Why, that's Silas B. Cobb."
The men who knew him will recognize the verisimilitude of this story.
He was very frugal in all his personal expenditures; but with his family
he was most liberal. He did not require from them the economies he
practiced in his own person.

Mr. and Mrs. Cobb almost reached their golden anniversary to-
gether. They were married in 1840 and Mrs. Cobb lived till 1888.
There were six children, five girls and one boy. Three of the daughters
lived to be married and two of them survived their father. At the time
of Mrs. Cobb's death the family home was at 3334 Michigan Avenue.
With her sister, Mrs. Jerome Beecher, Mrs. Cobb had been much
interested in the Chicago Orphan Asylum and other charities. After her '
death her husband made his home with his daughter, Mrs. William B.
Walker, at 2027 Prairie Avenue.

He was now 76 years old, but was still vigorous and maintained the
springy step and rapid pace of his earlier days. He still kept his office
in the Cobb Building on Dearborn Street, and there continued to
manage his multiplied business interests. It was in this office that I
first saw Mr. Cobb, in 1892. I well recall the time and the circum-
stances. The new University of Chicago, which had not yet opened
its doors to students, was engaged in what seemed the impossible task
of raising in Chicago a million dollars in ninety days. Such a thing
had never before been done or attempted in that city. It had not then
more than one-third its present population or one-tenth its present
wealth. Sixty of the ninety days given us had passed. We had little
more than half the amount subscribed and seemed to be at the end of
our resources. We were at a loss to whom to appeal. We knew that
the family of Mr. Cobb wanted him to help us; but he had the reputa-
tion of liking to be self-moved in his giving, of disliking to be solicited.

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 167

We were assured that if we went to him and made a direct appeal he
would resent it and we should defeat ourselves. We were repeatedly
warned against making a direct appeal to him. His family finally told
Dr. Harper, president of the University, that they feared the decision
must go over to the autumn. This was in the first week in June and
seemed a deathblow to all hope of success in securing the million dollars,
the time for doing which would expire in thirty days.

I then said to Dr. Harper that we must take the matter into our
own hands, adding that we were not in the habit of giving offense to
those to whom we made our appeals. He reminded me of the warnings
we had received, but said we would go if I would assume the responsi-
bility of our probable failure. I told him that since we should lose
our million dollars if Mr. Cobb did not help us, I would take the
responsibility. Thereupon we went and called upon him in his unpre-
tentious office.

He received us cordially, heard us with evident sympathy, giving
us the impression that if we had not called on him he would have
felt that we had overlooked him. He evidently regarded it as entirely
appropriate that, for so great an object and in so extreme an exigency,
the matter should be brought to a man so well able to help. We had
a long interview, going over the whole case very fully. We explained,
in answer to his questions, a number of things he had not understood.
We told him we needed $150,000 from him, and that we believed this
contribution from him would assure our complete success. He seemed
entirely ready to give us this great sum, and said he had thought he
would write us a letter voluntarily proffering the subscription. Know-
ing his decided preference for making his gifts in this way, we strongly
encouraged him in this purpose. We left him with the assurance that
we had succeeded in our mission. Two days later Dr. Harper met
him on the street and told him we had not received his letter. He
said he hadn't yet found tune to write it, and, in fact, didn't know just
how to go at it; and intimated that he would be glad to put the matter
in the way we thought would be most helpful to us in our campaign.
The president came to the office and asked me to prepare such a letter
as we would like to have Mr. Cobb sign, which I lost no time hi doing,
trying to express also what I knew were his views. This was at once
sent to his office and two days later he walked into my office and returned
the letter to me with his signature appended. He had not cared to
alter it and it was as follows :

1 68 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

CHICAGO, June 9, 1892
To the Board of Trustees of the University of Chicago

GENTLEMEN: I have watched with growing interest the progress of
the institution, the care of which has been intrusted to you. As my
years increase, the desire grows upon me to do something for the city
which has been my home for nearly sixty years. I am persuaded that
there is no more important public enterprise than the University of
Chicago. It seems to me to deserve the most liberal support of our
citizens, and especially does it seem important that the University
should, just at this juncture, be enabled to secure the million dollars it
is seeking for its buildings and equipment. I therefore hereby subscribe
$150,000 on the conditions of the million-dollar subscription, and put
my proposed gift in this form that the securing of the full million dollars
may be more certainly assured. The particular designation of this gift
I will make later.

Yours sincerely,

S. B. COBB

The University was at that time building its first recitation building.
For this building Mr. Cobb immediately, that same day, in fact, des-
ignated his contribution, later adding to his original donation $15,000,
making a total of $165,000. His subscription proved the turning-point,
perhaps it may be said, in the drive for the million-dollar building
and equipment fund. Cobb Lecture Hall was so nearly finished that
within its walls the work of the new University was formally opened on
October i, 1892. It proved to be a most important building, for more
than a quarter of a century the center of University life. It is eighty
feet wide, one hundred and sixty feet long, and four stories in height.
It contains over sixty rooms. As originally constructed it provided a
chapel or assembly room for temporary use, taking for this purpose the
north third of the first floor, a general lecture-room that would accom-
modate nearly two hundred, and offices for the president, deans, and
other officials. With the multiplication of buildings, great changes
have taken place in the arrangement of the first floor and the general
use of the building. Other changes will be made as later buildings
still further relieve the congestion, and the time will come when its
use will be more largely restricted to the work of instruction. It has
a record of general utility which no other University building can ever
have. In the hall of the first floor may be seen a white marble bust of
Mr. Cobb.

SILAS BOWMAN COBB 169

Probably no act of Mr. Cobb's life, except his marriage, gave him
more unalloyed happiness than the great contribution he made for the
erection of Cobb Lecture Hall. He took no pains to conceal the satis-
faction he felt in it. He was evidently happy in having made a contribu-
tion to the city which had done so much for him. He had prospered in
Chicago and he had been able to recognize his obligation to the city.
He occasionally called at my office and once brought and left with me a
photograph about i2X 14 inches in size, appropriately framed, represent-
ing him sitting in the open air at his summer home at Pride's Crossing
in New England, with his feet on a bowlder and a cigar in his mouth.
The cigar was characteristic. He usually had one in his mouth, but
did not smoke it. Underneath the picture was this statement, dated in
1895 and signed by him:

"A native of Vermont, I left Montpelier in April, 1833, and arrived
at Fort Dearborn, now the city of Chicago, May 29 of the same year.
I have lived in Chicago from that time to the present day. Every
building now standing in Chicago has been erected during my residence
here."

Mr. Cobb lived in good health almost to the last, tenderly cared
for by his daughter, Mrs. William B. Walker, until he reached the age
of eighty-eight years. He died April 6, 1900. The funeral service was
conducted by President Harper. The honorary pallbearers, with the
exception of the writer of these pages, were old business friends of
wealth and prominence — S. W. Allerton, Albert Keep, E. T. Watkins,
J. A. Tyrrell, and Dr. D. K. Pearsons.

The estate amounted to about $6,000,000. Bequests were made to
twenty-eight nephews and nieces, amounting to $35,500; to the Home
for the Friendless, $50,000; to the Chicago Orphan Asylum, $25,000;
to the Old People's Home, $5,000; to the Young Men's Christian Asso-
ciation, $5,000; and to the American Sunday School Union, $2,500.
To William B. Walker, Mr. Cobb's son-in-law, who had been very
helpful to him in the care of his large interests, a bequest of $25,000
was made. The rest of the estate was left in trust to William B. Walker
and Clarence Buckingham to be equally divided eventually between the
two living daughters, Mrs. Walker and Mrs. Walter Denegre, and the
children of a deceased daughter, Mrs. General G. Coleman.

A considerable number of the early settlers of Chicago who achieved
large material success have built for themselves enduring memorials in
institutions of charity and education. These benefactions for the
public welfare are the things for which they will be remembered. They

170 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

were not unmindful of their obligations to the city which they had
helped to build and which had rewarded them with prosperity. Their
beneficence has given them an immortality of remembrance, as well as
of helpful influence. Their names are and will continue to be household
words on the lips of thousands every day. As the students of the
University of Chicago come from every quarter of the globe and later
find their spheres of activity in every land, one name will be known
familiarly far beyond the limits of Chicago — the name of Silas Bowman
Cobb.

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT

The only time I ever saw G. F. Swift, the first week in April, 1890, he
gave me a subscription of a thousand dollars toward the fund for the
founding of the University of Chicago. The personality of the man,
the sympathy with which he listened to the appeal of a stranger,
and the readiness of his response stamped themselves on the memory
with a vividness that made the brief interview unforgettable. Mr.
Swift was then only potentially wealthy. In the thirty-one years that
have passed since that first gift the family of Mr. Swift has contributed
nearly $1,000,000 to the various needs of the University. Mrs. Swift has
endowed the Gustavus F. Swift Fellowship in Chemistry as a memorial
of her husband and has given large sums for the medical and other
departments. Two sons, Charles H. and Harold H., and a daughter,
Mrs. Helen Swift Neilson, have made contributions aggregating more
than $425,000.

For years preceding his death Mr. Swift was one of the great figures
in the business world of Chicago — great, in spite of his persistent avoid-
ance of any sort of display, by the sheer force of his achievements. It
is a curious coincidence that P. D. Armour and G. F. Swift, both in the
same business, both displaying the same type of genius, both founders
of enterprises that have expanded to proportions of such bewildering
immensity, began their careers in Chicago at the same tune, settling in
that city in the same year, 1875. Thus they were not pioneers, but late
comers, and worked out their spectacular successes in a comparatively
brief period of business activity in Chicago.

Mr. Swift was a native of New England, where his forefathers had
lived since 1630. In that year the first of the Massachusetts Swifts
came from England and after a few years in Boston or its vicinity settled
in Sandwich, Barnstable County, Cape Cod, near the point where the
Cape joins the mainland. G. F. Swift was in the seventh generation
from William and Elizabeth "Swyft" who in 1630 made their home in
the New World. Their sympathies would seem to have been with the
Pilgrims of Plymouth, since they finally settled far from the Puritans of
Boston and less than twenty miles south of Plymouth Bay. At the
same time it must be said that they formed a part of that first great
migration in which about three hundred of the "best Puritan families"

171

172 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

of England came to the new world and founded the colony of Massa-
chusetts Bay and the city of Boston. They were not adventurers,
but pioneers who came to America to find new homes and who began
the building of a new empire. The Swifts were for the most part farmers,
and G. F. Swift was in the direct line which for more than two hundred
years clung to the soil where the family first settled.

William, the progenitor of the house, bought the largest farm in the
town of Sandwich. Only a few years since, the house built two hundred
and eighty years ago was still the family residence. It was one story
in height, but wide enough to give ample space under the roof for second-
story rooms. Like so many other Cape Cod houses, the side walls as
well as the roof were shingled.

G. F. Swift was born in West Sandwich, sometimes called Scussett,
now known as Sagamore, a few miles north of Buzzards Bay, and only
a mile or two from the southeastern boundary of Plymouth County, on
what is called the shoulder of Cape Cod. The new ship canal connecting
Cape Cod or Barnstable Bay with Buzzards Bay passes within half a
mile of the place of his birth.

Sandwich was the first of the Cape townships to be settled. It was
nearest to Plymouth and became, on its organization, a part of Plymouth
Colony. Captain Miles Standish used to be sent to regulate its affairs.
It is about ten miles square, reaching across the isthmus and running a
few miles down the eastern shore of Buzzards Bay. On the north it
looks out on Cape Cod Bay, and on the east adjoins the township of
Barnstable. The soil, except along the shores of the bays, is not sand,
but a sandy loam and fairly fertile. It is a region of hills, brooks, small
lakes, and ponds. In its hundred square miles there are perhaps forty
lakelets. Before the railroad locomotives had repeatedly set fire to the
forests it was a diversified, attractive, and delightful region having
fifteen miles of waterfront on the two bays and filled with farms, old
homesteads, tracts of woodland, water courses and lakes, and pleasant
villages where retired sea captains built their substantial homes. One
writer of that day said of it: "A delightsome location, and no town in
our extended country can boast of a more salubrious atmosphere, purer
water, greater healthfulness, or more of the general comforts and con-
veniences of life. Sandwich is one of the most pleasant villages in
Massachusetts. To persons fond of fishing, sporting or riding it offers
greater resources than any other spot in this country." Near the north-
eastern corner of this pleasant land was West Sandwich, or Sagamore,
where G. F. Swift was born.

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 173

The town was first occupied by white men in 1637, a grant of land
having been made by Plymouth Colony to a company formed in Lynn.
The original settlers were joined by others from Duxbury and Plymouth,
among whom was William Swyft, who is believed to have been one of
the earliest among them. He lived only to 1642-43, but in 1643 his son
William is recorded as one of the sixty-eight men between the ages of
sixteen and sixty liable to bear arms. In 1655 this William Swift and three
others were engaged to build the town mill, and the same year his name
appeared on a subscription for building a new meetinghouse. There
were forty subscribers, and only seven gave more than William Swift.
The family was religious. Soon after the subscription was made William
united with eighteen others in a request to a minister to supply them
with preaching, giving him this assurance: "We will not be backward
to recompense your labors of love." In 1672 the same William Swift
was one of a committee of seven prominent men who were "requested
to go forward settling and confirming the township" with the Indian
chiefs and to prevent the town of Barnstable from encroaching on the
domains of Sandwich. The trouble with Barnstable again called for
his services a few years later, this time with only one associate. In
1730, among one hundred and thirty-six heads of families ten were
Swifts. These were the recognized people "besides Friends and
Quakers." But there were Swifts among them also, and Jane Swift had
the honor of being fined ten shillings by this Pilgrim colony for attending
Quaker meetings.

The family sent deputies to the General Court and furnished its
share of selectmen for the town. They were ardent patriots in the War
for Independence, supplying members of the committees of public
safety and soldiers and officers. The Swifts were noted for large families.
In Freeman's History of Cape Cod the author writes: "The Swifts
descended from Mr. William Swyft are like the stars for multitude."
Like other families they are now found in every part of our wide domain.
But many of them lingered long in Cape Cod, and among these were
the forebears of G. F. Swift.

His father William was a farmer, and his mother, Sally Sears Crowell,
was a descendant of Elder William Brewster, one of the best known of
the Pilgrim Fathers, and was related, as her name indicates, to two of
the leading families of the Cape. Perhaps the most illustrious among
her relatives was Barnas Sears, president of Brown University and first
secretary or agent of the Peabody Fund, who seventy years ago was one
of our great men.

174 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Mr. Swift was born June 24, 1839, the ninth child and the fifth son
in a family of twelve children. Brought up on the farm, he enjoyed
only the advantages of a common-school education. The school could
hardly have been of a high standard. The months of attendance for a
farmer's boy must have been restricted. And unfortunately the years of
his schooling were all too few, ending at fourteen. But he had the practical
education of the farm, and of a family life characterized by industry,
piety, ancestral self-respect, and mutual affection. The large family
was a community in itself. The boys were active, energetic, resourceful.
If any of them were lacking in these qualities G. F. had enough for a
dozen ordinary boys. Their youth was not all work on the farm.
There were frequent periods of freedom. Then calls for recreation came
from every direction. Barnstable Bay, only a little way north, called
with its opportunities for swimming, sailing, and fishing. Buzzards
Bay, only three miles south, invited with its different aspect, its other
sorts of boating, and new varieties of salt-water fish. And east and
west were the woods for hunting or nutting excursions, and the streams
and ponds which, at the very time of which I write, young Swift's boy-
hood, Daniel Webster found attractive enough to tempt him from
Marshfield for a try at the trout. In winter there were unexcelled
opportunities for sleighing, coasting, and skating. Winter, too, was the
period of school when the boy was brought into daily fellowship with all
the boys of the neighborhood, with whom he enjoyed the winter sports
of boys in a region where the snow covered the ground from late autumn
to early spring. That he had a happy boyhood, affectionate parental
discipline, enough work to keep him pleasantly employed, the youthful
pleasures that every boy ought to have, is evident from the fact that he
"attributed all his success and happiness in life to the habits of industry
and love for work, together with the fundamental Christian training"
of his boyhood.

That he was born for business became evident while he was a lad.
A cousin, Mr. E. W. Ellis, now eighty-four years old, brought up in the
same neighborhood and in mature life in Mr. Swift's employ in Chicago,
tells me many interesting things of his early and later life, among other
things the following: "I well remember I was at grandfather Cro well's
one day when Gustavus came in. He did not notice me, but said,
' Grandpa, I will give you forty cents for that old white hen. ' He got
the hen and was soon gone. I said, ' Grandma, isn't that new business
for Stave, buying hens ? ' ' Why, ' she said, ' he is here most every day
for one. He finds a customer somewhere. Seems to get enough out

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 175

of the transaction to pay him. ' Thus he started early in life," continues
Mr. Ellis, "only nine years old, but ambitious."

The family, as has been said, was large. There was not room for all
on the farm. It was doubtless an inborn, impelling urge toward business
activity that started Stave, as he was called, on his career at the age of
fourteen. At that time he went to work for his brother Noble, nine
years his senior and the village butcher, the wages being one dollar a
week. His pay was gradually increased to two dollars a week, and there
is a tradition that before he left his brother's employment at the end of
two or two and a half years he was receiving three dollars a week. He
was not the sort who could long remain an employee, and at sixteen he
started out to make his own way. He differed from other boys and dif-
fered in an extraordinary degree in initiative, ambition, self-reliance, and
an intuitive genius for business. There were millions of boys in America
in 1855 who were better educated, had more money, were backed by more
influential friends, and had larger opportunities and far more brilliant
prospects. This boy had little education, no money, and no influential
friends. The business opportunities offered on Cape Cod to a farmer's
boy were next to nothing, and prospects for any brilliant business success
did not exist — not even possibilities, save for the entirely exceptional
young man, the one boy in a million. And young Swift was that
exceptional one boy in a million. Already at sixteen he was a boy
of vision. He saw no certainties, but possibilities, and had the ambition
and courage to attempt them. This he did, and his initial efforts were
necessarily of the humblest sort.

The common story of G. F. Swift's beginning in business for himself,
the story which has become a classic, is as follows. He was developing
a purpose to try his fortune in New York City, when his father said:
"Don't go, Stave. Stay at home and I'll buy you an animal to kill
and you can start in the meat-market business for yourself." This his
father did, advancing him $20.00, which was the original cash capital of
the business which, since incorporated as Swift & Co., has carried its
operations around the world. With this capital the boy bought a heifer,
which he killed and dressed in one of the farm outbuildings. A horse
and wagon were, of course, at his disposal, and taking his merchandise
about the neighborhood to the doors of possible customers, with
all of whom he was well acquainted, he readily disposed of it so
profitably that he cleared $10.00 on the transaction. This is a
good story and well introduces the history of Mr. Swift's business life.
It leads naturally to the following from Mr. Ellis, the cousin already

176 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

quoted, who tells his story from personal and vivid remembrance of all
the details. Both incidents may well have occurred at about the same
date, the spring of 1855, the transaction of the heifer opening the way
for the more ambitious one. Here is the story of his cousin Ellis, then
approaching eighteen, while young Swift was sixteen.

He called on Uncle Paul Crowell [son of Grandfather Crowell and village store-
keeper]. I obtained this information a few days after from Uncle Paul himself.
Stave said, "I want to borrow some money. Will you lend it to me?" "Oh," said
Uncle Paul, "how much do you want?" "Four hundred dollars," said Stave.
"Whew," said Uncle Paul, " what you going to do with it ?" "I want to go to Brighton
stockyards and buy some pigs." "Why, that will be quite an undertaking for a
boy." "Yes," said Uncle Paul to me, "I could but admire his ambition." Brighton
Yards, located northwest of Boston, sixty miles distant! Just imagine it! The worst

kind of sandy, crooked roads Well, in about ten days, he, with his drove, hove

in sight at my father's home. He had sold some, but about 35 shoats were still with
him. I looked over his outfit, which consisted of an old horse and a democrat wagon
in which a few tired or lame pigs were enjoying a ride and a rest with their legs tied
together. With him was another lad as helper, who was trying to keep the shoats from
straying. There was Stave, a tall, lank youth, with a rope and steelyards on his
shoulder, also a short pole he carried in his hand that might do duty from which to
suspend the squealers and steelyards between his shoulders and those of the customer.
Father had made his selection and purchase, and, going to the house said, "There is a
good exhibition of ambition. Gustavus Swift will make a success in whatever business
he undertakes. For he has the right make up." Gustavus made several such trips
to Brighton for pigs, spring and fall, for two or three years. Several years later I had
learned he was in business in Barnstable. While on the train from Boston to Scussett
[West Sandwich or Sagamore] I noticed a man riding on the car platform all the way.
Finally I recognized him as G. F. Swift. I went out and learned he was on his way
home. He had been doing some business in Brighton. I could not prevail on him
to come into the car. He was not dressed up.

He was a modest, diffident youth, very reticent, with an unusual
face, the features being exceptionally refined. But he was, at the same
time, self-reliant, with an irrepressible business aggressiveness that led
him into new paths that other young men had neither the initiative nor
the courage to enter.

The business of buying and selling pigs was confined for the most
part to two or three months in the spring, when the people were buying
pigs to fatten for their own use. What use did the young dealer in
pigs make of the rest of the year ? Naturally enough he followed the
business he had learned of butcher and meat seller. He had found the
way to the big stockyards at Brighton outside of Boston and made some
kind of a place for himself there. He was no doubt hard pressed for
capital, but he managed to keep going and little by little to forge
ahead.

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 177

His method of procedure was as follows: On Friday he bought a
fat steer in the Brighton market outside of Boston. On Saturday he
slaughtered the steer and hung up the quarters over Sunday. Monday
he loaded the meat into his democrat wagon and started for Cape Cod,
fifty miles away. During the week he peddled the meat from house to
house and wherever he could dispose of it to the best advantage and, hav-
ing sold out, returned on the following Friday to Brighton and repeated
the process the next week. If he returned on Friday with more money
than he had on the preceding Friday, this was his profit on the trans-
actions of the week. It was in this way that he got together a little
capital and finally began to look for a place in which to establish himself
as a village butcher. This search led to developments he did not, at
the time, anticipate and made the choice he arrived at one of the most
important decisions of his life. Southeast from Plymouth, across the
great bay, forty miles away, midway of the long arm of Cape Cod, is
Eastham. In 1643 the Pilgrims seriously contemplated the abandon-
ment of Plymouth and removal to this region. After full examina-
tion the plan was rejected, but a small colony, seven men and their
families, settled there, and the place nourished. The principal village
of the town was also called Eastham, and there in the winter of 1859-60
G. F. Swift opened a meat market. He took with him as partner or
assistant his brother Nathaniel, who was his senior by two years and who
like himself had learned the business with the still older brother Noble.
Eastham was a very small village, and he remained there little more
than a year. But this was long enough to do two of the most important
things he did during his entire life. He fell in love and married a wife.
On January 3, 1861, he became the husband of Annie Maria Higgins.
Mrs. Swift was a descendant of Richard Higgins, one of the seven original
proprietors who settled in Eastham in 1643-44.

Mr. Swift matured early, entered business early, and married early —
when he was twenty-one years and six months old. Surrendering the
Eastham business to his brother Nathaniel, he returned with his bride
to Sagamore and entered into the same business. In Sagamore his
eldest son was born, Louis F. Swift, for many years past head of
Swift & Co.

He soon concluded that there was not room for him and his brother
Noble in Sagamore. Finding that there was an opening in the village
of Barnstable, a few miles east, he established himself in that place as
the local butcher. He had, for years, been studying cattle, and he soon
acquired the reputation of being one of the best judges of cattle in

1 78 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Barnstable County. With this reputation there came to him the revela-
tion that this expert knowledge was capital that should be invested
outside the walls of a retail butcher shop. Barnstable was a small
village. It had little more than five hundred inhabitants. There
was no outlook for enlarging the business of the meat market. But there
were cattle for sale on Cape Cod farms, and the farmers could not get
them to market profitably. The young butcher therefore, eager for a
larger field of activity, began to study the question whether he could not
do this with profit to the farmers and to himself. He already knew the
towns between Barnstable and Boston, and his acquaintance with them
would be a help in the new business. Once entered upon, it took him
again to the large stockyards at Brighton and Watertown outside of
Boston. A clerk looked after the meat market in Barnstable, and
Mr. Swift bought and sold cattle. He knew cattle, no one better, and
what he bought he sold readily at a profit. The business grew, and he
began, in a small way, to prosper. The buying and selling of cattle
soon became his real business and the meat market a side issue. He
was no longer a village butcher but a cattle dealer.

Mr. and Mrs. Swift remained in Barnstable about eight years.
There their second son, Edward Foster, was born. A third son, Lincoln,
was born and died there. In Barnstable were born also two daughters,
Annie May and Helen Louise.

In 1869 Mr. Swift's increasing business called the family away from
Barnstable, and they made their home first in Clinton and later in
Lancaster, about forty miles west of Boston, in Worcester County. It
was in Lancaster that the fourth son, Charles Henry, was bora in 1872.
Meantime, cattle-buying not occupying all Mr. Swift's energies, he had
established a meat market in Clinton, a few miles south of Lancaster,
putting his brother Nathaniel in charge. From this point as a center he
sent his meat in wagons to the cities and villages of Worcester County.
A little later he opened another market in Freetown, between Fall River
and Taunton. This enterprise he put in charge of a lieutenant, who sent
his wagons out among the towns of Bristol County. This man proved
so efficient that Mr. Swift later advanced him to positions of large
responsibility. In these undertakings, sending out dressed meats from
chosen centers through districts as wide as wagons could reach, Mr.
Swift was unconsciously preparing himself for that future, then quite
undreamed of, when the field of his operations should embrace the world.

Meantime, however, he did begin to get a new vision of the possible
development of the cattle-buying business into which he had been feeling

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 179

his way. The trend toward the cities had begun. Population in
industrial centers was multiplying. The demand for meat was increas-
ing. He looked into the future and saw it growing more and more.
The purpose of greatly enlarging the field of his operations began to take
shape in his mind. Massachusetts, New England, began to seem too
small for him. He looked west toward Albany and Buffalo, where
there were now great cattle yards with their enlarged opportunities for
profitable business. In 1872 the opportunity came to enter on the
realization of his dreams.

In that year he entered into partnership with James A. Hathaway,
who was doing a large meat business in Boston. The firm was Hathaway
& Swift and combined the dressed-meat business with that of buying and
selling cattle for the Boston market. Mr. Hathaway looked after the
meat business and the selling in Boston, while Mr. Swift managed the
buying end of the enterprise. This part of the business, in accordance
with his previously matured plans, he soon extended to Albany and a
few months later to Buffalo. This rapid extension westward was one
of the indications of that extraordinary revolution then taking place in
the business of the country and particularly in the meat industry.
The needs of the cities of the East had outgrown the home supply.
Europe was calling for American food. There had been a time, only a
few years before that of which I write, when the products of the West
could not be brought to the East and sold at a profit. A hundred years
ago it cost five dollars to transport a hundred pounds of freight from
Buffalo to New York. The cost of transportation was prohibitive, and
commerce hardly existed. Then began the new era of railways, and
everything was changed. The country was covered with railroad lines
and competition reduced freight rates to so low a figure that an ever-
increasing flood of western products filled the eastern markets. In the
early seventies the meaning of all this and its relation to him began to
be clear to Mr. Swift. He saw the primary cattle market move west to
Albany and then, almost without pause, west again to Buffalo. And
he had the business sagacity to see that the real and permanent primary
market was Chicago. He studied the matter carefully, as he was
accustomed to examine beforehand every step in his career. The more
he thought of it the clearer it became to him that if he aspired to leader-
ship in the cattle business he must make Chicago his headquarters.

And it seems evident that before the seventies of the last century
were half over he had definitely made up his mind to strike for leadership
in the cattle business. Every step in his future career was taken with

i8o BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

that end in view. He intended to be in the first rank. Why, otherwise,
was he not content with the prosperity he was enjoying ? The firm of
Hathaway & Swift was exceptionally successful. Mr. Swift was a young
man in 1874 — thirty-five years old — already fairly well off and estab-
lished in a good business. But when he came to a full comprehension of
the new conditions of the cattle trade he sensed the fact that the real
field of his operations was Chicago, and to Chicago he determined to go.

The firm of Hathaway & Swift was doing well, but Mr. Swift per-
suaded his partner to consent to the transfer of the cattle-buying part
of their business to that city, and the year 1875 found him among the
cattle buyers in the Chicago Stock Yards.

The family found a home on Emerald Avenue near the Yards and
there Mr. Swift continued among his employes for twenty-three years.
His going to Chicago was, of course, the turning-point in his business
life. He did not go to Chicago as a packer, but as a cattle buyer. The
cattle raisers brought their cattle to the Chicago Stock Yards and sold
them to the buyers for the best price they could get. In 1875 the
"Yards" was a small affair in comparison with what it is today. The
packing business was smaller still as compared with the stupendous
enterprises of our time. But small as it then was it did not take
Mr. Swift long to discover that the future belonged, not to the buyer
and seller of cattle, but to the packer, and he quickly decided to enter
the meat-packing business.

As has been already said, the two men who were destined to become
the leading figures in the packing industry, P. D. Armour and G. F.
Swift, became citizens of Chicago in the same year, 1875. Mr. Armour
was Mr. Swift's senior by seven years, being forty-three years old.
Each man had certain advantages on his side in the business race before
them. Mr. Armour had been longer in business, was already a man
of large wealth, and for eight years had had packing interests in Chicago
which had finally become so large and profitable as to make his residence
in that city necessary. The sole advantage Mr. Swift had was his age.
He was only thirty-six years old. Though he had some accumulations,
his wealth did not compare with that of Mr. Armour. Probably in native
business genius and acquired abilities two men were never more equally
matched.

The packing business of 1877, when Mr. Swift entered it, was a
totally different affair from what it has since become — different not in
size only but in kind. The packers were essentially pork packers — pork
curers and packers. Curing and packing were winter jobs only, and

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 181

the distributing of the product followed during the succeeding warm
weather, when killing and curing could not be done. But already that
marvelous, yet simple, invention was being perfected which revolution-
ized or rather entirely made over the meat industry — the refrigerator
car. It was this car that transformed the packing industry into the
fresh-meat industry and opened the way for the undreamed-of develop-
ment of the business. I say undreamed-of development, and yet it was
G. F. Swift's prevision of developments that seemed to him possible that
led him to enter, not so much the packing, as the fresh-meat, industry.

It is said that this vision came to him very soon after he began
buying cattle in the Chicago Stock Yards to ship east. A picture is
drawn of him sitting on a fence at the Yards with Herbert Barnes,
urging Mr. Barnes to receive from him consignments of dressed beef
for the eastern market. These were to be at the outset cars of chilled
beef sent during the winter months. The agent was to "break down
the prejudice incident to all innovations and undertake the building up
of an eastern market for western beef." Mr. Swift was full of the
subject, and his enthusiasm prevailed. Having thus found an efficient
agent, in 1877 he entered the new business and became a packer.

In its beginnings the new business was preparing dressed beef and
sending it to eastern markets. The economy of sending dressed beef
instead of live cattle was enormous. It did not have to be fed and
watered on the way. A steer in the shape of dressed beef weighed more
than 40 per cent less than when alive. But obstacles in the way of mak-
ing the new business successful were well-nigh insurmountable. The
railroads were opposed to it because it reduced freight bills nearly one-
half. The eastern stockyards were hostile because it threatened their
business. The eastern butchers fought against it for the same reason.
Every sort of misrepresentation was employed to prejudice the eastern
public against Chicago dressed beef. It could, at that time, 1877, be
sent only in the winter, and even during the winter the eastern consumer
would have none of it. Mr. Swift, through his agents on the Atlantic
Coast, set to work to break down this prejudice and build up an eastern
market for western beef. And meantime, in the opening of the winter
of 1877, he began to make shipments. He took the greatest personal
pains with the cars in which they were made. As Charles Winans
tells the story:

He rigged up a car after his own ideas. He superintended the loading of it him-
self. He even took an active part in hanging the quarters of beef by ropes from the
2X4 timbers he had arranged. The car was sealed up and started on its journey

1 82 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

eastward Barnes was waiting for it when it came. It was with grave doubts

and misgivings that he opened it. But when, at last, he did open it and the quarters
of beef stood revealed as fresh and sweet and in better condition for food than when
they left Chicago, then Barnes knew that western dressed beef had got to the east to

stay there He knew that the task of uprooting the prejudices that were so

strongly planted was no easy one. But he set about it with the true New England
energy and persistence, and he kept at it until it was a fact accomplished.

The success achieved was such that Mr. Swift became more and
more determined that the eastern market must be supplied the whole
year round, spring, summer, and autumn, as well as winter.

This was to be the work of the refrigerator car, upon which his mind
had been fixed from the beginning. The devising of that car dated
back more than ten years. It had not been entirely successful. From
year to year it had been unproved but was still far from the perfection
it has since attained. Other packers were studying it with interest, but
perhaps Mr. Swift's mind comprehended its vast potentialities a little
sooner than did the minds of other men. But if the difficulties in the
way of introducing Chicago dressed beef into the eastern market in the
winter had been great, those confronting its introduction in the summer
by means of the refrigerator cars were immensely greater. To all
those before encountered were now added new ones with the railroads.
They were equipped to handle live stock. They had an abundance of
cars for shipping cattle. But they had no refrigerator cars, and they
would not have any. They doubted their value. They were not organ-
ized to run them and were skeptical about their ability to do it. Such
cars must be kept immaculately clean. Any speck of decay would
make them worse than worthless by tainting and thus destroying the
beef they carried. The older roads running most directly to the East
were particularly averse to having anything whatever to do with the
refrigerator car.

But with Mr. Swift difficulties existed only to be overcome. He
went to the Grand Trunk Railway, which, owing to its longer line to
the East, had little live-stock business, and proposed that the road
should unite with him in building up a business in shipping dressed beef,
providing refrigerator cars that would carry the product the year round.
He would furnish the business if they would provide the cars. The
road welcomed the proposal to accept the new business, but they would
not build refrigerator cars. "Will you haul the cars, if I build them
myself?" said Mr. Swift. The management answering "yes," he
arranged for the building of ten of the best refrigerator cars then made,
and put them into immediate use. This was the origin of his private

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 183

car lines. During the twenty-five years that followed, that is during
Mr. Swift's lifetime, these ten cars grew into thousands.

For the dressed-beef industry, which was the original business, did
not remain that alone. Eastern prejudice once broken down and Chicago
dressed beef being recognized as the best in the world, an insistent
demand arose for fresh mutton and then for fresh pork and finally for all
sorts of fresh meats, transported in refrigerator cars, and the dressed-
beef business expanded into the vast fresh-meat industry. Few things
in industrial and commercial history have wrought such a revolution in
business methods and expansion as the refrigerator car.

In 1905 Charles E. Russell, in Everybody's Magazine, told the story
of Mr. Swift's relation to the first successful use of the refrigerator car.
His articles were written in a far from friendly spirit, and this makes
all the more interesting the following enforced tribute to Mr. Swift:

A man named Tiffany had lately invented and was trying to introduce a refri-
gerator car Mr. Swift studied this scheme and gradually unfolded in his mind

a plan having the prospect of enormous profits — or enormous disaster. When his
plan was matured he offered it to certain railroad companies. It was merely that the
railroads should operate the refrigerator cars summer and winter, and that he should
furnish them with fresh dressed meats for the Eastern market. This proposal the
railroads promptly rejected.

Thus thrown upon his own resources Mr. Swift determined to make the desperate
cast alone. Commercial history has few instances of a courage more genuine. The
risk involved was great. The project was wholly new: not only demand and supply
had to be created, but all the vast and intricate machinery of marketing. Failure
meant utter ruin. Mr. Swift accepted the hazard. He built refrigerator cars under
the Tiffany and other patents and began to ship out dressed meats, winter and
summer.

The trade regarded the innovation as little less than insanity. Mr. Swift's
immediate downfall was generally prophesied on all sides, and truly only a giant in
will and resources could have triumphed, so beset. He must needs demonstrate that
the refrigerator car would do its work, that the meat would be perfectly preserved
and then he must overcome the deep-seated prejudices of the people, combat the
opposition of local butchers, establish markets and distribute products. All this he
did. People in the East found that Chicago dressed beef was better and cheaper
than theirs, the business slowly spread, branch houses were established in every
Eastern city and the Swift establishment began to thrive. By 1880 the experiment
was an indubitable success.

As soon as it was discovered that Mr. Swift was right a great revolution swept
over the meat and cattle industries, and eventually over the whole business of supplying
the public with perishable food products. The other packing houses at the stock-
yards went into the dressed-meat trade, refrigerator cars ran in. every direction, ship-
ments of cattle on the hoof declined, the great economy of the new process brought
saving to the customer and profit to the producer, and the new order began to work
vast and unforeseen changes in the life and customs of the nation.

1 84 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Mr. Russell goes on to declare " Gustavus F. Swift the chief founder
and almost the creator of the refrigator car as a factor in modern condi-
tions" and "really the most remarkable figure" in the packing industry
of Chicago. It is certain that the man who made the refrigerator car
the factor it has become in business was a benefactor of mankind, for
in the conditions of our modern life he feeds the world, carrying to every
part of it perishable foods of every other part.

The firm of Hathaway & Swift was no longer in existence. When in
1877-78 Mr. Swift decided that the future belonged, not to the cattle
buyers, but to the packers, and decided that the firm must enter the
packing business or take a back seat in the developments he foresaw,
Mr. Hathaway drew back. He refused to enter the packing business.
He clung to the idea that the true theory was to buy cattle in Chicago
and ship them alive to the eastern market. With his clear foresight
of impending changes Mr. Swift knew that this would be a fatal policy
to follow for any firm aspiring to the largest success. The partners
therefore separated.

This change did not immediately take Mr. Swift out of the business
of buying cattle. In an interview some years ago Louis F. Swift was
reported as saying:

I can remember when my father bought all the cattle we handled. He did not
need any help. Then came the time when he had to go to the packing house and
offices and I took up the buying alone and did all of it. My five brothers followed me.
I well remember when we were able to ship one whole car of beef in one day. It
marked an epoch in our business.

But while this evolution was going forward and the father was train-
ing his sons to assist him in Chicago, other important developments
were taking place. He saw that he needed a partner to care for the
eastern end of the business, someone in whose integrity and business
ability he had confidence. His mind turned to his brother Edwin C.
Swift, who was ten years his junior. Edwin had some time before gone
to the Pacific Coast. Letters sent to his last address in San Francisco
did not find him. They were returned. He had left San Francisco
without directions for forwarding his mail. But Mr. Swift had set his
mind on securing him as a partner, and he now did a characteristic
thing. He called in one of his cousins who was in his employ, handed
him a large sum of money, and said: "Take this, you will need it. I
want you to find Edwin. Last heard from he was in San Francisco.
Where he went from there it is up to you to find out. But fail not to
bring him to me. He may refuse and put up all kinds of objections, but

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 185

fail not to bring him. just the same." The messenger spent a week in San
Francisco without result. Finally he found the name he was after in a
railroad contractor's office and learned that the gang Swift was with was
several hundred miles away following the engineers across the Rocky
Mountains. After weeks of travel and many adventures he found his man
in charge of the gang with the engineers and explained to him his errand.
Edwin said, "What does G. F. want of me?" The cousin answered, "I
cannot tell. I know this. He wanted you enough to foot the expenses of
this trip. He charged me, ' Bring him without fail.'' ' Edwin said, " I am
here bound by contract. I cannot go if I would; so do not bother me
further." But the cousin had the Impressive and imperative charge of
G. F. so impressed on his mind that he continued, as he says, " to remind
him of his duty" daily, saying to him, "You must know G. F. would
not have gone to this trouble and expense unless it meant something of
great importance to you as well as to himself. You know Gustave. You
know he would not have done all this without good reasons. I have
been more than two months on this trip thus far and I will not return
without you." It took two weeks to part Edwin from his job and get
him started for Chicago and the fortune his brother was offering him.
An old horse was found, and they started through the wilderness for
Ogden, two hundred miles away, riding and walking alternately — the
old-time method, perhaps, of " ride and tie." I regret that I do not know
the story of the meeting of the brothers when the cousin delivered Edwin
at the office of his older brother. Edwin was then twenty-nine and G. F.
thirty-nine. Mr. Swift must have had a good deal of confidence in his
young brother, for he made him his partner and sent him to represent
the firm in the East, with headquarters in Boston. The business at the
eastern end was done under the trade name of Swift Brothers, but the
name of the company was G. F. Swift & Company.

It could not have been long after the refrigerator cars of Mr. Swift
began to appear in Boston that the following incident is said to have
occurred. I give it in the words of the cousin already quoted in a letter
written August 20, 1920, forty years after the event. Referring to the
fact that when Mr. Swift was an operator in Brighton he had dealt
quite extensively with the Stock Yards Bank at that place, frequently
borrowing money and having a well-established credit, the letter says :

When it became known that G. F. Swift was actually shipping dressed beef into
New England he happened to be in Brighton. He called at the bank for accommoda-
tion. They declined to loan him any more money. He said, "What is the matter?
Do I owe you anything?" "No." "How have I lost my credit?" The president
of the bank said, "If we lend you money you would probably use it in furthering your

1 86 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

scheme to injure our business." G. F. Swift told me this little story, enjoying it
very much. The parties got rather warm, when Mr. Swift started to leave the bank.
"Gentlemen," he called loudly, "Yes, I will cause grass to grow and flourish in your
yards" — a prediction which has long since been fulfilled. The opposition he found
in Lowell, Boston, New York, Baltimore, and other places and how he overcame it
is history.

He did not leave the task of finding an eastern market entirely to others.
His brother Edwin C. and he himself worked the field together and
separately. They adopted a liberal policy toward the trade. In the
more important centers they either engaged the leading meat dealer as
their agent or entered into partnership with him, to his great advantage.
They formed in a few years nearly a hundred of these partnerships.
They shared their prosperity with the trade. This policy was popular
and gained them both friends and business. It was a part of the service
they rendered the community, and not less a service because it proved
profitable. Mr. Swift had no sympathy with the practice of some
packers, whose first appearance in a town was as rivals to the butchers of
the place whom they were powerful enough to drive out of business.
In the early years Mr. Swift himself or his brother visited all the larger
cities and many smaller ones and arranged these agencies or business
associations, and wherever they went the refrigerator car followed. At
the beginning that car was far from perfect and occasioned many losses,
but every year it was improved. I have referred to the confident
prophecies of Mr. Swift's certain failure. Few now living know the
struggle through which he fought his way to success during the first
five years. But he did not fail. Every year found him on firmer
gound. Business increased. Operations expanded, and in 1885 the
firm was incorporated as Swift & Company with a capital stock of
$300,000. Mr. Swift became and remained president. This was only
seven or eight years after the founding of the business, and it was still,
in comparison with what it has since become, an infant industry. But
less than two years later, so rapid was the development, the capital was
increased to $3,000,000, a tenfold increase.

After the refrigerator car came the refrigerator ship, and with that
the extension of the business to England and the Continent. If the
introduction of Western dressed meat to the American seaboard had
been difficult, it can easily be understood that putting it on the overseas
market would seem impossible. But this tremendous achievement was
accomplished, not by Mr. Swift alone, but by all the packers. It is
said that Mr. Swift made as many as twenty trips abroad in this great
undertaking. He is pictured as getting up every morning in London

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 187

for weeks together at three o'clock and going to the great market and
attending personally to the handling of his beef, keeping it so openly
displayed that it could not be overlooked. The story is told of a great
dinner where the finest roast of beef that could be found was to be served.
It was prodigiously relished. "The Scotchmen claimed it for Scotland,
the Englishmen for England." The dealer who furnished it was sent
for and asked to tell the diners whether it was English beef or Scotch.
"Well, gentlemen," said the dealer, "that beef isn't English, nor yet
again is it Scotch. That beef is American chilled beef, dressed in
Chicago and sent here by refrigerator car and refrigerator steamer."
The campaign to conquer the English market was long and hard,
requiring immense courage, tact, and perseverance, but in the end it
was brilliantly successful.

This is not the story of a great business but of the man who made it
a great business. And yet the man so identified himself with the
business that it is difficult to differentiate the two. Mr. Swift origi-
nated the business, made it, worked out its marvelous success, and
dominated it to the end of his life. It is one of the marvels of the story
that this extraordinary man developed with the business that grew from
nothing to such gigantic proportions and expanded in so many directions
— a business that in the course of twenty-five years unfolded into such
a bewildering multiplicity of undertakings. But it never became too
great or multiform for this quiet, masterful man.

One of the most remarkable things in this evolution relates to the
by-products of the packing industry. In the early days the only by-
products to which any attention was given were the hides, tallow, and
tongues. Everything else that was not edible was sheer waste. Gradu-
ally in 1880 began the transformation of this waste into profitable
by-products. One of the first of these was oleomargarine. Then
followed glue. In the last year ot Mr. Swift's life the company turned
out eight million pounds of glue. Beef extract, pepsin, soap, oil, ferti-
lizer, and more than a score of other by-products followed, until every-
thing in or on a meat animal was utilized. All this meant vastly more
than profit to the packer. It meant more money to the farmer for his
live stock and to the public cheaper meat, and at the same time provided
many things, some never known before, that contribute to the general
welfare.

Mr. Swift began business in Chicago with little capital. He was a
young man, and one wonders where and how he acquired the skill that
enabled him to launch his new packing enterprise and meet the demands

1 88 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

its growth laid upon him. The first few years must have been filled
with anxiety, as they also were with unremitting toil. He worked
much longer hours than any of his employees. Mr. Elh's, the cousin,
joined him in Chicago in 1880 and before going to work was a guest in
his house. He says: "I found Mr. Swift a very busy man. He did
practically all the buying at that period. Five o'clock in the morn-
ing he was off on horseback, pants tucked into his boots — a streak
of dust visible much longer than he was." It was only extraordinary
financial ability and daily overtime toil that achieved the success of
those early years. He was matched against some of the ablest business
men of his day, or, for that matter, of any day, all of whom were strug-
gling for supremacy in what was a new industry in the world of business.
They drove each other to well-nigh superhuman efforts to carry their
products around the globe. Expansion and ever greater expansion
was called for. The outstanding illustration of this is the successive
establishment of branch houses. As has been said, Swift & Company
was incorporated in 1885 and within two years increased its capital
stock tenfold. Its first branch was established in 1888 in Kansas City,
Missouri. Two years later the Omaha branch followed. In 1892
another was built at St. Louis. Then followed St. Joseph, Missouri, in
1896-97, St. Paul in 1897, and Fort Worth, Texas, in 1902. These were
all completely equipped packing-plants, with stockyards adjacent,
each of which developed into a great enterprise. They were, in every
case, opened only after the most painstaking and exhaustive examination.
The establishment of the branch plant at St. Joseph illustrates Mr. Swift's
methods. His attention had been repeatedly called to St. Joseph as a
place presenting peculiar advantages for a Swift & Company packing-
house before he began to consider the matter seriously. When he
decided to take it up he accepted the views of no one else, but went
himself to St. Joseph to look the ground over. He not only examined
the town, its location, and its people, but "drove in a road wagon for
days and days in all directions, examined the quality of the soil, got facts
and figures about corn production, studied the transportation facilities,
made minute inquiries as to the character of the farming population,"
and only after this careful personal investigation decided to establish
the St. Joseph branch.

Meanwhile by this time, 1896, the capitalization of the company had
been increased to $15,000,000. From time to time it continued to grow
as the business expanded, reaching before 1903, $25,000,000 In that
year, the last year of his life, Mr. Swift had been in the packing business

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 189

twenty-five years. One ought to say, only twenty-five years. For in
that brief peroid he had not only founded an industry which in 1918
transacted a volume of business second only to that of the United States
Steel Corporation, but had himself built it up to vast proportions and
established the policies and methods which have led to its extraordinary
development.

It is not surprising that Mr. Swift did not live to an advanced age.
The physical, mental, and nervous strain of the twenty-five years
following 1877 were enough to wear out any man. He worked harder
than any man in his employ. His mind was incessantly engaged on
the new and perplexing problems of a business that developed and
expanded in every direction with bewildering rapidity. To meet the
demands for new capital to finance a business that grew with such leaps
and bounds and every day called aloud for more and more money which
must be supplied would have driven an ordinary man mad. Mr. Swift
grew with his business into an extraordinary man, but the Gargantuan
appetite of the business he had created for more and ever more funds
to finance it must have exhausted even his store of nervous energy.
He ought to be alive today, eighty-two years old. But he died, when he
was in the full maturity of his powers, at sixty-three, March 29, 1903.
At that time there were in the various establishments controlled by his
company above 7,000 employees, and the yearly business exceeded
$160,000,000.

"A man of vast and various capabilities, his genius for commercial
transactions and his excellent judgment placed him high among the
captains of industry." This was among the things said of him after
his death. "He began life in the humblest way among the sand dunes
of Cape Cod and closed it as one of the great powers in the indus-
trial world." The newspapers spoke of his industry, frugality, sharp-
sightedness, clear-headedness, cleverness in molding circumstances and
managing affairs, quiet resoluteness, concentration upon a given purpose,
reticence, and almost diffidence. It was said: "He talked h'ttle and
accomplished much and let the results talk for him. He was averse
to publicity, preferring to be unknown in any other way than through
his ordinary business connections. He was attentive to details and a
keen critic of the men in his employment." The pains he took in caring
for his meats is illustrated by the story of his calling a driver from the
seat of his wagon one day to show him where an inch or so of meat was
exposed and making him carefully cover it. If he was a keen critic of
his men he usually helped the victim by giving the criticism a humorous

i go BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

turn. He had a good salesman, sharp as a tack, but untidy in his
appearance. One day Mr. Swift met him when he had on a woolen
frock with a world of grease on it, which had not seen the laundry
for several weeks. Mr. Swift inquired what the market for tallow was.
Being told that it was about 4! cents he said he thought the price was
going lower, and if he were the salesman he would have the frock rendered
out in order to get the full market value of the tallow in it. The sales-
man took the lesson to heart, but he must have had, in later years, many
a laugh over the humorous way in which it had been taught. This vein
of humor was often in evidence. One of his buyers rode up to him in
the Yards one day and reminded him that he had told the buyer he might
take his vacation at any convenient time on giving a few days' notice,
and said he would like to go the following Monday. Just then a very
unlikely bunch of cattle passed. Mr. Swift asked who owned them.
The buyer said, "Swift & Company and I bought them." "When
are they going to be used?" Mr. Swift asked. The buyer said, "They
are cutters for Russell." Mr. Swift quickly responded that he was
sorry for Russell, and he was also sorry the cattle buyer had not started
on his vacation the Monday before.

One who grew up under Mr. Swift and is still a part of the great
business says of him: "While his criticisms were severe, they seemed
always based on a desire to build up a bigger, broader, and more self-
reliant manhood. He was one of those rare individuals whose contact
with his fellow-men was a constructive and beneficent influence." It
was this that "invariably made the criticism palatable."

There was something very human in this big man's relations with
his employes and sometimes something very Christian. A not very
desirable employe resigned and went to one of his competitors. A
public controversy springing up about the packers, this former employe
sent an anonymous letter to one of the daily papers assailing Mr. Swift
in a scandalous way. The original letter signed with the ex-employe's
name came into his hands. Time passed, and finally a minister came to
Mr. Swift to ask him to give this man a job, as he had lost his position
and was in desperate need. When shown the letter in which the man
had so misrepresented Mr. Swift the minister was dumbfounded and
returning to his protege told him he could do nothing for him. The
man himself then wrote to Mr. Swift, admitting that he had written
the letter, and appealed to him as a Christian to forgive him and if
possible give him the means of supporting his family. This Mr. Swift
did, and he remained on the pay-roll long after his employer's death.

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 191

There was once published a collection of maxims attributed to
Mr. Swift. The three that follow are, I think, authentic.

The best a man ever did shouldn't be his standard for the rest of his life.

When a clerk tells you that he must leave the office because it is 5 o'clock, rest
assured that you will never see his name over a front door.

The secret of all great undertakings is hard work and self-reliance. Given these
two qualities and a residence in the United States of America, a young man has nothing
else to ask for.

In beginning this sketch I spoke of the enduring impression made
on me by Mr. Swift's personality in the only interview I ever had with
him. I went to the Stock Yards rather expecting he would be too
busy to see me. He was not in his office, and I found him outside
apparently at leisure. His talk was that of any ordinary man of business.
But his face took me wholly by surprise. It was not the face of a typical
business man, but that of a scholar, or a poet, or an artist. It looked like
the face of a man who might see visions and dream dreams. And his fun-
damental characteristic as a man of affairs was his business imagination.
From his youth up he was always seeing possibilities that other men could
not see. He was like an explorer in a new country. Every step in advance
opened up new vistas. Every new achievement gave him a vision of
something bigger beyond. He was a man of business vision. Other
men sometimes scoffed at what they called his dreams. His partner left
him when he proposed to sell Chicago dressed beef in eastern cities.
When he saw the possibilities of the refrigerator car and had to borrow
money he applied to a relative who had it to lend and who made this
reply to his appeal for a loan, " Stave, I will not trust you with a dollar in
your wild west scheme." Men about the Stock Yards referred to him
as "that crazy man, Swift." But his visions were not of the "baseless
fabric" sort. His idealism was of the most severely practical kind.
His business imagination never played him false. It might soar among
the clouds, but his Cape Cod conservatism kept his feet firmly on the
ground, and he walked with sure steps to his high achievements.

Behind all his plans was the driving-power of tremendous and tireless
energy. He worked early and late. When he was his own cattle buyer
he was up and off on horseback at five o'clock in the morning. His
indomitable energy and purpose were never more in evidence than in
the triumphant campaign to make a market, against powerful combina-
tions, for his superior product in eastern cities and in England. For
example, having sent two or three carloads of dressed beef to Lowell,
Massachusetts, which were readily sold, the market men combined

192 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

against him, agreeing to buy no more meat from him, signing a bond to
that effect. The next carload, therefore, at the end of the first day
had made no sales. The agent in charge of the car wired to Mr. Swift
the information of what had taken place and said, "No sale for beef in
Lowell. Shall I ship the car to Lawrence or where ?" As quick as the
telegraph wires could bring it, the message came back, " Sell it in Lowell."
The second night the agent again wired, "No sales," and again asked,
"Where shall I sell it ?" He had hardly got his message away when Mr.
Swift flashed back, "Sell it in Lowell." The next day anyone in Lowell
could buy Chicago dressed beef at his own price, and the carload was sold.
A few days later Mr. Swift arrived in Lowell, in a few hours had a lot
purchased, trackage secured, and lumber for a market on the ground.
Before the building was finished, Mr. Swift being again in town, one
of the principal market men called on him, acknowledged that he had
been in the combination against him, and having assumed the $500 loss
on the carload of meat that had been sacrificed, was received into associa-
tion, and took charge of the new market. It was such purpose and
energy, combined with the superiority of his product, that won for him
a place in the eastern market. His success was no happy accident.
He was no lucky child of fortune. He toiled as few men toil. He
contended with difficulties such as few men meet, and he did it with
surpassing courage, patience, perseverance, purpose, and success.

While all this was true, it was also true that he knew how to relax,
and when the time came for rest he did not wish his rest to be disturbed.
Like so many other men of tremendous driving-power he was a good
sleeper when the time for sleep came. "It was one of his chief points,"
says one who knows, "that it was necessary to have plenty of sleep to
be efficient." He was therefore usually in bed by ten o'clock and
refused to have his hours of rest broken into even by calls that to
the ordinary man would have seemed imperative. There is a well-
authenticated story that late one night the telephone rang persistently
and roused one of the maids. She called Mr. Swift, but he refused to go to
the telephone. The maid, however, was troubled and said they wanted
to tell him that "his packing-house was burning down." All he said
was, "Have them tell me what happened at seven o'clock in the
morning." Extinguishing the fire was not his part of the business.
That would not begin till after breakfast. He knew how to conserve
his strength and to apply it when it would be effective.

It must be added to all this that he had an undoubted genius for
business. Some men gain wealth because opportunities are thrust

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 193

upon them. But opportunity never knocked at G. F. Swift's door.
It was he that knocked at her door, or, rather, he beat the door down
and forced an entrance. It was so when, to the astonishment of all
the other boys of the neighborhood, he borrowed money and went to
Brighton for his first drove of pigs. It was so when, hardly more than
a boy, he invested his small savings in the business of buying and selling
cattle. He forced the door of opportunity when he took his family to
Chicago and risked the capital he acquired in matching his skill as a
dealer against the veteran traders of the Stock Yards. Most of all was
this true when he conceived the daring project of sending Chicago chilled
beef to the eastern market and immediately afterward ventured every-
thing on the success of the refrigerator car. What looks now like a
victorious march to great success was in reality a ceaseless struggle
against odds in which every step was won by a stroke of sheer business
genius.

He developed as a business man naturally and surely with every
new enlargement of his affairs. For the first twenty years this was a
gradual growth. But when in 1877-78 he founded an enterprise which
quickly and beyond any possible forecast developed into a vast business
industry the situation changed suddenly and radically. The difficulties
were enormous, the complications beyond measure, the demands on
his business abilities new, complex, incalculable. His power to borrow
money in large sums, his inventive genius in connection with his chilling-
rooms and the imperfect refrigerator car, his tact and resourcefulness
in finding markets for his goods, his ability to manage a new and great
and rapidly growing business, all were taxed to the utmost. The
wonder is that he grew as fast as the business did and at every stage of
its development measured up to its demands. He had a microscopic
and a telescopic mind. He had an eye on and kept in touch with the
smallest details of his business. The color of the paint on his wagons
and cars he determined. He wrote explicit directions to his representa-
tives everywhere, usually closing his letters with these words: "Please
answer and say that you have carried out these instructions." In the
same way he decided the great questions of policy. He was equally
at home in the least things and the greatest. He saw clearly the things
under his eye, but just as clearly the things far off.

Mr. Swift became a man of large wealth. But the accumulation of
wealth was by no means his supreme aim in life. He was enamored not
of money but of achievement. For many years he lived in a modest
home on Emerald Avenue near the Stock Yards and among his em-

1 94 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

ployes. He had no taste for display. He had none of the arrogance of
wealth. He valued money for what he could do with it in his developing
business and in helping others. The extraordinary expansion of his
business with its ever-growing demands for the investment of new capital
absorbed his profits for some years, but as soon as he began to see his
way clearly he began to give widely and freely. Possibly 1890, the year I
met him, was not far from the beginning of this period of larger and
freer giving. He gave a large sum toward building the Annie May
Swift Hall at Northwestern University, a memorial of a daughter Mr.
and Mrs. Swift had lost in 1889, when she was twenty-two years old.
He gave the initial $25,000 for the Hyde Park Y.M.C.A. building.

The wideness of his philanthropies may be judged by the following
statement made at his funeral: "His name is hidden in the corner
stones of a thousand churches and colleges." Allowing for exaggeration,
the words suggest the liberality and catholicity of his giving. What has
been said to me by the best-informed man on the subject in Chicago is
undoubtedly true, that if he had lived to a more advanced age he would
have been known as one of our greatest Chicago givers.

The last paragraph indicates that Mr. Swift had interests outside his
business. That, indeed, was absorbing enough to leave little room for
anything else. It left him scant time for general society. He was too
busy for club life. He shrank from publicity and did not take that
interest or that place in public affairs which a man of his abilities and
wealth, perhaps, should have taken. It is not impossible that he would
have done this had his life been prolonged. It was unfortunately cut
short just as he was reaching the time when his sons began to relieve
him from the more absorbing cares and labors of business. Had he
lived they would have given him opportunities for leisure he had not
enjoyed since he was fourteen years old. Whether he would have
taken these opportunities I do not know.

But he had two great interests outside his business. These were
his family and the church. I have already spoken of the birth of six
children who came to Mr. and Mrs. Swift before they made their home
in Chicago in 1875. Five more came to them in that city, Herbert L.,
George Hastings, Gustavus F., Jr., Ruth May, and Harold Higgins —
the last a trustee of the University of Chicago, of which he is an alumnus.
Ten of these children lived to maturity. This large family was, in
itself, enough to keep a father and a mother both busy. That they were
not neglected is evident from the way in which the sons grew up to take
their father's place in the great and growing industry he had established.

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 195

The oldest son, Louis F. Swift, succeeded to the presidency, and his
younger brothers were united with him in the management. It is an
unusual example of family solidarity, with the mother still living as the
center of the family life. I do not need to point out how efficiently the
sons have guided the remarkable development of the great business left
in their hands. Their father left it when the annual transactions were
$160,000,000, and the sons have increased these to over $1,200,000,000.
The children not only inherited a great business from their father, but
his spirit of liberality seems also to have descended to them, the second
inheritance being better than the first.

When Mr. Swift died he said in his will that Mrs. Swift understood
his views and wishes as to benevolences, and he fully trusted her to
carry them out. She has very nobly done this and has been as
unobtrusive in her large benevolences as was her husband before her.

Mr. Swift was as devoted a son as he was a husband and father.
His father dying soon after he made his home in Chicago, his mother
became the object of his tender care. The old house was taken down
and a new and much finer one built for his mother, and her declining
years made comfortable by his constant care.

Mr. Swift united with the Methodist church of his native place in
his youth, and religion was as we have seen one of the three great interests
of his life. The husband and wife were one in their devotion to the
church. On February 18, 1877, less than two years after they settled
in Chicago, the Winter Street, now Union Avenue, Methodist Church
was organized with a membership of nine persons. Among these were
Mr. and Mrs. Swift. Mr. Swift was made a trustee and also a steward.
His home on Emerald Avenue was within three blocks of the church,
and the meetings of the official boards of the church were frequently
held there. He gave the church the same wise thought and faithful
service he gave to his business. He was not only most faithful in his
attendance at church services but manifested a living interest in the
attendance of his employes. Rev. J. F. Clancy, of the Union Avenue
Church, says:

It was no unusual thing for him, in case of absence from church services of his
employes who were members or attendants of the church, to call them into his office
and in a fatherly way impress on them the value of the church and its services; and
through his strong and far-reaching influence many persons were brought into a Chris-
tian experience and into useful membership in the church Mr. Swift was never

too busy for the work of the church He was much interested in the problems

and work of city missions and he gave valuable aid in establishing and strengthening
churches in needy places.

196 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

For twenty years Mr. Swift continued to live on Emerald Avenue
among or very near his employes. In 1898 he moved two miles directly
east and built a spacious house in a spacious lot at 4848 Ellis Avenue.
His attention was immediately centered on a new religious enterprise,
but he neither forgot nor neglected the little church near the Stock
Yards, but continued his official relations with it and his liberal interest
in it.

The new religious work that followed his removal was the founding
of the St. James' Methodist Church, which has become one of the great
churches of Chicago. He and the late N. W. Harris were ultimately
associated in the origin and development of St. James. The first meet-
ing of the first board of trustees was held in Mr. Swift's house, Septem-
ber 7, 1895, while he still lived on Emerald Avenue. He and Mr. Harris
gave themselves without stint to the upbuilding of the church. When
a thing needed to be done which seemed to him to depend on the two of
them, it is said that Mr. Swift would say, "Well I will give half of it
and, Harris, you give the other hah0." I have no doubt it was sometimes
the other way round. After his death, in token of their affectionate
remembrance of him, the people made the north window of the church
a memorial of Mr. Swift. Six years later his portrait was hung in one of
the church rooms, and in 1914-15 Mrs. Swift and her children presented
to the church the great memorial organ. Seven years before this,

in 1907 the Union Avenue Parish House, consisting of a parsonage, gymnasium,
baths, bowling alleys, library, and reading room, and, later, a playground, both con-
nected with the Union Avenue Church, were given and endowed by Mrs. G. F. Swift
and the other members of her family, as a memorial to Mr. Swift, in the place where,
and among the people with whom he had lived for many years and raised his family.
These institutions are now ministering in a very helpful way to many young people
and are open to Protestant, Roman Catholic and Jew alike.

It is interesting to hear the pastor, Mr. Clancy, add to this statement that

Mrs. G. F. Swift, the daughter, Mrs. Helen Swift Neilson and the six sons, all maintain
a fine, strong interest in Union Avenue Church and Parish House, and contribute
regularly and liberally for the support of the church. Mr. Louis F. Swift is one of the
trustees of the church and Mr. Edward F. Swift and Mr. G. F. Swift, Jr., are members
of the Parish House Board of Managers.

Devotion to a great memory has not exhausted itself in these acts of
beneficence, but has added one of the most beautiful of all in the G. F.
Swift Memorial Church in Sagamore, the home of his boyhood and the
place of his spiritual birth.

In the final estimate of a man's life the decisive question is not,
Did he gain wealth and power ? but, Did he serve mankind ? Mr. Swift

GUSTAVUS FRANKLIN SWIFT 197

certainly achieved an illustrious success in business, and in doing
this displayed extraordinary qualities. But of him also it must be asked,
Did he serve his fellow-men ? One thing is clear, that Mr. Swift and
his associates in the packing industry, in the best way that has so far
been devised, did one inestimable service, among many others, in feed-
ing the world. It is difficult to see how this could have been done
without the packer so economically and successfully, if indeed it could
have been done at all. Mr. Swift was consciously striving to serve his
generation, and his gigantic labors were a service beyond estimate to
the public welfare.

This sketch began with an account of a gift by Mr. Swift toward
the founding of the University of Chicago and of later frequent and
most generous contributions by his wife and children to the same institu-
tion. But these contributions only hint at the ceaseless flow of similar
gifts to churches, colleges, universities, missions, the Y.M.C.A., the
Y.W.C.A., hospitals, charities. The fountain of benevolence opened
by Mr. Swift during his own lifetime has never ceased to flow but has
rather sent out increasing and widening streams to bless the world.

An old employe and trusted friend, having read this sketch, wishes
me to conclude it with these words: "A rugged faith in his Christian
belief, a self-reliant hope and confidence in life and its problems, and
a thoughtful charity for mankind sum up the lovable characteristics of
this splendid man."

PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOK, LENOX
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

CHARLES HITCHCOCK

CHARLES HITCHCOCK

The study of American genealogies is a fascinating pursuit. The
student is constantly discovering interesting and surprising things. The
sketch of Sidney A. Kent relates how his ancestors settled about 1670
the wilderness of Suffield, Connecticut. Charles Hitchcock was a
prominent lawyer, as Mr. Kent was a prominent business man of Chicago.
While Mrs. Kent's forefathers were subduing the Suffield wilderness, the
ancestors of Mr. Hitchcock were hewing out homes for themselves in
the same wilderness not more than five miles to the north, in the town
of Springfield, Massachusetts, being allotted lands on the border of
Suffield. The tract, indeed, was so near being a part of Suffield that it
was expressly stipulated that care must be taken not to encroach on
that town's domain. The ancestors were neighbors and no doubt
acquaintances. Two hundred years later the two men descended from
them were neighbors and acquaintances in a great city nearly a thousand
miles away.

The writer can recall the names of only a dozen men of his native
village on the Hudson River. One of these men was Dwight Hitchcock,
a direct descendant of the Hitchcocks of Springfield, who in 1853 sold
to my father the steam foundry of the village. He had wandered only
a little more than a hundred miles from the home of his fathers.

The earliest ancestor of Charles Hitchcock in America was Luke,
who became temporarily a citizen of New Haven about 1644, six years
after what was then the colony of New Haven was founded. After
the lapse of a hundred and fifty years, a descendant put on record the
following account of Luke Hitchcock:

He had received a large tract of land lying in the eastern part of New England and
came out with a view of taking possession of the same. When he arrived he found
it inhabited by numerous hordes of natives determined to resist all encroachments of
the English. In this situation he determined to abandon the enterprise, and settled
in Wethersfield (Connecticut) . He was peculiarly fortunate in cultivating the friend-
ship of the Indians, who, in testimony of their attachment, gave him a deed to the
town of Farmington. This deed was a clear and valid title to the land, but was so little
thought of that it was destroyed by his wife, who used it to cover a pie in the oven.

It is quite consistent with this account that when Luke Hitchcock
first appeared in New England he seems to have been uncertain where

199

200 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

he should settle. Matthias Hitchcock, who was probably his brother,
was one of the founders of New Haven in 1638. When Luke followed
him five or six years later, he took the freeman's oath, but after a few
months' stay in New Haven departed for Wethersfield, thirty miles
to the north. There he married into a leading family and made the
town his home. When he died in 1659 his estate was valued at $2,260,
which shows him to have been a forehanded man. A year or two after his
death his widow migrated thirty miles farther north to Springfield, Massa-
chusetts, twenty-five years after the Pynchons founded that settlement.

The widow Hitchcock brought with her two sons, John and Luke.
The Hitchcock family, therefore, though not numbered among the
founders, were very early settlers of Springfield. The boys growing to
manhood rose to prominence and may be justly regarded as among
the fathers of the town. Both the Hitchcocks were among the most
substantial citizens, as were their sons after them.

We are concerned with Luke, the younger of the two brothers.
Taught the shoemaker's trade, a fundamental and profitable industry
of that day, he later became the proprietor of the village hotel, no doubt
known in the speech of the time as Hitchcock's Tavern. He was a
captain in the militia and sheriff of the county which then included what
are now the counties of Hampshire, Hampden, Franklin, and Berk-
shire, about one-third of the area of the state. He was seven times
selectman of Springfield and nine times representative in the General
Court of Massachusetts.

His wife's family, counting from her grandfather, Henry Burt,
one of the most prominent of the first settlers, numbers among its
descendants President Grover Cleveland, Silas Wright, one of the
governors of New York, Ethan Allen, of revolutionary fame, Ezra
Stiles, former president of Yale College, and Oliver Wendell Holmes,
author of the A utocrat of the Breakfast Table.

Among the sons of this second Luke was Ebenezer, born in 1694,
who married Mary Sheldon, granddaughter of Colonel John Pynchon,
the great man of early Springfield, and a direct descendant of Gilbert
Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury. Their son, Gad Hitchcock, was
born in Springfield, February 22, 1719, and was graduated from Harvard
College in 1743. On his mother's side Gad was descended from Colonel
Pynchon and George Willis, governor of Connecticut. He was one of
the most picturesque and distinguished clergymen of the Massachusetts
of the eighteenth century. He was ordained as pastor over the Con-
gregational church in Hanson, Plymouth County, in 1748. The church

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 201

invited him to become its pastor at a salary of $500. He replied that
he would be glad to settle in Hanson, but would need a stipend of $2,000.
His terms were immediately accepted and he continued as pastor of the
church till 1803, a period of fifty-five years. He was an able and popu-
lar preacher, being often called upon to preach on important occasions.

In 1774 he preached the annual election sermon in Boston. An
ardent patriot, he spoke on the text, "When the righteous are in
authority the people rejoice; but when the wicked bear rule the people
mourn." General Gage, the royal governor, was present, but the
courageous preacher did not hesitate to enter a strong protest against
tyranny and to make an earnest plea for liberty. Later in the same
year Plymouth invited him to preach the anniversary sermon on Fore-
fathers' Day. It is stated as an established fact that "the first news-
paper printed in the Old Colony was at Plymouth in 1786." Dr.
Hitchcock's sermon was preached twelve years before that date. But
seven days later, on December 29, 1774, Plymouth appointed a com-
mittee " to wait on the Revd. Gad Hitchcock with the thanks of this
town for his ingenious & Learned discourse delivered on 22nd Instant,
being the Anniversary of the landing of our Fathers in this Place, and
request a Copy for the Press." For what press, if not for that of Plym-
outh, and was there a newspaper printed in Plymouth as early as 1774 ?

The Reverend Gad Hitchcock served as an occasional chaplain in
the patriot army and in 1780 was chosen a member of the convention
which framed the first constitution of Massachusetts, doing for that
state the same honorable service which his great-grandson did for
Illinois ninety years later.

The only son of Dr. Gad Hitchcock, born in 1749 and graduated
from Harvard in 1768, bore his name, Gad, and was the Hanson physi-
cian for more years than the father was the Hanson pastor, living to his
eighty-seventh year, 1835. He was the father of twelve children. One
of these was Charles, born September 4, 1794, who became a farmer in
his native town. He married Abigail L. Hall, a daughter of one of the
first families of the adjacent town of Pembroke, on the border of which
the farm was located.

Their son, Charles Hitchcock, with whom this sketch is concerned,
was bom on his father's farm April 4, 1827. The town of Hanson is a
part of Plymouth County and hardly more than ten miles northwest of
Plymouth Rock. It is a town of farms, Hanson and North and South
Hanson being insignificant hamlets with an aggregate population of
only a few hundreds. It is a pleasant countryside of small groves

202 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

and small farms, watercourses and lakelets, the soil fairly fertile, the
surface undulating, a quietly picturesque district. The Atlantic is
eight or ten miles distant and Boston only twenty miles away. It
was a pleasant region in which to be born and spend one's boyhood,
almost within sight of the ocean, in the environs of a famous city, and
surrounded by points of great historic interest.

The boy Charles bore a name highly honored in the community
and the family was in fairly comfortable circumstances. There were
three sons and two daughters, Charles being the oldest of the five. He was ,
therefore, his father's principal assistant on the farm as he grew toward
the stature of a man. But he also availed himself of every advantage
which the schools of Hanson and Pembroke could give him. So rapid
was his improvement in school and such was his reputation for scholar-
ship that, while he was still a boy, he began to be in demand as a school
teacher. The way to the academy and college was open before him.
The demands of the farm on his time and the inadequacy of the neighbor-
ing schools had delayed his preparation, indeed, but only delayed it. He
had reached the age of seventeen and was pushing forward his studies
as best he could when that great tragedy of a boy's life occurred — the
death of his father. When he died in 1844, the father was only fifty
years old. He left a family of young children, and Charles, the boy of
seventeen, became the mother's chief dependence and was recognized
as the head of the household. Fortunately he was thoughtful, mature
for his years, self-reliant, and resourceful. A very tender relation of
mutual responsibility and affection grew up between the mother and
her oldest son. She began to live for him and he to live for her in their
common responsibility for the family.

The natural and easy way for the boy was to step into his father's
place in the management of the farm and thus provide for the common
support until the younger boys and girls should reach maturity. But
there had been born in young Hitchcock an ambition for learning, that
extraordinary human development which the ordinary man cannot
understand. This boy believed he could do more for his mother, for
his brothers and sisters, and for himself if he disciplined his mind into
an instrument of power than he could possibly do by working with his
hands in the cultivation of a small farm. He was by nature a student.
Already, as opportunity offered, he was teaching school, and he now
redoubled his efforts on the farm and in teaching. In the schools of
Hanson and Pembroke and in private study he sought to hasten his
preparation for college. This was, of course, necessarily delayed by the

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 203

burdens resting on his young shoulders, but by dint of determination
and perseverance he succeeded in entering Phillips-Andover Academy
in the spring of 1846, when about nineteen years old. One of his class-
mates has said of this period of his life: "He had at that time great
vigor of body and mind. In the academy he applied himself to all
the studies preparatory for college with indomitable industry, and it
soon became manifest to the teachers and to his fellow-students that he
had no superior there in ability to make solid acquisitions in learning.
In something less than half the time prescribed by the academy for
the preparatory course of study, he became admirably fitted for college."
His vacations were spent in teaching school or doing what was essen-
tial on the farm and arranging for the final disposition of that property.
In 1847 ne entered Dartmouth College. His grandfather, the
physician, and his great-grandfather, the Hanson pastor for so many
years, were both graduates of Harvard. Why did he pass by that
famous institution to take his college course in the wilds of New Hamp-
shire and in the little village of Hanover, which in 1847, outside the
faculty and students, could not have had five hundred inhabitants?
Was it because he lived almost in sight of Marshfield, the home of
Daniel Webster, who was the most distinguished graduate of Dart-
mouth, and whose fame, during the youth of Charles Hitchcock, filled
the land ? Marshfield was hardly five miles from Hanson. No doubt
the boy often saw the great man and knew him, as Webster was him-
self a farmer and cultivated exceedingly cordial terms of friendship
with the farmers of that whole region. He was unaffectedly attached
to them and they were devoted to him. In his Life George Ticknor
Curtis says: "It was a common remark that, when Mr. Webster was
at home, a stranger might discover it anywhere within ten miles of
his house in the looks of the inhabitants." It is natural to suppose
that Webster, knowing that here was a promising candidate for college,
encouraged young Hitchcock and commended Dartmouth to him.
However this may be, the autumn of 1847 found him in that institution.
The buildings of the college were then few in number. Many students
found it necessary to find rooms and board in the village. The boy
and his mother had disposed of the farm, moved to Hanover, and
opened a student boarding-house. It was really a large family. The
mother made a home for boys who, for the time being, needed a mother's
thought and care. Daniel L. Shorey, young Hitchcock's roommate
at Andover, became a member of the family and again shared his room
throughout their college course.

204 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

It was the day of small colleges. Harvard had only 300 under-
graduates, and there were 200 at Dartmouth. The village of Hanover
is about fifty miles north of the Massachusetts line and on the extreme
western border of New Hampshire. It stands on a plain west of the
Connecticut, one hundred and eighty feet above that river. The
surrounding country is diversified with hills and valleys, with mountains
looming above the nearer hills. In commending it as a location for
a college, one writer says: "The uniform temperature of the climate,
the pleasantness of the village, the healthfulness of the situation, the
beautiful and romantic scenery .... the many pleasant resorts, all
contribute to render it, hi every essential, a seat of literature and

science The gradually rising Green Hills of Vermont, seen in

the distance, furnish a picture not soon forgotten." At the time when
Charles Hitchcock was a student the village was very small, and,
practically, the college — with its faculty, students, employees, and
those who served them in one way or another — the college was the
village. It was a college community in a sense true, probably, of no
other community in our country. The life of the college was the life
of the community. This still remains true. In The Story of Dart-
mouth College, published in 1914, Wilder D. Quint says: "Today there
is not a man, woman, or child in the village but is dependent in some way
upon the college for a livelihood. She is the summum bonum of Hanover
and without her the place would revert to nature."

At Dartmouth young Hitchcock spent the four years from 1847
to 1851, from his twentieth to his twenty-fourth year. His class num-
bered forty-six. Among them, as has been said, was Daniel L. Shorey,
who was Hitchcock's roommate and remained his close, lifelong friend.
Mr. Shorey was himself no mean scholar, yet he says: "For seven or
eight years following our meeting in Andover in the spring of 1846, we
were companions in study, being in the same classes in the academy,

at college, and at the law school In college he immediately

took and held the highest rank. He was the unquestioned leader of
his class from the beginning. Nor did he devote himself to the required
studies of the college only. His reading and study covered a wide
field beyond— in political economy, philosophy, history, and throughout
the whole range of the English classics." The life of the students of that
day, before the era of athletics and other college activities of our time,
centered, outside the classroom, very largely about the fraternity chapters.
The two chums were Alpha Delts and both achieved membership for
high scholarship in Phi Beta Kappa. But with his mother's large

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 205

family to care for the son must have had duties, outside his college
work, that kept him very busily employed.

Before his graduation, probably before entering college, Mr. Hitch-
cock had chosen the law as his profession. Hanover being his home
at the time of his graduation in 1851, he entered the law office of Daniel
Blaisdell, who was treasurer of Dartmouth College, where he spent a
year in preliminary law studies. At the end of that time an oppor-
tunity came to him to go to Washington as a teacher of Greek and
Latin in an academy. It was so good a chance to become acquainted
with life in the national capital, and at the same time earn funds needed
for further study, that he accepted the proffer made to him and with his
friend Shorey, who seems to have received a similar invitation, spent
the year 1852-53 in teaching in that city. He seems also to have done
some lecturing on scientific topics and gained some reputation as a
teacher and scholar. Meantime he continued his law studies under
the guidance of the Honorable Joseph Bradley. Declining tempting
invitations to continue teaching, he entered the law school of Harvard
in 1853. Having been pursuing the study of law for two years or more
under the guidance of very competent lawyers, and being twenty-six
years old, he found no difficulty in entering the Senior class and graduat-
ing at the end of one year, in 1854. He had kept up his law-office
work at the same time, having a desk during the year with Harvey
Jewell, of Boston.

Charles Hitchcock was now twenty-seven years of age. He had
finished the preparatory work and was ready to enter on his career.
He had come face to face with that question which many young men
find so difficult to answer, Where shall I do the work of my life ? Strangely
enough, he lost no time in coming to a decision. Doubtless he had
decided the question long before. During his youth the miracle of
Chicago had happened. When he was a boy of seven the hamlet of
Chicago had a population of about five hundred. Twenty years later,
in 1854, it was a city of 66,000 people, in its extraordinary growth
the wonder city of America. It was evident, moreover, that it had
only just begun to grow. Ambitious young men of every state felt
its attractive power. None felt it more strongly than Charles Hitch-
cock. He hardly waited for the ink to dry on his diploma before he
was on his way to Chicago. To get his bearings and become acquainted
with the courts and laws of Illinois and with the city in which he was
to practice, he entered the law office of Williams and Woodbridge and
was admitted to the bar of the state on October 10, 1854, only a few

206 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

weeks after leaving the Harvard Law School. Erastus L. Williams
became later "long and favorably known" as judge of the Circuit
Court of Cook County. John Woodbridge had a long and successful
career at the Chicago bar. Both became lasting friends and warm
admirers of Mr. Hitchcock. He was not a mere clerk in their office, but
a lawyer who began at once, with the advantage of connection with a
successful firm, to feel his way into practice. He remained with this
firm two years, with much profit to himself in preparing him to enter
with good hope of success into practice on his own account.

In 1856 Mr. Hitchcock had become acquainted with the life and
people, the methods of business and of law practice in Chicago, and
deciding that the time had come to have an office of his own, he found
a partner and established the firm of Hitchcock and Goodwin. For
some reason unknown to the writer the partnership continued for one
year only. Mr. Hitchcock then became the partner of the well-known
and successful Benjamin E. Gallup, the firm name being Gallup and
Hitchcock. Mr. Gallup was interested in real estate and real-estate
law, and cases having to do with commercial law fell naturally and
more and more completely to Mr. Hitchcock. He ordinarily represented
the firm in court. The connection with Mr. Gallup continued with
success for nine years, till 1866. It was then dissolved. Meantime
Mr. Hitchcock had formed an intimate friendship with Charles A.
Dupee. The latter had been in 1856-58 principal of Chicago's first
high school, which had then been opened in the new high-school build-
ing on West Madison, east of Desplaines Street. He had later entered
on the practice of law. Both men were of unusual scholarly tastes
and attainments. Both were able lawyers. The close friendship
they had formed, which was an enduring one, naturally resulted in a
partnership which continued to the end of Mr. Hitchcock's life. The
firm was known as Hitchcock and Dupee, and was established in 1866.
A young man named Evarts, who had been with Gallup and Hitchcock,
came into the new office and in 1869 became a member of the firm,
which then took the name of Hitchcock, Dupee, and Evarts. Mr.
Evarts was interested in patent law and, being encouraged by Mr. Hitch-
cock to develop his talent for that line of practice, did this with such
a growing clientele that he soon found it was likely to become a success-
ful business by itself. With the approval and encouragement of the
older partners, therefore, in 1872 or 1873 he withdrew from the firm
and established a patent-law business which he followed for the rest of
his life, more than forty years. Meantime another young man, Noble

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 207

B. Judah, came into the office and developed qualities which in 1875
made him a member of the firm, which then became Hitchcock, Dupee,
and Judah, and so continued to the end of Mr. Hitchcock's life.

As Mr. Hitchcock was twenty-nine years old when he began his
independent practice, he was more mature than most young lawyers
just starting in business for themselves. He had profited by his experi-
ence in four good offices, and had been studying law in offices and law
school for five or six years. He had innate gifts for success at the bar.
His rise, therefore, was unusually rapid and his success great. In the
third quarter of the last century Chicago had a very able bar. Many
members of it were men of brilliant attainments and wide reputation.
But not many years passed after Mr. Hitchcock entered their ranks
before he reached a very high place among them. Judge Williams, in
whose office he spent his first two years in Chicago, said of him twenty-
six years later: "For this more than a quarter of a century it can be
said .... Charles Hitchcock had no superior at the bar or upon the
bench of this city." John M. Palmer, general, governer, senator, said
of him in the Bench and Bar of Illinois: " Mr. Hitchcock was, in some
respects, one of the ablest lawyers who ever practiced at our bar."

Mr. Hitchcock had hardly begun to practice when he won the most
important suit of his career — the suit for the heart and hand of Annie
McClure, who became Mrs. Hitchcock in 1860. She was only twenty-
one years old, but, though so young, was one of the "old settlers" of
Chicago. The father of Mrs. Hitchcock, James McClure, was a native
of the north of Ireland, of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock. He had
come to this country to join an older brother, a Philadelphia architect,
and, studying that profession, had assisted in building the Philadelphia
customhouse. His health showing signs of failure, he was led by
glowing accounts of the invigorating climate of northern Illinois to join
the western stream of migration which was already flowing strong in 1837.
Brothers had preceded him to Illinois and they chose for him a farm in
Lake County, forty miles north of Chicago and" six miles west of where
Waukegan now stands, and plowed round it a deep furrow to mark
its boundaries. With his wife and three children Mr. McClure pro-
ceeded by boat to Albany, thence by the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and
reached Chicago by way of the Great Lakes, fifteen years before the
first railroad from the East had laid its tracks to that city. Had
the young architect remained in Chicago he would not only have escaped
the toils, privations, and sufferings of Illinois pioneer life of that day,
but would certainly have prospered in a profession in which the young

208 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

city offered every opportunity for success. But the farm had been
bought and awaited him and he had learned farming in his youth, and
he went forth to a harder struggle with pioneer conditions than had
faced the forefathers of Mr. Hitchcock two hundred years before in
the New England wilderness. Mrs. Hitchcock has written interesting
reminiscences of that struggle. She tells how the effort to subdue and
tame and make productive a wild Illinois prairie farm eighty years ago was

a battle where high spirit unsupported by vital strength contended with the rude
forces of nature on every hand. They could not get help in any task whatever.
.... There was the ploughing and sowing of the fields, the building of fences, the
cutting and hauling of firewood, the care of cattle, and the long journeys to Chicago
for every pound of flour, or sugar, or other necessary of life, for the father, while the
mother not only made the bread but the yeast that raised it, not only made the soap but
leached the ashes necessary for its successful manufacture. She made candles, cured
hams, braided rugs, wove rag carpets, made and mended the clothing of her five children,
knit their stockings, even made their little shoes out of the tops of their father's boots.
.... There was the fickle climate, its fierce heats, its piercing winds, the deep
snows, often over the fence tops, the mud embargoes of the spring, the long journeys,
over forty miles, for every comfort, from a paper of pins to a barrel of flour. And
the loneliness of that mother on the hilltop when the father was away, the night
coming on, the wolves howling on the edge of the wood, and often the Indians claim-
ing the right to sleep by the kitchen fire as they journeyed home from their sales of
furs in Chicago. It was on that lonely hilltop, one night late in April when a snow

storm had been howling for three days, that I first saw the light The demands

on bodily endurance were too great for my father. His malady overcame him and
after months of illness he died at the end of six years of pioneer life. Not once had
he reaped a good harvest for what he had sown.

Mr. McClure was a rare man, high minded, capable, who would
have prospered in the growing young city. He was a student and had
brought a select library into the settlement which became the cir-
culating library of the scattered community of farmers. He was also
a devout man and brought the first home missionary to Lake County,
and when the meetinghouse was built on a corner of his farm, his
skilled hands made the pulpit. The missionary and his wife became
inmates of his family and so remained after his death.

After two years Mrs. McClure sold the farm and moved with her
children, now five in number, to Chicago. On the corner of Jackson
and Sherman streets she built two cottages, renting one and occupying
the other. Here she remained from 1844 till the arrival of the Michi-
gan Southern Railroad in 1852. Mrs. Hitchcock says: "From others
they secured the right of way up to our homestead and there was no
resisting them when, in seeking a site for their depot, they decided upon
the very spot where my mother had made a home for her little family

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 209

on the corner of Jackson and Sherman streets." It would appear from
this statement that the first Michigan Southern station was one block
north of its present location and that the early home of Mrs. Hitchcock
was on the site where the Board of Trade Building now stands.

"So," continue these reminiscences of early Chicago, "once more
we were pilgrims and moved, first onto La Salle Street north of Washing-
ton, where we lived a few years in a rented house, then buying on the
West Side, on the corner of Monroe and Des Plaines streets, where
we were one block away from the first high school that came to Chicago."
This was the attractive stone structure, where Mr. Dupee was principal,
of which Chicago was very proud.

The very first schoolhouse owned by the city was built in 1837 for
two hundred dollars on the present site of the Tribune Building and
continued in use till 1845, when, Dearborn School No. i having been
built across Madison Street, it was sold for forty dollars, and, according
to the school inspectors, "the purchaser had no occasion to congratulate
himself on account of his bargain." This was District School No. i,
and in these humble quarters Mrs. Hitchcock began her education, but,
with the erection a year or so later of the seventy-five-hundred-dollar
Dearborn School just across the street, continued her studies in that
fine building. It was so large that many thought there would never
be enough children in Chicago to fill it. But at the end of the first year
the pupils numbered 543, and after two years it was overcrowded with
an attendance approaching 900.

To reach the school the children walked across the open prairie in
sight of their mother for most of the half-mile. They were eager in
their studies and in their play, as well as in work to help their mother
in her difficult struggle. An older sister was soon teaching and the boys
were busy out of school hours in a printing office or selling papers.
After the removal to the West Side, Annie was prepared to enter the new
high school.

It was just at this time, when he had been two years in Chicago,
that Charles Hitchcock was opening his law office in the partnership of
Hitchcock and Goodwin. By 1860 he was one of the rising young
lawyers of the city and married Miss Annie McClure, now grown to
womanhood, though younger than Mr. Hitchcock by twelve years.
They were married July 10, 1860, by the well-known Dr. R. W. Patter-
son, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, of which the bride was
a member. Mr. Hitchcock's family were Unitarian-Congregationalists
of the New England type. His wife's religious home, however, became

210 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

his also. Their pastor said of him: "Throughout his married life he
read the Scriptures and united his heart in prayer with the heart of his
wife." The marriage was an exceptionally happy one. The man who
knew him best, perhaps, Mr. Dupee, said: "Mr. Hitchcock's home
life was a most happy one His wife, to whom he was most ten-
derly attached, shared in his intellectual and social tastes."

He seems to have made it his first concern, after his marriage, to
provide for himself and his wife a permanent home. He accordingly
bought a large lot, nearly or quite a quarter of a block, on the corner of
Greenwood Avenue and Forty-eighth Street. Here in the early sixties
he built a commodious and comfortable house, and in this pleasant home
Mrs. Hitchcock still resides after more than fifty-five years. Not long
after the removal to the new house an incident occurred which reflects
great honor on Dr. Patterson. Though far removed from his
church, Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock continued to make it their religious
home. The pastor and his family paid them occasional visits, the
ample grounds furnishing the pastor's children opportunities for play.
On one of these visits Dr. Patterson, after assuring Mrs. Hitchcock that
he valued most highly their constancy to the old church, said to her
that they had come to a new community to which they owed duties and
that perhaps she ought to transfer her membership and support to the
struggling church in her neighborhood. Thus encouraged by her pastor
she became a member of the Hyde Park Presbyterian Church more
than fifty years ago. Her husband became an attendant, a liberal
supporter, and a useful trustee. After his death his fellow-trustees
testified to "his wise counsel in all which concerned the welfare of our
church and his generous assistance in its periods of embarrassment and
depression," and added, "It is a grateful and pleasant remembrance
that one of his last acts was his liberal gift to relieve this society of its
burden of debt."

The main work of Mr. Hitchcock's life was that of a lawyer. He
had few ambitions beyond his profession. But there was one period
of his life when his law practice was interrupted. The state of Illinois
previous to 1870 had had two constitutions. The first was the one
enacted in August, 1818, under which the state was admitted into the
Union. Thirty years later the population had increased from less than
50,000 to about 800,000, and, all the conditions of life having changed,
a new, more elaborate, and much improved constitution, framed by the
convention of 1847, was adopted by the people by a vote of nearly
four to one.

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 211

But the development of the state during the twenty-one years
following 1848 was even greater than it had been in the thirty preceding
years. The population had increased to 2,500,000. The state had
become a great manufacturing community, having risen between 1850
and 1870 from the sixteenth to the sixth place in the value of manu-
factured products. But these years had been pre-eminently the rail-
road era. In 1848 no railroad had entered the state from the east and
there was hardly a mile of road in actual operation except the few miles
of the Galena and Chicago Union running west from Chicago. But so
astonishing was the change that had taken place before 1870 that
Illinois had come to have a greater railroad mileage than any other
state in the Union. The whole fabric of business was new. This
extraordinary development in population and in economic conditions
made the constitution of 1848 an antiquated document in 1869, and a
new convention was called to frame a revised constitution.

In the important work of this convention Mr. Hitchcock recognized
an opportunity to do an exceptional service to the state, and, accepting
a nomination, was elected a member of the convention. The sessions,
beginning in December, 1869, continued through five months, thus
taking the members from their business for nearly half a year. Mrs.
Hitchcock accompanied her husband to Springfield, and they made
their home in that city till the convention adjourned in May, 1870.

The sessions were held in the old state capitol. The early meetings
were most unpromising. Two rival factions not only nominated but
elected temporary chairmen, a proceeding worthy of ten-year-old boys.
The only thing that saved the situation was the good sense and good
nature of the rival chairmen, who agreed to preside alternately, which
they did during the first day. Then three days were spent in an
absurd debate as to whether the members should take the oath of office
in the form prescribed by the legislative act which provided for the
holding of the convention, requiring them to support the constitution of
the state. In the end the majority decided to take the oath in a modified
form, while the minority took it in the form prescribed by the legis-
lature. The astonishing position taken by the majority was this, that
they could not swear to support the constitution of the state without
some qualification, since they were to form a new constitution to take
its place.

When on the fourth day the convention got down to business, there
were two candidates for president — Joseph Medill, editor of the Chi-
cago Tribune, and Charles Hitchcock. The choice of the delegates

212 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

fell on Mr. Hitchcock, who was elected by a vote of 45 to 40 for Mr.
Medill. Years afterward Mr. Medill wrote: "I do not believe that
any state constitutional convention was ever more fortunate in the
choice of a presiding officer. He seemed to know intuitively where to
place any member that he might do the most good. His fine judicial
temperament enabled him to keep constant control of the body and
make everything move smoothly and successfully. The great success
achieved by the convention is due to his skill and abilities as the pre-
siding officer."

There were many able men among the delegates and, under the ca-
pable presidency of Mr. Hitchcock, they worked with fidelity, efficiency,
and wisdom. The product of their protracted labors was widely acknowl-
edged to be the best state constitution that had, up to that time, been
devised in the United States. When submitted to the people a few
weeks after its formation, it had a happier fate than that prepared by
the Constitutional Convention of 1862, which had been rejected by a
large majority. The new constitution of 1870 was adopted in July of
that year by popular vote and went into effect in August. If the present
effort to form a new constitution is successful, the old one will have
served the state for more than half a century.

The constitution revolutionized the policy of the state in regard to
corporations, with its sweeping provisions against special laws, bring-
ing these things under the general laws of the state. Bills could no
longer be passed over the governor's veto by a majority vote, but only
by a two-thirds vote of all the members in both houses of the legis-
lature. Counties, cities, and other local governments were limited in
the amount of taxes they could levy and money they could borrow.
The judicial system was reorganized. For the first time the right to
vote and the duty of militia service were recognized as the same for
white and colored men; and for the first time also it was made the duty
of the state to provide "a system of free schools whereby all the children
of the state may receive a good common-school education."

Mr. Hitchcock had been influential in working out the new judi-
cial system providing for additional courts and judges. The election
of the new judges took place on the same day on which the constitution
itself was voted on and adopted. Mr. Hitchcock was nominated as one
of the new judges of the Supreme Court. It was, however, fatal to
his chances of election that Judge McAllister, well known for his good
record as judge of the Recorder's Court, ran against him. One of the
newspapers said: "Owing to the fact that the election was held in the

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 213

summer; that a light vote was cast; and that he himself was not as
widely known throughout the district as his competitor, the Honorable
W. R. McAllister, he was defeated."

It was universally recognized by the bar that Mr. Hitchcock was
eminently qualified for a seat in the Supreme Court. He had in a very
unusual degree the judicial temperament. He was by nature a judge.
A great judge declared that he had "a judicial mind, that is, a mind
capable of an impartial survey of both sides of the question in conten-
tion and of arriving at a just conclusion." He was a great lawyer, but
he would have been a greater judge. His wide legal knowledge, his
penetrative intellect, his analytical mental processes, his sense of justice,
his practical wisdom, .all fitted him for distinction on the bench. It
was a much greater misfortune for the state than for him that he did
not attain judicial honors. He had a large, increasing, and lucrative
practice which brought him a competency he would have sacrificed by
giving up the bar for the bench. Had his years been prolonged, it is quite
certain, however, that the bench would ultimately have claimed him.

The great Chicago fire of 1871 again for a brief period brought Mr.
Hitchcock into public life. It was felt that under the distressing cir-
cumstances of the times the wisest and most trustworthy citizens must
be called on for service. Mr. Medill was made mayor on what was
known as the "fireproof ticket." Mr. Hitchcock was elected to the
County Board provided for by the new constitution. He drew the
short term, one year, but was a most valuable and efficient member,
"his great legal experience and practical wisdom coming into admirable
service at that time, when, owing to the fire and to the reorganization
of the county government, everything was chaos and confusion."

It is said that after the fire the governor called him into consulta-
tion as to the best way of granting state aid to the afflicted city and
acted on his advice with large advantage to Chicago. Some three
million dollars (including interest) which Chicago had advanced for
deepening the channel of the Illinois and Michigan Canal was at this
time repaid to the city for rebuilding its burned bridges. William B.
Ogden and others aided in bringing this about. A sketch of Mr. Hitch-
cock's life, referring to this period, makes the following extraordinary
statement: "His remarkably retentive memory enabled him to furnish
information that was regarded as so reliable and authentic that it was
accepted in lieu of many deeds destroyed and thus established titles."
I have seen this statement made of only one or two other men of that
time.

214 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Mr. Hitchcock was a busy lawyer, but his activities were not con-
fined to these political services nor to his office. He was one of the
incorporators of the Merchants Loan and Trust Company in 1857. He
was a member of the first board of managers of the Chicago Law Insti-
tute, and three times in later years served on the board of the Institute.
He was one of the founders in 1873-74 of the Chicago Bar Association,
which was organized " to maintain the honor and dignity of the profession
of law." Mr. Hitchcock was one of the forty- two lawyers who united
in calling the meeting at which the Association was formed, and later
was one of the six distinguished men who signed the articles of incor-
poration. The other five were Charles M. Sturges, James P. Root,
C. B. Lawrence, Ira 0. Wilkinson, and Robert T. Lincoln. He was a
prominent member of the Chicago Historical Society, as well as of the
Chicago Library Association, an institution which flourished before
the great fire. His literary tastes led him into active participation in
the Chicago Literary Club, and his social and business connectons into
membership in the Chicago Club.

Mr. Hitchcock was not a criminal lawyer. He confined his practice
to civil cases, and more and more to corporation and commercial law,
in which, it was believed, he had no superiors in Chicago. It was said
that "the practice which his firm had gained was an enormous one,
probably the largest in Chicago" during the seventies of the last century.
Among the clients of the firm were banks, insurance companies, great
mercantile houses, the Chicago City Railway Company, and the South
Park Board. They conducted some of the most important suits follow-
ing the creation of the park boards. Mr. Hitchcock was instrumental
in securing the legislation by which Michigan Avenue was made "a
boulevard and drew up the act under which that improvement was
made."

It was inevitable that he should be called upon frequently to represent
clients in the Supreme Court of the state. He was once brought into
an embarrassing situation before that court. He had won a verdict in
a lower court which was in plain contradiction to decisions of the higher
court in similar cases. The defeated parties naturally took an appeal to
the Supreme Court and Mr. Hitchcock found himself compelled to
try to persuade that august tribunal to reverse itself. It is hardly
necessary to say that he did not succeed.

He had many important cases. I make room for a few only. Within
a year after the adoption of the new constitution he carried through
the courts a case which established the rule that a city tax collector

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 215

could not sell real estate for the non-payment of taxes, the con-
stitution providing that the official authorized to do this must be
"some general officer of the county having authority to receive state
and county taxes."

In 1874 the Circuit Court of Cook County rendered a decision
against the Chicago City Railway Company forfeiting its right to run
cars on Indiana Avenue — a judgment of "ouster." The case was
carried to the Supreme Court of the state, and Mr. Hitchcock, appear-
ing for the railway company, succeeded in having the decision reversed,
and the cars still run on Indiana Avenue.

A little later he won another suit in the same court which secured
the construction of the street-car line on Clark Street, south from
Randolph, a most important part of the street-car system.

Perhaps the greatest of his cases before the state Supreme Court was
the following: The legislature had passed an act "to regulate public
warehouses and the warehousing and inspection of grain." This was
a law, as the Supreme Court phrased it, "to protect producers and
shippers of grain against frauds in warehouses." The owners of an
elevator had brought suit in a lower court to have the law declared
unconstitutional and had won the case. It was taken to the state
Supreme Court and after a full presentation the judges, being unable
to decide, ordered that it should be reargued. Mr. Hitchcock was
brought in to assist the counsel for the people, and in 1873 the judgment
of the lower court was reversed, the law declared constitutional, and the
farmers and shippers of grain were permanently protected by an ade-
quate inspection law. There can be no doubt that the inspection laws
have been as valuable to Chicago as to the farmers in making that city
the great grain-distributing center of the world.

It was high praise that Judge Lawrence of the Supreme Court gave
to Mr. Hitchcock when he said: "I have known no member of our
profession who has seemed to me more careful to conform his practice

to a high standard of professional ethics He never sought to

lead the court astray in a matter of fact or law. He would not endeavor
to withhold from it a knowledge of any fact appearing in the record.
He would not, as an advocate, express his personal belief in a legal prop-
osition unless he could do so with entire conscientiousness. He would
not cite as an authority an overruled case without stating the fact that
it had been overruled His ambition in life was purely pro-
fessional, and was formed upon the highest conception of what a great
lawyer ought to be. His ambition he achieved. He won the goal."

21 6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Chief Justice Craig said: "His briefs were models of perfection. He
never loaded down a case with lengthy printed arguments, but he
selected a few strong points and in a clear, convincing manner brought
all of his authorities to bear upon them."

Although Mr. Hitchcock was an unusually busy lawyer, he found
time for much reading and even study outside the law. It was a close
friend who had known him ever since they entered college together who
said of him: "Mr. Hitchcock possessed and constantly cultivated an

ardent love of literature and the languages Not infrequently

have I found, upon entering his office, .... that he was employed
and deeply interested in the study of some language, like Latin or
French, or work of literature which he enjoyed with the keenest relish,
and he has told me more than once that whenever his accumulations
.... had reached such a point as to yield him a satisfactory income,
his design was to leave the practice of the law and devote himself ....
to the study and pursuit of literature and the languages." He was
essentially a student. He loved scholarly pursuits. A lover of books,
he accumulated a very valuable library of several thousand volumes.
His real life was in his home, where he found his wife and his books.

It must not be supposed, however, that he neglected his business
for his books. Indeed, his love of literature found inexhaustible material
in his legal studies. There is a world of interest to be found in the
study of legal cases. Mr. Hitchcock was a lawyer and a student,
and much more. It was Judge Williams, whose office he first entered
in Chicago, who more than twenty-five years later said that he "was
capable of succeeding in almost any field of intellectual labor. In
statesmanship or in literature he could have attained like eminence."

His practice grew as his years increased. The firm of Hitchcock
and Dupee, later Hitchcock, Dupee, and Judah, prospered. In 1877
a young man, Monroe L. Willard, came into the office and in 1882 or
1883 became a member of the firm, which, after the death of the man
who had so long been its head, became Dupee, Judah, and Willard.

Mr. Hitchcock was still a young man with an enlarging business,
a growing reputation, increasing legal abilities, with all that these
things promised of success and honor, when a latent difficulty with the
heart which had long threatened him began to give him serious trouble.
He labored on, however, with heroic courage as long as his physicians
would permit. It was said of him when approaching fifty years of age:
"Personally he is tall, with a large portly figure, and is, altogether, a fine-
looking, imposing gentleman." His disease soon began to increase his

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 217

weight and he became corpulent, and this became a cause of further
physical disability. In 1880 he went abroad with Mrs. Hitchcock
in the hope of finding relief. This hope, however, proved vain, and
he returned home and died May 7, 1881. In speaking at his funeral
his former pastor, Dr. D. S. Johnson, made the following impressive
statement: "I have been told there was an incentive for his struggle
for life ; and what was it ? It was the cord of life that ran from his heart
to the heart of his aged mother — that mother for whom even as a boy
he seemed to feel that he must care; that mother for whom through all
these years he had had the very tenderest affection. For her sake,
lest it should break her heart if he should die, he resisted death — he
still determined to keep his place and do his work. But only a week
ago this very day, the news came to him by telegram that the dear,
devoted mother had passed away."

Very unusual honors for a man in private life were paid to Mr.
Hitchcock after his death. In addition to action taken by the Bar
Association, the Historical Society, and other organizations, his death
was announced in highly appreciative addresses to the Supreme Court
of the state and five lower courts in Chicago. Out of respect for his
memory the Supreme Court adjourned. The general assembly of the
state paid him the same unusual honor. Perhaps the most touching
and illuminating tribute was the unconscious one of a little boy of the
neighborhood. His mother found the child lying on his bed "weeping
bitterly, and when she asked the cause of his grief, he said, 'I shall
never see Mr. Hitchcock again.' ;

Thus honored by the strong men of the city and the state and
lamented by the children of his neighborhood, Charles Hitchcock
passed away at the age of fifty-four, at the meridian of his life and of
his powers. His independent professional activity had been restricted
to twenty-five years. He might, not unreasonably, have looked forward
to another twenty-five years. Had this additional time been given,
he would have accomplished more during the second quarter-century
than he had during the first. His faculties would have developed
greater power. His fame would have increased. His professional
triumphs would have multiplied. He would have gone far.

Some months after his death Mrs. Hitchcock issued a memorial
volume which contained a brief sketch of her husband's life and various
appreciations of him in the addresses before the Bar Association and
the courts of Chicago and the state. These appreciations were uttered
by men who had" been familiar with him since his boyhood or throughout

218 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

his life in Chicago. They reveal the extraordinary confidence, esteem,
and admiration he commanded. This is the more remarkable because
he was not one of the "hail fellow, well met" sort of men. Chief
Justice John Marshall had a rollicking, good-humored camaraderie
which gave him instant entrance to the hearts of men. Mr. Hitchcock
had nothing of this about him on first acquaintance. He was quiet
and perhaps seemed to hold himself aloof. At his funeral Dr. Johnson
said: "Very many thought him reserved. It was not reserve, but
rather a natural timidity .... which caused so many to mistake him
for a man of cold demeanor. Not so. We who knew him here (in his
home) knew there was nothing of coldness about him by nature. Here
he seemed to give himself just as he was to his friends."

Indeed, he had a rare capacity for friendship. His partner, Mr.
Dupee, said: "He greatly enjoyed the society of his circle of intimate
friends and was especially delighted to meet them around his own fire-
side. His wife, to whom he was most tenderly attached, shared in his
intellectual and social tastes. His hospitality at his own home was
open handed and, to me, seemed something princely. He had a way
of presenting to his guests his house and everything it contained, and
this was done in so simple, unaffected, and unostentatious a manner as
to charm everyone who came under his roof."

It was said of him: "He had not those qualities which give to men
a wide social popularity, but he retained entire to the hour of his death
all the friendships he had ever made." D. L. Shorey, who had been
his close friend for nearly forty years, said: " I have had many enduring
friendships, but I have had no friend truer, nobler, more worthy of
remembrance."

Mr. Hitchcock was a man of extraordinary self-command. In
scenes of excitement and turmoil he was undisturbed, imperturbable.
This was one of the qualities that enabled him to preside so successfully
over the sessions of the Constitutional Convention. His friends spoke
of his "great equanimity of temper, which enabled him to pass through
the most heated trials of difficult cases with a calm and unruffled surface."
This was one of the elements of his power.

I cannot forbear quoting the following illuminating testimony of his
partner, Mr. Dupee, to his character:

Mr. Hitchcock was a most benevolent man. There was hardly a day in which
calls upon his purse and sympathy were not made, and no worthy man or worthy
cause ever went away from him neglected. Hundreds of men in this city could point
to him as their benefactor and he gave a regular support to most of our public philan-
thropic institutions. His private life was pure and clean. No taint of dishonor or

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 219

dishonesty ever touched him. His word was better than his bond Envy,

uncharitableness, and such qualities were wholly foreign to his nature. ... I never
knew him to do a little act, or an unkind one.

He was a large-minded, large-hearted, upright man.

This sketch has indicated something of Mr. Hitchcock's ability as
a lawyer. He had not, perhaps, the oratorical gifts of some of his con-
temporaries. He was not pre-eminent as a jury lawyer. It was said
of him in a sketch written before his death: "He has a clear voice, a
graceful style, and an imposing presence, but he does not deal in emotions

at all He is logical, clear, and forceable, and will generally win

the juror who happens to be of an eminently logical temperament. He
argues supremely: but most jurors have feelings as well as reason that
must be touched and these he never touches." One other qualification
of the highest praise must be made, and it is perhaps a commendation,
rather. It was made by Mr. Dupee: "Mr. Hitchcock was not success-
ful in the management of weak cases. He had little facility in making
the worse appear the better reason. In order to labor successfully it
was necessary for him to thoroughly believe in his case, and then no
man worked harder for his client." This, of course, means that he was
above the use of base cunning, trickery, or any unworthy expedients to
help him to win a weak or bad case. Every man, whether his case is
good or bad, has the right and ought to have the right to be represented
by counsel. Mr. Hitchcock had cases that could not be successfully
defended by fair means, and he did the best he could for his clients. But
bad causes did not naturally seek him, as they do some lawyers, as their
advocate.

Among the members of the bench and bar he had a most enviable
reputation. Judge Williams, before whom he conducted many cases
in the Circuit Court, said of him: "Primus inter pares is no mean praise
at a bar, many of whose members have attained an enviable national
reputation, but it was the position universally accorded" to Mr. Hitch-
cock.

Melville W. Fuller, later chief justice of the Supreme Court of the
United States, said: "Charles Hitchcock possessed a mind of singular
precision and power. It was in a marked degree a judicial mind, capable
of an impartial view of both sides of a question and of arriving at a just
conclusion. In his practice he was absolutely fair, never indulged in
artifice or concealment, never dealt in indirect methods, but won his
victories, which were many, and suffered his defeats, which were few, in
the open field face to face with his foe."

220 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

It was high praise that was given him by a lawyer who had known
him intimately since they entered college together: "He had the faculty
of grasping the pivotal points of legal questions presented to him almost
intuitively and thereafter brushing aside all those surrounding questions
which cluster about a complicated case; and, therefore, perhaps no
man at the bar was in the habit of devoting so little attention to accessory
points arising on the trial of a cause and confining himself so closely to
the main issues at stake." In this respect he resembled Chief Justice
Marshall, of whom his biographer, A. J. Beveridge, says: "Marshall's
ability to extract from the confusion of the most involved question its
vital elements and to state those elements in simple terms was help-
ful to the court and frankly appreciated by the judges."

John Woodbridge, in whose office Mr. Hitchcock began his career
in Chicago, said of him: "He was a lawyer, a man of letters, a man of

affairs Men paid him an involuntary homage, such as is ever

yielded to dignity of character and grandeur of mind. His career at the
bar was an uninterrupted success. He came here a stranger, but he

advanced rapidly to fame and fortune He had a numerous and

wealthy clientage and was always concerned with great causes."

That he was a man of affairs was shown in the business instinct
which led him to make such an investment as the purchase of the north-
west corner of Madison and La Salle streets, part of the ground on which
the Hotel La Salle stands, as a permanent holding. He had the busi-
ness instinct to foresee its certain and progressive increase in value.

One of Mr. Hitchcock's outstanding characteristics was the deep
interest he took in young men, particularly in young lawyers. There
were many testimonies to this effect by those whom he had advised,
encouraged, and helped. This was recalled by one of his partners:
"Especially did he find time to aid young men — young lawyers who
came to him for advice and assistance, as they very frequently did.
He always aided them generously and freely, and they found in him a
real friend. His thoughtful consideration for others was shown in his
treatment of the young men in the office, the clerks, and the students.
He suggested their courses of reading, both legal and miscellaneous.
He was solicitous for their health, for their advancement, and that
their labors should be of service to themselves as well as to him."
Speaking before the Bar Association for "the younger members of our
profession," F. O. Lyman told of his first meeting with Mr. Hitchcock
when he arrived in Chicago, a stranger: "He asked me what qualifi-
cations I had, what studies I had pursued, what preparation I had made

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 221

for my life-work He earnestly impressed on me not to grow

discouraged with the days and years of waiting, drudgery, and toil
which must be endured .... and to ever keep in mind the ideal
lawyer every student pictures to himself while reading Blackstone,
Kent, and the lives of the great lawyers."

The writer has been impressed by the estimate of him expressed
by John H. Thompson at the Bar Association meeting: "As I recollect
him when he came here, he presented very manifestly the same striking
features of character which he always afterward displayed — a mind of
remarkable clearness and quickness, and a mature, vigorous and sound

judgment He had an eminently judicial mind, and he would

have adorned any bench upon which he might have been placed. But
the glory of the bench was not needed for him. His glory was rather
needed for the bench."

Judge Blodgett happily summed up his characteristics: "As a
lawyer he responded to the highest ideals of our noble profession. As
a citizen he was ever patriotic, public spirited, and wise. As a friend
he was true to the noblest impulses of our nature."

Since the death of her husband Mrs. Hitchcock has continued to
live in the home to which they went soon after their marriage in 1860.
It is therefore one of the old homesteads of the city. It satisfies one's
idea of a homestead. It is not part of a brick block, nor is it closely
shut in by other houses. It is a pleasant and commodious frame house,
standing far back from the street in the midst of grounds two hundred
and fifty feet in length. When it was built it was in the suburb of
Kenwood, far south of the city limits. Now the city limits are many
miles south of the Hitchcock homestead, so far south, indeed, as to
leave it almost in the center of the town, measuring from north to south.
It is one of the pleasantest parts of Chicago.

With many gifts of mind and heart, Mrs. Hitchcock has always
been equally at home and equally welcome in the humblest and the
highest circles. She was one of the organizers of the Fortnightly Club,
which has numbered among its members many of the foremost women
of Chicago. She has long been a member of the Kenwood Club, and
has engaged in the multiplied activities of the Chicago Woman's Club.
She has taken a warm interest in Berea College, Kentucky.

The establishment of the University of Chicago in 1889-92 early
attracted her attention and awakened her interest. Mrs. Hitchcock
had all her husband's interest in the welfare of young men seeking a
preparation for the work of life. Having no family of her own, she

222 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

determined to satisfy this interest in fulfilling a purpose which had
grown up in her mind to build a memorial of her husband which should
embody his devotion to young men just entering into life. The new
University offered itself to her as a place where her purpose could be
best carried out.

On December 12, 1899, President Harper informed the Trustees
that Mrs. Hitchcock desired to build a memorial to her husband and
was prepared to give the University a considerable sum for this purpose.
On the first of January, 1900, she proffered the University for the
purposes she had in mind $200,000. These purposes finally took the
following form: The sum of $25,000 is set aside for the endowment of
a traveling fellowship in Greek to be known as the Daniel L. Shorey
Fellowship, in commemoration of the long friendship between her
husband and Mr. Shorey. The sum of $150,499 was used in the con-
struction of a dormitory for young men students of the University, to
be known as the Charles Hitchcock Hall, and $25,000 was designated
as a sustentation fund, the income to be used for maintaining the
memorial hall "in first-class condition and repair."

The plans for the Charles Hitchcock Hall were prepared by Mr.
Dwight H. Perkins, architect, after he had studied student dormitory
buildings in this and other countries. The corner stone was laid by
Mrs. Hitchcock herself on June 15, 1901, Professor Paul Shorey, head
of the Department of Greek in the University, making the address. The
June, 1901, Convocation was a great celebration, marking the tenth
anniversary of the founding of the University. The exercises continued
through five days. During this time the corner stones of six buildings
were laid: on June 15 those of the Press Building and the Charles
Hitchcock Hall, and on June 18 those of Hutchinson Commons, the
Mitchell Tower, the Reynolds Clubhouse and Mandel Assembly Hall.
The founder of the University, Mr. Rockefeller, was present, an inter-
ested participant in all these exercises.

The Charles Hitchcock Hall was completed in September, 1902,
and was occupied by students at the opening of the Autumn Quarter,
October i. It is the largest of the residence halls thus far provided,
having not only rooms for ninety-three students, but, in addition, a club-
room, infirmary, breakfast-room, and a large and beautiful library. It also
provides a room for the clergymen who preach every Sunday morning
in Mandel Hall, this room being known as "the preachers' room." It
has been furnished by Mrs. Hitchcock, some of the furniture having
been brought by her parents when they migrated to Illinois in 1847.

CHARLES HITCHCOCK 223

Among the attractive features of the building is the cloister running
along the south front and uniting the five divisions of the hall.

One of the most interesting things connected with the building
and subsequent history of the hall is the deep and increasing interest
manifested in it by Mrs. Hitchcock. She gave much attention to the
making of the plans. The library was equipped by her with a large and
valuable collection of books and its walls were adorned- by her with
portraits and other works of art. Over the fireplace hangs the portrait
of Mr. Hitchcock. Much of the furniture of this room, as well as that
of the University "preachers' room," was contributed by her. A
series of architectural photographs adorn the walls of the cloister,
an added illustration of Mrs. Hitchcock's interest, taste, and munifi-
cence. She takes a great interest in the students who occupy and
always fill the hall, and frequently meets them at afternoon teas in
the library. The thought, time, attention, and gifts she has lavished
on the hall and its students during the past twenty years are evidence
of the large place it has had in her life and illustrate the overflowing
good will and bounty of her nature. She has made the memorial of
her husband not an erection of dead stone but a living monument
eloquent of human feeling and affection.

In presenting the resolutions of the Chicago Bar Association on the
death of Mr. Hitchcock before the Appellate Court, William C. Grant
said: "It has been said that the life of a lawyer who devotes himself
strictly to his profession and its practice leads to fewer permanent
results which the world retains after his death than almost any other
learned profession." It is not so in the case of Charles Hitchcock.
When Mrs. Hitchcock put the accumulations of his quarter of a century
of business activity into Hitchcock Hall and the Greek Fellowship, she
transformed them into great intellectual and spiritual influences which
will bless succeeding generations of young men, and through them
the world itself, as long as our civilization endures.

JOSEPH REYNOLDS

JOSEPH REYNOLDS

In 1882 the steamboat "Mary Morton," passing down the Mississippi
from St. Paul to St. Louis, tied up at the landing-place at McGregor,
Iowa, to discharge and take on freight. George B. Merrick, a leading
Wisconsin editor, was making the trip as a guest of his oldtime river
friend, Captain Burns. .Mr. Merrick was himself a former riverman,
was a great lover of the Mississippi, and is a prolific writer on the history
of its navigation. Much contained in this sketch is derived from his
records of the rise and fall of river travel and traffic. Telling of touch-
ing at McGregor on this trip he says:

Captain Burns pointed out a man, dressed in a dark business suit, sitting on a
snubbing post, lazily and apparently indifferently watching the crew handling freight,
or looking over the steamer as if it were an unusual or curious sight. He did not
speak to any of the officers while we were watching him and Mr. Burns thought it
very unlikely that he would. He did not come on board the boat at all, but sat
and whittled the head of the post until we backed out and left him out of sight
behind.

This was the once famous Captain Diamond Jo Reynolds, who
for nearly a generation was one of the leading figures in the upper
Mississippi steamboat traffic, the most widely known, indeed, of all
the rivermen. At the time of this incident he was sixty- three years old.

He was born in the little village of Fallsburg, in eastern New York,
June n, 1819. His parents were Quakers and he never lost the unde-
monstrative, self-contained, determined characteristics their influence
wrought into his life. He was the youngest of six children. From his
early years business was the occupation that absorbed him. He was
a born trader. One incident of his youth survives in which his inborn
bent toward trade is revealed. When he was six years old one of his
older brothers took him to a neighboring town to see a general militia
muster, or General Training Day. The brother had a stock of ginger
and other cakes to sell. Securing an eligible stand and displaying his
stock he began crying, "Cakes for sale." He had brought Jo along
that the boy might see the soldiers on parade and all the sights of a
holiday. But no sooner did his brother begin to cry his wares than

the business instinct asserted itself in little Joe, and forgetting the soldiers he took up
the cry of " Cakes for sale," and entered with his whole soul into the spirit of sales-
manship. Another vender had a stand near that of Silas and was endeavoring, by

22 =

226 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

making the most noise, to divert his custom. Seeing this, little Joe changed his cry
and shouted: "That man's cakes are good, but these are better! Good and better!
Good and better!" The shrill treble of the six-year-old merchant carried conviction
to the crowd and the stock of cakes was soon all sold.

We learn little of the sports of his boyhood. But in later life he
used to tell, with great enjoyment, of a practical joke a sister played on
him when he was a boy. The two went nutting in the woods late
enough in the fall, as they supposed, to find the nuts covering the ground.
As it happened they found the ground bare and the nuts still on the
trees. Thereupon the sister said, "Jo, you climb the tree and shake the
nuts off and I will pick them up and we will go halves." This seemed
fair to Jo so up he climbed and shook and beat the branches till the
ground was covered with nuts. When he had about finished, his
sister called up to him: "Jo, I have picked up my half and am going
home." And off she marched. This no doubt caused a temporary
family feud, but when he became a man it seemed to be the most delight-
ful remembrance of his youth.

Jo received only a common-school education, but must have been
something of a student, as at an early age he was spending his winters
teaching school at ten dollars a month and board. But business was his
real vocation and at seventeen he was fully embarked in trade. His
first venture was in the meat business. It was exactly like that of
G. F. Swift, the founder of the great packing industry of Swift and
Company. He bought from the farmers cattle, sheep, and hogs which
he prepared for market, peddling the meat in a wagon through the
surrounding villages and among the farmers along his route. He con-
tinued this first adventure into business through several seasons, but the
returns did not satisfy him. He had acquired the elements of book-
keeping and kept accounts of his transactions from the beginning.
This early experience was of value to him and, although not a very
profitable venture, gave him sufficient capital to take his next step in his
business career.

With an older brother, Isaac, he opened in the nearby village of
Rockland a "general store." As one of the merchants of the place he
became widely acquainted. He soon acquired a reputation for integrity
and fair dealing. The best people of the community were his friends.
He was the most enterprising and ambitious young man in the town.
How long he and his brother continued to run the store or how success-
ful the business was does not appear. It must have been reasonably
successful, as we find him after a few years in Rockland marrying the

JOSEPH REYNOLDS 227

most eligible young woman in the place, Mary E. Morton. Mr. Morton
seems to have been a man of considerable means. He was also a
man of sufficient discernment to recognize the very unusual business
abilities of his son-in-law. The young man was quick to seize oppor-
tunities <bf advancement and Mr. Morton had such confidence in
his business judgment and skill in management that he gave young
Reynolds the most liberal financial backing.

Data relating to these earlier years are few. The "general store"
disappears from view. The young man found an opportunity which
looked promising to him to purchase a custom flour- and-feed mill. Mr.
Morton assisted him in securing the mill and he conducted the new
business with so much skill that it became very profitable. He was in
the full tide of success, in a small way, when the mill, together with a
considerable amount of grain he had on hand, was totally consumed by
fire. Not yet having means enough of his own to rebuild, he formed
a stock company and enlisted a number of the business men of the
place in the new enterprise. He immediately proceeded to erect a mill
of the most modern type, with " the latest and most improved machinery,
with mahogany bolts and hoppers." The stockholders thereupon took
alarm, exclaiming that his extravagance would bankrupt the company.
Their dissatisfaction became so open and extreme that his father-in-law,
Mr. Morton, whose confidence in his business acumen remained un-
shaken, again came to his assistance and enabled him to buy out all the
stockholders and finish the mill in accordance with his plans.

It was the most perfectly equipped mill in a wide area, and proved a
great financial success. Business came to it from every quarter and
Mr. Reynolds began to prosper. He had, before he was thirty years old,
a well-established and profitable business which was quite certain to
make him one of the leading financial men of the place. Any ordinary
man would have been satisfied with such a position and such prospects.
But Mr. Reynolds was very far from being an ordinary man. He was
seen at the beginning of this sketch sitting on a snubbing post seemingly
indifferent to his surroundings. But Mr. Merrick says Captain Burns
"allowed that Jo was doing a heap of thinking all the time we were
watching him." It was Burns's opinion that he was " scheming." This
was the way in which his associates came to regard him. Behind a very
quiet, apparently unobservant, and indifferent demeanor there was a
singularly alert and active intelligence, alive to developments about him
and planning new projects. As in later life, this was true in Rockland
before he was forty. Near his mill was a tannery doing a small business,

228 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

in which he saw, if wisely managed, large development with correspond-
ing profits. Forming a partnership with a friend of his youth, he
bought it, transformed and enlarged it, and began the manufacture of
oak-tanned leather. The new venture prospered. He was making
money in both mill and tannery. But he was not satisfied.

While Mr. Reynolds had been learning business and establishing
himself, the great new West had been discovered and occupied. The
frontier village of Chicago had become within twenty years a city of
80,000 people. A flood of immigration was pouring into the western
states. The attractive power of the new West was felt in every com-
munity of the older East. Mr. Reynolds felt it not less strongly than
others. He had good reasons to be satisfied with the success he had
already achieved and with his prospects of increasing prosperity. But
as the wonder of the development of the West grew, his mind dwelt more
and more on the opportunities it presented for bigger business enter-
prises and opportunities than were possible in his surroundings. More
than fifty years later the village of Rockland had a population of only
300. For playing the drama of his life he needed a larger stage.

When therefore in 1855 an opportunity came for disposing of both
his mill and tannery profitably he welcomed it, and, winding up his
affairs as quickly as possible, he moved to Chicago. There he went
into his old business of tanning and established a tannery on Water
Street, west of the Chicago River. His business compelled him to
travel widely through the new states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa,
buying hides and furs for the tannery. He was brought by his business
into an acquaintance, which seems to have ripened into a friendship,
with P. D. Armour, the founder of the great packing and grain business
of Armour and Company. They apparently became acquainted very
early in Mr. Reynolds' residence in Chicago. In the Dubuque Telegraph-
Herald, John Deery, a leading lawyer of Dubuque, told in 1911 this
story: "It may not be true, but it is related that Joseph Reynolds and
the late Phil Armour, after coming west, engaged in the same business

of buying hides and furs along the river towns As the story

goes, it appears that both had, at the same time, an overstock of hides
for the market, and they agreed to play the then popular game of cards,
' California Jack,' to decide which one should take the other's stock off
his hands. The result of the game was that Reynolds had to take
Armour's stock. Happily for him the market soon rallied and he made
good money on the deal."

In his travels along the Mississippi Mr. Reynolds soon discovered that
the country west of the river had become so well settled and was pro-

JOSEPH REYNOLDS 229

during such abundant crops that the farmers were looking for buyers
for their grain. With his remarkable instinct for recognizing business
opportunities he saw that the wholesale buying of grain and shipping
it to the Chicago market ought to be very profitable. I give the story
of what immediately followed in the words of Mr. Merrick :

About the year 1860 Reynolds disposed of his Chicago business and engaged in
the grain trade exclusively, with headquarters at Prairie du Chien, at which point
transhipment was made from steamboat to the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad.
The Minnesota Packet Company was paramount on the upper river between Galena
and St. Paul. Some of its stockholders were interested also in the railway company,
and were also engaged in buying grain. Their connection with both steamboat and
railroad enabled them to obtain favors not accorded to others who were considered
"outsiders," of whom Reynolds was one. His grain would be refused by the boat
line, while that of his rivals would be taken, often subjecting him to loss by the
elements, at the point of shipment, and to pecuniary losses through failure to deliver
his grain upon a favorable market.

To avoid at least some of the annoyances and delays to which he was subjected
by the Packet Company, and to provide adequate transportation for his rapidly
growing business, Reynolds in the spring of 1862 built the steamboat "Lansing," a
stern wheel boat of 123 tons. This he placed under the command of Captain
J. B. Wilcox of Desoto, Wisconsin, an experienced steamboat man, and ran her between
Lansing and Prairie du Chien, carrying all his own grain and produce, and handling
such other freight as was not directly controlled by the Packet Company, through
the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railway Company, at Prairie du Chien.

Fearing that this small venture might lead to a competition detrimental to its
business, the Packet Company prevailed upon Reynolds to sell them the "Lansing,"
promising in return to care for his business in a satisfactory manner. Before the
season ended, however, he found that the company had no intention of living up to
the promises made him, and his business was suffering from neglect and discrimination.
Like the old farmer in the fable, rinding that the clods of compromise and concession
were unavailing to secure an even chance with his rivals in business, he decided again
to resort to the weapons to which the Packet Company was amenable. In the winter
of 1862-63 he built at Woodman, Wisconsin, on the Wisconsin River, some ten or
fifteen miles from Prairie du Chien, a stern wheel boat of 242 tons, which was named
"Diamond Jo" .... with Captain William Fleming, master. Two barges for bulk
grain, the "Conger" and the "Fleming," were also built and placed in commission.

It will appear from the foregoing statement that the Packet Com-
pany was not conducted on good business principles. The inevitable
result followed. In the beginning of 1864 it was reorganized under
another management under the name of The Northwestern Packet
Company. The new company, wishing to rid itself of a rival for river
business, by promises and guaranties persuaded Mr. Reynolds to sell his
little fleet to them and retire again from the transportation business.
For the next three years the new arrangement worked satisfactorily.
But hi 1866 a new consolidation of steamboat companies again brought
into river navigation rival grain buyers who were able to control condi-

230 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

tions at the river railroad terminals at La Crosse and Prairie du Chien so
completely and used their power so ruthlessly against their rivals in the
business of buying and shipping grain that Mr. Reynolds was so much
embarrassed that he found "he must secure other river transportation
and railroad connections or go out of business." Mr. Merrick dryly
remarks: "It is very unlikely that he considered the latter alternative to
any great extent."

Mr. Reynolds continued through life to manifest many of the traits
of his Quaker upbringing. He was quiet, patient, long-suffering. He
was not easily provoked to aggressive self-assertion. He desired to live
at peace with all men. But the same class of men having repeatedly
threatened his business life at length aroused the sleeping lion in the
man. They lived to repent their temerity.

Mr. Reynolds resolved to establish a new line of steamboats on the
upper Mississippi and contest with his enemies the control of the river.
He began very conservatively, buying in 1867 a small boat of only 613
tons, the "John C. Gault," and a few barges. The new line was fully
established in 1868 and named the Chicago, Fulton, and River Line,
with four boats, the "John C. Gault," the "Ida Fulton," the "Diamond
Jo," and the "Lady Pike," together with the necessary towing barges.
In 1871 the " Bannock City " was added to care for the rapidly increasing
business, and the title of the line was changed to the Diamond Jo Line
steamers. This soon became and remained for forty years, till long
after Mr. Reynolds' death, the most famous name on the upper Mis-
sissippi. It will always continue to indicate the great days of trade
and travel on the Father of Waters.

Mr. Reynolds himself came to be popularly known as Diamond Jo.
It was easy therefore for those who only knew of him as a steamboat
man to conclude that he must have got the name because he wore on his
person a somewhat conspicuous diamond. So I myself supposed. But
an employe who knew him well for many years writes me that "when
this nickname was given him Mr. Reynolds had no big diamond on
his shirt front nor on his finger." He was a plain, quiet, unpretentious
man, never given to display.

The better explanation seems to be the following, given by a near
relative. In marking his bales of skins he placed a diamond-shaped
trade-mark on them— thus <^> • Later he found another man using
the same trade-mark and thereupon changed his own by placing his
name Jo inside the diamond, ^^> — and thus gave himself the name
by which he came to be so widely known.

JOSEPH REYNOLDS 231

Curiously enough he became, apparently, so attached to the name that
he devised a signature which distinctly shows his trade-mark between
the J. and R, making the signature not ungraceful and certainly unique.

The second boat he built he called the "Diamond Jo." The name
pleased the river and when he entered seriously on the task of establish-
ing a new line of steamboats, the public began to call it the "Diamond
Jo Line." The newspapers used the name in preference to the first
real name of the company, the Chicago, Fulton, and River Line, and,
yielding to this demand of the public, Mr. Reynolds, three years after
the company was formed, formally changed the name to the Diamond
Jo Line steamers. His packets floated, as the company's ensign, a
flag bearing the conventional figure of a diamond on a plain field.

Mr. Reynolds naturally became, as the owner of a line of river
steamers, " Captain," though he never ran his own boats except, perhaps,
on a single trip, and then with a competent mate at his side. He was
no navigator, but a business man of such exceptional qualities that he
distanced all his competitors and became the most successful and famous
figure on the upper Mississippi. Other lines came and went. They
failed or, on account of internal dissensions, were "reorganized"; but the
Diamond Jo Line increased its service and went on with growing success.

Organized at the outset to protect his grain-shipping business and
covering only a small part of the upper river, it gradually extended the
area of its operations, until it covered the entire distance from St. Louis
to the head of navigation at St. Paul, approximately a thousand miles.
The Mississippi, as a navigable stream, is divided into two distinct
parts, the lower river extending from New Orleans to St. Louis, and the
upper river from St. Louis to St. Paul. The great boats of the lower
river ended their trips at St. Louis. There a passenger for St. Paul
would transfer to a smaller boat and proceed, perhaps, halfway up the
river and then, if the water was low, he would take a still smaller boat
of very light draft and go on to his destination. I once made the trip
from Quincy to St. Paul and shall never forget the impression made on
my mind by the contrast presented by the river at these two cities. At
Quincy the great river is a most impressive stream, nearly a mile wide.
Our small upper-river boat to which we had been transferred arrived
at the head of navigation at St. Paul early one August morning. When
I got up and went on deck I was astonished to find the majestic river on
which I had begun my journey shrunken to what impressed me as an
insignificant creek. It was almost impossible to believe that this was
the great Father of Waters with whose vast flood I was familiar.

232 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

The first boats of the Diamond Jo Line were built for the upper-
river traffic. When about 1880 Mr. Reynolds extended his business to
St. Louis he built the "Mary Morton," named after his wife, a boat
210 feet long and of nearly 500 tons. This was followed by the " Sidney,"
of about 618 tons, and the "Pittsburg," of 722 tons, all large stern-wheel
boats. Others of still larger size were added later. They contrasted
greatly with the small boats used on the upper river, like the "Josephine,"
the "Libbie Conger," the "Diamond Jo," and others, some of them half as
large and still others much smaller, some of them less than 100 tons, and
only ninety or a hundred feet long.

The Diamond Jo Line was so successful that during the seventies it
established a shipyard at Eagle Point, three miles above Dubuque.
This grew to large proportions, building the new boats required, repairing
those that were damaged, constructing the many barges needed, and
doing the general work of a shipyard for the river.

The traffic boats did their most profitable work towing loaded barges.
The "Imperial," a very powerful tugboat, "frequently handled eight
barges of bulk gram, which, with the deck load of sacked grain carried
in times of good water, often reached as high as 100,000 bushels. It is
estimated that, reducing this to the terms of the railroad transportation
of that day, it would have loaded ten trains of twenty-five cars each,
which would have required ten locomotives, ten cabooses, and ten
crews to handle them, while the track covered would have exceeded a
mile and a half." Captain Fred A. Bill tells me he recalls one trip in
which 112,000 bushels of wheat were transported. This will give some
suggestion of the volume of business done by the Diamond Jo Line of
steamers. It was, indeed, a business of great risks. Mr. Merrick writes:

The life of a steamboat is brief at best. Before the river had been lighted and
cleared of snags, wrecks, and other obstructions, four or five years was the limit of
probabilities. Later this probability was doubled; but the possibility of loss was
ever present. The Diamond Jo Company bought boats only as it had use for them,
and by selling the older and smaller boats while they were yet salable and buying
new and larger ones to meet its increasing business it was able to declare dividends and
to outlive all its rivals, maintaining itself longer than any other line that ever
operated on the Mississippi, either on the upper or lower river.

The results of the great era of railroad construction in the latter
third of the last century in destroying the Mississippi as a highway of
travel and traffic are well known. But it is said that the "twenty
years between 1875 and 1895 witnessed the greatest activity in the
lumber business ever known 'on the Mississippi, or any other river, or in
any country or age. It gave employment to hundreds of steamboats

JOSEPH REYNOLDS 233

used in towing the logs and lumber to market." This was particularly
true of the upper river. It made the shipyard Mr. Reynolds had estab-
lished above Dubuque a very successful and profitable part of his
business. Here came the boats needing repairs. Here new boats were
built for this extraordinary trade. The yard was never idle. It con-
stantly employed a large force of skilled mechanics. "In addition to
the boat builders a crew of expert divers, with all necessary gear, with
barges, pumps, and other machinery and rigging for raising sunken
vessels, was likewise maintained, ready at an hour's notice to proceed
to the relief of any boat in trouble, anywhere between St. Louis and
St. Paul."

For nearly half a century crowds gathered regularly on the levees at
all the river towns from St. Louis to St. Paul at the sound of the familiar
two long and two short whistles, to welcome or do business with up or
down Diamond Jo steamers, their comings and goings being in many of
these places the principal event of the day.

When in 1860 Mr. Reynolds entered extensively into the grain busi-
ness along the Mississippi, he moved to McGregor, Iowa, one of the
river towns a few miles north of Dubuque, and made his home there for
the rest of his life. Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds had one son, whom they
named Blake, and who was born in McGregor during the first year of
their residence there. Being an only son, their hearts and their hopes
were bound up in him. Mr. Reynolds was a man of almost boundless
energy, and the steamboat line, which was itself a big business, was only
one among his many activities. As new railroads were built beyond
the river, he carried his buying and shipping of grain into the new towns
that sprang up.

He was not only a steamboat, but also a railroad, magnate. The
story of his entrance into the railroad business is one of the most interest-
ing stories of his life. Soon after his sixtieth year, in the early eighties,
the partial failure of his health led him to seek relief at the Arkansas
Hot Springs, the medicinal qualities of which were beginning to attract
large numbers of seekers after health. These now celebrated Springs
were then little known. At that time they could be reached only by a
tedious journey of twenty-two miles among the hills from the nearest
railroad station of Malvern. The narrator of the story says:

The stages in use between the railroad at Malvern and the Springs were old
and rickety, and the one in which he had taken passage broke down completely while
they were yet some miles from their destination and Reynolds and his fellow-passengers
were compelled to walk the remaining distance. On arrival at the Springs Reynolds
remonstrated in somewhat forcible terms, to which the proprietor rejoined with a

234 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

sneer: "Well, what are you goin' to do about it?" "I'll build a railroad," said Jo.
The stage man thought it a bluff; but Reynolds studied the proposition while taking
the "cure," later calling in engineers to assist him. Deciding that the chances were
rather for than against success, he put all his ready money into the work, hypothecating
his stock in the steamboat company and in his mines.

Within a few months he had completed a narrow-gauge road twenty-two miles in
length from Malvern to Hot Springs, upon which he had issued no bonds, and the
stock of which was practically all in his own name. Later, as the business increased,
.... he bonded the road and with the proceeds changed the line to a standard-gauge,
with heavier steel, and its sidetracks . . . . , from that time to this, have constantly
been filled with palace cars and private coaches from all parts of the country, switched
on to this, one of the best paying twenty miles of road in the United States.

Mr. Reynolds certainly made it pay. The fare for the 20 or 22
miles was about ten cents a mile for some years. When the fare was
$2.00 Mr. Reynolds had a facsimile of a two-dollar bill made which was
an order on the auditor of the road to pay that sum to any conductor
on presentation of the bill. When asked for a pass over the road he
would send one of these two-dollar bills. As I have indicated, his signa-
ture at the bottom of the bill revealed, to one who looked for it, his
Diamond Jo trade-mark.

It will be recalled that in the latter third of the last century there
occurred a remarkable revival of mining in the West. Great deposits
both of gold and of silver were discovered. Leadville and other camps
had their almost miraculous growth. All men with any speculative
bent were stirred by the stories that came from the West. Fortunes
were made, lost, and remade. Mr. Reynolds was one of those who
became infected with the mining fever, and in the late seventies he and
his son, then approaching manhood, interested themselves in gold mining
in Arizona and Colorado.

Their first experience in buying a mine was a very humiliating one.
Although they supposed they were using every precaution against being
swindled, even putting their own men in to work it for a time before
paying for it, the expert crooks who sold it succeeded in "salting" it even
while Reynolds & Son's force was working it. They paid for it and
suddenly found that there was not a particle of gold in it. Reynolds,
however, was always a good loser. He pocketed his loss and a little
later bought another mine, the Congress, in the same locality.

Someone said to him: "Mr. Reynolds, after losing so much in the Del Pasco I
should not think you would buy another mine in the same locality." "Well," said
Jo, " when you lose anything, don't you look for it where you lost it ?" The Congress
was a very rich gold mine and fully justified Reynolds in his decision "to look for his
money where he lost it."

JOSEPH REYNOLDS 235

Mr. Merrick tells one story of Mr. Reynolds' mining ventures which
illustrates the extent of his operations, the spirit in which he met diffi-
culties, and his business methods. He says:

In another instance Reynolds was robbed by a man whom he had befriended
and whom he trusted. A man by the name of Morrissey wired him from Leadville,
Colorado, that there was a rich and promising mine there that could be bought very
cheap, its owners not having funds wherewith to develop it. He immediately pro-
ceeded to Leadville, examined the property and, being satisfied that it was valuable,
agreed to buy it at the purchase price of $40,000, provided Morrissey, who was a
practical miner, would stay with it as superintendent, Reynolds to put in good machin-
ery with which to operate it and to promise that as soon as it had paid all that he
had put in he would deed to Morrissey one-fourth of the mine. The returns soon
equaled the total of the investment, and true to his promise he deeded to Morrissey
the one-fourth interest and left him in charge of the work.

Some time after, Reynolds observed that the smelter returns sent him were not
numbered consecutively, and when he investigated he found that Morrissey had
retained very much more than his share, the one-quarter to which he was entitled
amounting to something over $250,000. The fact that Morrissey could neither read
nor write probably hampered him in manipulating the returns. The shortage was
settled without prosecution, Reynolds' Quaker antecedents discouraging, if not for-
bidding, an appeal to law in the settlement of personal differences.

In connection with the other lines of business in which he was
engaged — dealing in grain, the Diamond Jo Line of steamers, the Hot
Springs Railroad, etc. — Mr. Reynolds continued his activity in mines
and mining to the end of his life. Conducting this part of his business
with the same ability and energy which had made him so successful
in other lines, he made it exceedingly profitable.

Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds suffered the greatest affliction of their lives in
the death of their son Blake. He was twenty-five years old. The
blow was a very heavy one and shadowed the rest of their lives.
Happily for them and for others it did not harden, but rather softened,
the hearts of both, and awakened in them a sympathetic interest in
other young men.

Mr. Reynolds survived his son only a short time. When he had
passed his seventieth year, although a man of large wealth and with no
apparent incentive to increase it after the loss of his son, he still con-
tinued his business activity. His death was caused, indeed, by his
undue devotion to these activities. February, 1891, found him in a
rude shack at the mouth of the Congress Mine, in Arizona, sixty miles
from the nearest railroad station. There he was attacked by pneumonia .

Like so many other men he had neglected to make a will. Realizing
that at his age and with infirm health at best, he was unlikely to survive
that dread disease, he dispatched a messenger posthaste to Prescott to

236 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

wire for a physician and a lawyer — the latter to draw his will. Storms
and washouts delayed all travel. Mr. Reynolds was surrounded by
devoted friends, but while they waited for the help which did not come
the disease was making fatal progress. There were certain things he
was very anxious to provide for in his will. He wished to make bequests
to some of the loyal and able assistants who had done much to promote
his prosperity, and in remembrance of his son to do something that would
provide advantages for young men. At length, despairing of the arrival
of the lawyer, he asked one of his friends to write out a will at his dicta-
tion. The approach of death, which he clearly recognized, did not
greatly concern him, but he was very much afraid his strength would
not hold out till he could get the special bequests he wished to make
committed to paper and signed.

The paper was completed and a pen was put into his hand that he
might sign it. He tried, but was so near his end that an illegible scrawl
was all he could produce. He was able to see that it was no signature,
and, being still able to speak, it is said that he caUed on those who stood
about him in the hut to witness that the unsigned paper was his last
will and testament and almost in the utterance of the words passed
away.

Mrs. Reynolds accepted the imperfect will written in the Arizona
shack and carried out its provisions as fully as possible during the few
years in which she survived her husband. She was engaged in carrying
out the provision in the interest of young men when, in 1895, she herself
died. The family burial lot is in Mount Hope Cemetery, Chicago, and
is marked by a massive block of granite with the simple inscription
"Reynolds."

Mr. Reynolds made a profound impression on those with whom he
was most closely associated. One of them says:

In many ways Mr. Reynolds was peculiar. He was very quiet and had little use
for "society." Minded his own business and expected others to do likewise. He

told very little of himself and practically nothing of his early life He became

rich and famous; made money rapidly, and when it was made it was easy to trace that,
it came from reasoning from cause to effect, and not from what is commonly called
luck.

Another wrote of him:

As I write this little sketch, there is on my desk a picture of Joseph Reynolds, that
grand old character, who left his imprint upon and who contributed so greatly to the
development of what was then called, in the seventies, "the Northwest." ....
Mr. Reynolds was a man who had peculiar traits, many of them most lovable, and I
have been greatly influenced through my entire business career by lessons early learned
from him. One of his characteristics was that when he found any man had wronged

JOSEPH REYNOLDS 237

him in a business transaction he seldom made much fuss about it — in fact, would
suffer a severe loss before he would take a case into the courts; but ever after that

particular person was "down and out" with Diamond Jo Reynolds If any

employee was found guilty of a breach of trust he was generally allowed to drop out
without any noise; but he was out good and hard forever after.

Another feature of Diamond Jo's character was that he appointed a man to fill a
place and looked to him for results. That is, he depended on the appointee's indi-
viduality and originality, without any special direction from himself There

have been but few, if any, who have left such a name for probity and high integrity as
Diamond Jo Reynolds; and those of us who were fortunate enough to be associated
with him revere his memory and think of him as one of the grand characters in the
early history of the development of the upper Mississippi Valley.

It is quite evident that he made a very strong impression on the
imagination of his captains and business managers.- Recurring to
the opening paragraph of this sketch, when Mr. Merrick saw him sitting
on the snubbing post at McGregor, paying little attention to the landing,
unloading, loading, and departure of what must have been one of his
favorite boats — the "Mary Morton" — speaking to none of the officers,
apparently taking no notice of anything except his whittling, "it was
Captain Burns's opinion that Reynolds had made a mental inventory of
the appearance and condition of the boat, of the manner in which it had
been handled in making the landing, and of the efficiency of the mate
in getting the cargo on board; but he spoke to no one and no one spoke
to him while we were looking," says Mr. Merrick, and continues: "'He
is scheming!' said Burns, and his thoughts may have been in Colorado
or Arizona rather than McGregor." This was the way the men who
knew him best thought and spoke of him. They said: "He is thinking,
scheming, working out far-sighted plans." Mingled with their strong
attachment to him was a feeling of awe. They regarded him as a kind
of super-business man.

At the same time he had one characteristic and one custom that
brought him and his employes into a rather intimate sympathy. He
had a natural genius and love for mechanical work. On some of his
boats and at several points on shore he kept chests of tools. If any
job of repairs needed to be done, the men would say, "Oh, let it alone till
the old man comes around." And sure enough, when he did come,
the first question he asked was likely to be: "Well, what have you got
for me to do ?" On his boats he did not pose as the owner or spend his
time in the pilot-house, but was usually found at work in the carpenter
shop.

An aristocratic southern gentleman once wandered into the shop on
one of the steamers and finding a carpenter at work entered into conver-

238 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

sation with him. Later he said to the captain: "I have had a very
pleasant chat with your old carpenter below decks. He seems rather an
intelligent old fellow." "Yes," said the captain, "he is somewhat
intelligent. His name is Reynolds, commonly known as 'Diamond Jo.'
He owns this line of steamboats, a railroad in Arkansas, numerous gold
mines in Colorado and Arizona, and is probably worth two or three
million dollars."

It was inevitable that with his varied and extensive interests Mr.
Reynolds should be a frequent visitor to Chicago. Indeed he had an
office in that city during the last thirty-five years of his life. There are
many business men in Chicago who, after more than thirty years, still
remember him. One of the intimacies of his earlier western life that
continued was that with the late P. D. Armour.

The following story, told by Mr. Armour to Captain John Killen,
one of Mr. Reynolds' principal lieutenants, illustrates the extent of his
credit, his reputation for absolute integrity, and the warm friendship
he inspired in the strongest men.

There had been a flurry in the money market and Reynolds found
himself in need of funds. He went to Mr. Armour's office and the latter,
guessing his errand, for the fun of anticipating his request said at once:

"Jo, can you lend me fifty thousand dollars?" Reynolds replied: "That is just
what I came to you for. I never wanted money so badly in all my life."

"How much do you want?" asked Armour.

"I want two hundred thousand dollars," was the reply.

" I can let you have it," said Armour, and filled out checks for the amount, taking
Reynolds' personal notes in exchange.

Soon after, Reynolds came back and threw a bundle of stock certificates on the
desk, saying, "Phil, keep that until I pay back the money."

"Put that back in your safety box, Jo," said Armour. "But for the uncertainty
of life your word would be enough for me. Were it not for that I would not accept
your notes."

The bundle of stock certificates represented the entire value of the Hot Springs
Railroad at that time.

If the readers of this sketch have conceived of the Mississippi
River steamboat man as a boisterous, intemperate, profane character,
they must free their minds of this conception in thinking of Mr. Reynolds.
He was exactly the opposite of all this. His Quaker bringing-up had
made him a quiet, reticent man. Surrounded by drinking men, he
was himself strictly temperate, once saying to a reporter that it was so
long since he had tasted whiskey that he could not remember the time.
He did not drink liquor at all. There were no bars on the boats of the

JOSEPH REYNOLDS 239

Diamond Jo Line, and "drinking by either passengers or crew was dis-
countenanced." And, as Mr. Merrick says, "being a Quaker he did not
swear."

It may also be said that, being a Quaker, his religion was of the
silent sort. The executor of his estate tells me that among his papers
was found a note hi his own handwriting which said: "It is my religion
to do what I say and pay what I owe."

That Mr. Reynolds was a man of extraordinary business activity
and ability is evident from this brief sketch of his life. He engaged in
many kinds of business and succeeded in all. In his great enterprises —
dealing in gram, steamboating, railroading, mining — he accumulated a
large fortune. But the enterprises I have touched upon did not limit
his activities. He was interested in the Park Hotel and perhaps others
in Hot Springs. He was concerned in the Santa Fe, Prescott, and
Phoenix Railway Company. His investments covered a wide field and
his business activities, as this story has shown, continued to the very
end of his life, in his seventy-first year.

He carried a small red book in which he kept a record of his business
transactions. These records were concise, but complete. After his
death a baseless claim was made against the estate for a very large
sum by a man who had been his agent in certain transactions. The
"red book" contained an entry hi which he said that he had, on a date
mentioned, paid the claimant for "$200 worth of service" and settled
with him in full. Confronted with this the claimant and his lawyer
withdrew and were seen no more.

It illustrates the essential nobility of the man that the death of his
son, who would have been his heir, and in whom all his hopes were
centered, instead of narrowing his sympathies, widened them and awak-
ened in his heart a warm interest in all young men. There is something
sublime and impressive and appealing hi the sight of this man of wealth,
lying sick unto death in that shack in the Arizona wilderness, making
provision with his dying breath to give young men a start hi life. In his
last hours he thought of others rather than himself.

Mrs. Reynolds was like-minded and lost no time hi taking steps to
carry out her husband's plans.

The University of Chicago opened its doors to students on the first
day of October, 1892. The estate of Mr. Reynolds was not then settled,
but on the nineteenth of that month Mrs. Reynolds agreed to pay
to the University $250,000, "to be used for educational purposes hi such
manner as shall commemorate the name of Joseph Reynolds and to

240 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

be expended for such purposes and in such manner as shall be agreed
upon." In 1895, before the settlement of the estate, Mrs. Reynolds
herself died.

The Reynolds Fund did not finally aggregate the amount originally
proposed. It was paid to the University by the executor in 1897 in
the bonds, for the most part, of the Hot Springs Railroad, he retaining
an option to repurchase them at par within five years. As long as that
line was the only one leading to the Springs, its securities were gilt
edged. The building of new lines, however, very materially impaired
their value. When in 1901 final arrangements with the executor were
made, the amount realized for the fund was found to be $113,123.45.
By agreement with the representatives of the estate during that year,
$80,000 was set aside for the erection of "The Reynolds Student Club-
house," and it was arranged that "the income of the remainder of the
Fund shall forever be used for scholarships for boys, to be known as the
'Joseph Reynolds Scholarships.'" The scholarship fund thus amounts
to $33,123.45, and every year pays the tuition fees of twelve young
men.

The Reynolds Clubhouse is one of the four buildings constituting
what is known as the Tower Group. The corner stones of all four, the
Hutchinson Commons, the Mitchell Tower, the Reynolds Clubhouse,
and Mandel Assembly Hall, were laid on the last day of the University's
Decennial Celebration, June 18, 1901. The corner stone of the clubhouse
was, very appropriately, laid by a student. It stands on the corner of
Fifty-seventh Street and University Avenue. The avenue side is
said to be strongly suggestive of the famous garden front of St. John's
College, Oxford. It is built, like the other buildings of the University,
of Bedford stone, and is three stories high, with a commodious basement
in which are the bowling alleys, barber shop, and locker room. On the
three floors above are a library, billiard room, reading room, and theater,
with numerous committee rooms, all handsomely finished and furnished.

The house provides the men of the University with facilities for mak-
ing student life socially enjoyable and profitable. They were quick to
realize this, and at the beginning of the Autumn Quarter of 1903 organ-
ized the Reynolds Club, which took over the house and thenceforth
filled a great place in the lif e of the University. The club has more than
a thousand members and grows with the growth of the institution. It
is the center of the University's social life for its young men.

The desire of Mrs. Reynolds to "commemorate the name of Joseph
Reynolds" has been fulfilled in a somewhat extraordinary manner.

JOSEPH REYNOLDS 241

The University has done it in building the Reynolds Clubhouse and estab-
lishing the Reynolds Scholarships. The students have, perhaps, made
a still greater contribution to this commemoration in calling their organi-
zation the Reynolds Club. Mr. Reynolds' line of steamers, his railroads,
his mines, his hotels, made no mention of his name. With the passing
of all these it would have been forgotten. But, connected in this three-
fold way with a great University, it is not only assured of historic
remembrance but is a living name and will continue perpetually to be
spoken every day by increasing numbers. But far better than this,
every year growing numbers of young men will enter the struggle of
life better equipped to achieve success and usefulness because he lived
and labored for them. And best of all, he was worthy of this immortality
of remembrance and influence.

NATHANIEL COLVER

NATHANIEL COLVER

Nathaniel Colver was one of the foremost Baptist ministers of the
last century. He bore the name of his father and his grandfather,
both Baptist ministers in New England and New York. They were not
educated men, and, preaching in the scattered settlements of Revolu-
tionary and pre-Revolutionary days, received little remuneration, sup-
porting themselves largely by farming. They preached for the love of
preaching. The Nathaniel Colver of whom I write was born, one of
eleven children, in Orwell, near Lake Champlain, Addison County, Ver-
mont, May 10, 1794. He was little more than a year old, however, when
his father took the family to a farm in Champlain, New York. They
no doubt traveled the hundred miles by water, up the lake to Rouse's
Point, the northeast corner of New York, and then five or eight miles
by the Champlain River to the settlement of the same name where the
new farm was located and where, although there were only thirteen
families in two townships, the father began at once to preach as well as
to cultivate his land. The country was a wilderness, but the population
slowly increased and churches were organized in course of time in Cham-
plain and other places. The family was poor. None of them was strong
and well except the boy Nathaniel. He grew up to a life of toil. Either
there were scant opportunities for schooling or the pressure of the family
needs gave him no time for school. At all events two winters at school
were all he ever had. He grew fast and became tall and robust. He was
strong as an ox, red-blooded, and eager to get all he could out of his
youth and the frontier wilderness about him. And what a country that
was for an active, vigorous, fun-loving, adventurous, courageous lad.
Within sight of his home to the north were the forests of Canada. A
few miles down the river were the upper reaches of Lake Champlain.
The rivers and brooks were the home of the trout. The woods were
full of many kinds of game. In his last days Dr. Colver visited these
scenes of his youth. "There," he wrote, "I learned to trap the musk-
rat and the mink, and also the wolf and the bear. I could remember
in what direction and about where, in the wilderness as it then was, my
brother next older and myself caught four wolves in one winter. We
caught them in fox traps, and by fastening the trap to the end of a pole
the wolf was unable to pull his foot out," the heavy pole acting only as

243

244 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

a drag. The boy was not able, however, to get out of this wonderful
boy's world all the joy of youth he might have had under happier circum-
cumstances. He continues, " In my father's family there was much hard
sickness. I, only, had good health, and mine was the lot of service and
toil." His lack of schooling was not compensated by any home advan-
tages. The only books he recalled as being in the house in those early
years were the Bible, a "psalm-book," a spelling-book, and the "Third
Part," so barren was his life of any opportunities of education. Being
naturally eager for knowledge he became during these early years thor-
oughly familiar with the Bible. He says, "I had nothing else to feed
my mind with, and so I ate up the Bible," which "my mother early
taught me to read and love." When asked in later life where he gradu-
ated, he replied, "In the northeast corner of New York, in a log heap."

The hard life of the frontier continued till he was fifteen years old,
when the family moved to West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where a
little over fifty years before Jonathan Edwards had produced the works
on which his fame is founded.

Although young Colver was still a lad he was, in this removal, sent
on in advance of the family, and all of the journey not made by water
he accomplished on foot. He was now apprenticed to a tanner and
furrier and learned, among other things, shoemaking. The war of 1812
came on, and, when in 1814 New York was threatened, Colver, then in
his twentieth year, volunteered and served for some months with the
army concentrated in that city for its defense. He became shoemaker
for his fellow-soldiers.

Up to his army experience there is not the slightest evidence that
the boy possessed any unusual gifts. But he now, all at once, gave proof
of hitherto hidden powers. A comrade was arrested and taken before
a magistrate. Young Colver, believing him innocent, appeared and
asked permission to defend him and did this with such eloquence and
power that not only was the soldier acquitted, but a gentleman present
sought out the youthful advocate and offered, if he desired to make the
law his profession, to put him in the way of obtaining a legal education.
Although he was only twenty years old he was already contemplating
marriage, and a long course of study did not appeal to him. The war
ending, he returned home and on April 27, 1815, a few days before his
twenty-first birthday, married Sally Clark and began life for himself.
He fully intended to follow the business he had learned, but in 1817,
when twenty-three years old, he became the subject of an old-fashioned
conversion and this changed the direction of his life. He did not indeed

NATHANIEL COLVER 245

choose the ministry. It rather chose him. Immediately after his con-
version the people began to say that he must preach. A call coming
from a neighboring church for someone to supply the pulpit, the deacons
drafted young Colver into the service. Reluctantly he went and told
the people that he could not preach, but would lead a prayer meeting.
They assured him that this would not do. They were expecting a ser-
mon and a sermon they must have. But he said, "I cannot preach.
I have not even a text." Thereupon one of them suggested, "This is
a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came
into the world to save sinners." "Well," the young man said, "I think
I do know a little about that," and went into the pulpit. The record
of his biographer, Dr. Justin A. Smith, is as follows:

The subject opened to him beyond his expectation, and while all were delighted
and surprised at the sermon which followed, he himself was more surprised than any
of them. At the close it was announced without consulting him that he would preach
again in the afternoon, and at the close of this sermon that he would preach a third
sermon at a school house a few miles away. This last was the best of all. His father
and mother were present, and the joyful old man, turning to his wife as the service
ended, exclaimed, "Our Nathaniel is a preacher."

That day's experience settled the question. He was, indeed, with-
out theological training. He did not even have a common-school edu-
cation. He suffered from these handicaps throughout his life. But he
was a natural preacher and orator. He lacked the discipline of study,
the intellectual acquisitions of learning, and the culture of education,
and these serious deficiencies long obscured the extraordinary natural
abilities he possessed. He was ordained in 1819 at West Clarendon,
Vermont, being then twenty-five years old. Two years later he accepted
a call to Fort Covington, New York, fifty miles west of Champlain, where
he had spent his boyhood, and also on the Canadian border within five
or six miles of the St. Lawrence River. It was a wilderness country.
Almost any morning he could see deer from his study window. There
was no church. Not a man in the town professed religion. He was
called by and became pastor of the community. They promised him
a salary of $400, of which $242 was to be paid in cash, the balance "in
the produce of the country necessary for the support of the family."
A strong church resulted from Mr. Colver's labors, and he preached as
a missionary and an agent of Hamilton Theological Seminary all over that
part of New York lying north of the Adirondack Mountains. Losing his
wife in 1823, he married in 1825 Mrs. Sarah F. Carter, of Plattsburg.

After remaining eight years at Fort Covington he became pastor at
Kingsbury and Fort Ann, in Washington County, New York, southeast

246 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

of the Adirondacks. In 1834 he was called to Holmesburg, a suburb of
Philadelphia. The circumstances which led to this call reveal the sort
of preacher ten years of experience in wilderness and country places had
made of him. Failing health having led him to visit Philadelphia he
had gone into the First Baptist Church in which the distinguished pastor,
Dr. Brantley, was conducting a "protracted" meeting. Having been
introduced as a minister he was invited to preach. He had been preach-
ing but a few minutes when the pastor " discovered that the stranger
was a man of no common power in the pulpit. As he progressed the
impression was deepened, and by the time he had concluded his dis-
course, pastor and people were bathed in tears and made haste to
thank the Lord for sending such a preacher among them," and at once
prevailed on him to continue his preaching through the rest of the meet-
ing. So great was the impression that a year and a half later they sent
for him to assist them in another meeting. Speaking of Mr. Colver's
preaching the pastor wrote:

On Sunday evening the crowd was beyond all example in our place of worship.
After all the seats above and below in our spacious house had been filled, the aisles
were supplied with benches until no more could be introduced, and the whole space
was literally crowded. The preacher's lips appeared to be touched as with a live coal
from the altar. After remaining till ten o'clock at night without manifesting the
least impatience, the congregation was dismissed; but though dispersed, the people
appeared unwilling to leave the house and the greater part of them remained, whilst
inquirers to the number of about one hundred came forward.

Dr. Brantley did not rest until he had brought Mr. Colver to the
suburb of Holmesburg. He remained, however, only a few months.
But during that time he had the joy of welcoming into the church
his third son, Charles K. Colver, then in his fourteenth year. The
pastorate was brought to a sudden termination by an urgent call
to the Union Village Church, Greenwich, New York, near his former
field in Washington County. The church was one of the largest and
most influential in eastern New York. Rev. Edward Barber had served
it for more than forty years, Mr. Colver having been associated with
him for a time while pastor at Kingsbury. On the death of its aged
minister the church at once sent for Mr. Colver, and its position and
prestige were such that he does not seem to have thought it possible
to decline the call. It was during the two years previous to the old
pastor's death that Mr. Colver had been associated with him and had
devoted a great deal of his time to work in the church. Mainly as the
result of these labors three hundred converts were baptized. His own
sole pastorate in the Union Village church was one of the most remarkable

NATHANIEL COLVER 247

and fruitful in his career. In the four years it continued he baptized
three hundred and ninety, making, for the whole period of six years, six
hundred and ninety. It was a wonderful experience and a marvelous
record. How could a man leave the pastorate of such a church in the
midst of his usefulness and at the height of his success ?

That is the story I wish now to tell. In the early years of his
ministry he joined the Masons, but as he took one degree after another
he became increasingly dissatisfied, and when it came to oaths to
protect Masons even though guilty of crime and of treason, he re-
volted, left the order and joined, at great personal sacrifice, the anti-
Masonic crusade of the last century. Not that he neglected his duties
as a minister. His ministry was always his first business. But after
1830 he held his place among the foremost advocates of anti-Masonry.
He was called on frequently through many years to address anti-
Masonic meetings and conventions in many parts of the country.
Dr. J. A. Smith declares, "It is not too much to say that among those
who were chiefly instrumental in arousing and directing public senti-
ment with reference to the wrong and peril of secret orders such as that
of Masonry, Nathaniel Colver ranked always with the very foremost."
No doubt much that he denounced has been reformed.

Mr. Colver also early became an ardent advocate of the temperance
reformation. He became a popular lecturer on temperance. He was
sent as a delegate to conventions, and his eloquence placed him among
the temperance leaders of the country. Writing of this phase of his
work Dr. J. D. Fulton said:

Memories of his rising in his place at a great temperance convention in Saratoga,
New York, where he confronted and opposed Governor Briggs on a question of policy,
live in the minds of men at this hour. Such was his power that the currents of thought
were changed. The master-spirit had appeared. He spoke over an hour, apparently
without premeditation, but in so telling a manner that he carried the convention with
him, and Governor Briggs, familiar with the palmiest efforts of Henry Clay and
Webster, declared he had never listened to such oratory before. There was that in
the squint of the eye, the pucker of the mouth, the wave of the hand, the tone of
voice, which would set an audience into a roar of laughter, or smite the rock of feeling
with the touch of his wand, causing fountains of tears to gush forth.

The third great reform to which Mr. Colver devoted himself was
antislavery. He became widely known as an ardent abolitionist. His
zeal and abilities brought him into intimate association with antislavery
leaders and he quickly came into wide prominence. In the Baptist de-
nomination he was one of the leaders in disfellowshipping slaveholders
and organizing the American Baptist Antislavery Convention. He was

248 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

a delegate from that Convention to the World's Antislavery Convention
in London in 1840. William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips were
there. Taking an active part in the Convention were Prince Albert,
Clarkson, Daniel O'Connel, Lord Brougham, Guizot, and members of
the English nobility. Early in the sessions Mr. Colver was called out
and compelled to speak absolutely without premeditation. But it was
in just these circumtances that his genius flamed forth. His speech
produced so great an effect that he was publicly and warmly congratu-
lated and in the after-proceedings was one of the recognized leaders.
Mr. Colver's championship of the cause of freedom continued with
unabated zeal till the final triumph.

This review of the three great reforms to which Mr. Colver gave his
life brings us back to the reasons that led him to leave the Union Village
Church and the seven hundred converts who had flocked into it under
his ministry. In 1838 the reforms he advocated were none of them
popular. If he had been seeking popularity and pastorates in large and
powerful churches he would have eschewed them all. They raised up
against him multitudes of enemies in his own denomination. Many
churches, and most of all the large churches of the cities, were closed
against him. They regarded him as a fanatic and a trouble breeder and
would have nothing to do with him as a pastor. It so happened, how-
ever, that in the city of Boston there was a Baptist layman like-minded
with him. This was Timothy Gilbert, who for years had cherished the
purpose of founding a Baptist church in which the seats should be free
and which should be committed to those reforms which Mr. Colver
advocated. In his memoir of Timothy Gilbert, Dr. Fulton writes:

In 1838 Mr. Colver was in Connecticut lecturing [on slavery]. He had been
mobbed and vilified, but he had triumphed gloriously. Flushed with victory, he
came to Boston and spoke at the Capitol and at Marlboro Chapel. There Timothy
Gilbert saw him. Jonathan had found his David. He was at this time forty-four

years of age. His power of mind was fully developed Timothy Gilbert no

sooner saw him then he beheld a standard bearer. An agreement was made that
if the brethren in Boston would procure a place of worship and organize a church op-
posed to secret organizations, intemperance, and slavery, and in favor of free seats,
he would become their pastor.

This was the way Mr. Colver came to leave the amazingly success-
ful work he was doing in the Union Village Church and undertake a
pastorate in the metropolis of New England. He saw an opportunty
of building up from the foundations a new church of his own faith, fully
committed to all the great reforms he advocated, in the very center of
culture, of population, and of power. It was thus he came to Boston

NATHANIEL COLVER 249

in the autumn of 1839. He was in his forty-sixth year and during the
thirteen years of his pastorate reached the fulness of his great powers.
That he had great powers as a thinker and an orator cannot be doubted.
There has never been a nobler group of preachers in Boston than there
was during the fifties of the last century. But none of them had greater
popular gifts than Colver. A distinguished southern minister after a
long visit in Boston was persuaded to go and hear him. When asked
how he liked him, his reply was, "I abhor the man's abolitionism, but
he is the best preacher I have heard in Boston." He was above the
middle height, large-framed, symmetrically built, with a benevolent but
powerful face, altogether of a dignified and commanding presence.
Telling of one of his missionary tours before this date, a writer begins
thus, "A noble-looking man called at a public house in New Lebanon
Springs, New York, just in the edge of evening and inquired if there
were any Christians there who held evening meetings." That describes
him exactly. He was a noble-looking man. He had a most expressive
countenance and a voice of great sweetness, compass, and power. He
had all the natural gifts of a great speaker and on occasions was an
orator of surpassing eloquence. He lacked only one thing — the mental
discipline of a liberal education. It was this lack that made him an
occasional orator only. It was this that made him adopt a uniform,
cast-iron method of preparing a sermon. I have before me a dozen of
his plans of sermons. They are all constructed on the following model:
(i) introductory exposition of the text; (2) doctrine; (3) reflections.
He knew no other method.

It was this lack of the mental discipline of a liberal education that
made regular habits of daily study impossible for him and led him some-
tunes to enter the pulpit without having prepared a sermon or even
chosen a text. He had a fatal gift of extemporaneous speech.

But notwithstanding these handicaps he had a great and useful
ministry in Boston. Out of that ministry came the church and move-
ment famous in Baptist history as Tremont Temple. In 1842 one hun-
dred and thirty-six converts were baptized. This pastorate was the
golden period of Mr. Colver's life. As pastorates go it was a long one —
thirteen years. The time came, however, when Deacon Gilbert began
to criticize him because he had a shop in his backyard where he indulged
his genius for invention, because he didn't spend enough time in his
study, and because he was not enough in the homes of the people. The
friendship of the two was not broken, but in 1852 Mr. Colver resigned.
It was a curious coincidence that on the night he resigned Tremont

250 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Temple was destroyed by fire. The pastor went from the meeting as
a guest of Deacon Gilbert and during the night the Temple was burned
to the ground.

Mr. Colver was now one of the most distinguished and capable
preachers of the denomination and would naturally have gone to one
of its important churches. But the prejudice created by his agitation
against Masonry and slavery was so great and widespread that the only
settlement immediately open to him was in a small suburb of Boston,
South Abington. Here he remained only one year and then went to
the First Baptist Church of Detroit, Michigan, where he had a not very
fruitful pastorate of four years. The church was not a strong one, and
in 1856 Mr. Colver accepted a call to the First Baptist Church of Cin-
cinnati, where he remained a little over four years. The church was
a rather feeble body when he took charge of it. He was at the time
sixty-two years old, but in Cincinnati he renewed his youth and labored
with tremendous energy and power. He held great revival meetings,
preaching every night for many months together. Hundreds of converts
were baptized and the church was greatly strengthened. His Cincin-
nati pastorate extended from his sixty-second to his sixty-sixth or sixty-
seventh year, and he received during this period the degree of D.D. from
Denison University. He made the distinct impression that he was a
great preacher and a great man. Rev. Dr. Aydelotte, a Presbyterian
pastor of the same period, wrote of him as follows:

After a brief exordium we were brought to feel the power of a giant intellect

As he went on, his body as well as his spirit seemed rising upward — heavenward —
while he poured out one continuous stream of captivating, melting, richest, sacred
eloquence. It was not merely the eloquence of intellectual talent, or of high moral
and spiritual culture; it was something in addition to all these — it was a rare, heaven-
born genius shedding a hallowed glow of beauty, of power, of sublimity over every
statement, every argument, every appeal We have at times endeavored, not-
withstanding all the fascination of his eloquence, to listen with the severest critical
accuracy: and we were filled with astonishment, when we called to mind the defi-
ciencies of his early education, that we could rarely discover a solecism or grammatical
error in his language, and that his figures of speech were so apt and pure — always in

strict accordance with the nicest rules of rhetoric His was often the highest

style of sacred oratory — a glorious preacher We never expect to see another

Dr. Colver.

Such was the testimony of a fellow-pastor of another denomination. It
is only one of many like it relating to Dr. Colver after he had passed
threescore years.

Dr. Colver's last pastorate was with the Tabernacle Baptist Church,
Chicago. It began in 1861 and continued till 1864. The church was

NATHANIEL COLVER 251

not large and was badly located. The pastor was no longer in vigorous
health. But, as Dr. Smith, his biographer, says:

The closing period of his pastorate was marked by an incident of the greatest
interest and importance to the church .... putting the Tabernacle Church upon
a basis wholly new, and starting it upon a course of prosperity unexampled in its
previous history. The house occupied by the First Church — an excellent brick
structure — was, with its furniture and appurtenances of every kind, given to the
Tabernacle Church. The house was taken down, removed to the new location on the
corner of Morgan and Monroe streets, and there re-created, with improvements made
then and since which rendered it one of the most attractive houses of worship in the
city The Tabernacle Church, with the members, some sixty in number, of the First
Church proposing to join them, united in a new organization which, taking the name
of the Second Baptist Church of Chicago, has now, with God's blessing, won a title
to be named with the largest, most enterprising, most widely influential of the Baptist
churches of America. [This was written in 1873.] While these changes were in
progress Dr. Colver retained his pastorate of the Tabernacle Church. He felt, how-
ever, that the new church now formed should have a new pastor, a younger man, able
to undertake a service impossible to one who had already reached his threescore years
and ten. It was therefore with his most cheerful acquiescence that the joint church
called to its pastorate Rev. E. J. Goodspeed, of Janesville, Wisconsin. He welcomed
the new pastor to his field with cordial words, publicly spoken, and ever after, to the
end of his own life, co-operated with him in every way .... rejoicing .... in the
signal success which attended his ministry.

At the close of 1864 the writer of these pages was beginning his
ministry as pastoral supply of the North Baptist Church, Chicago.
Responding in March, 1865, when he was twenty-two years old, to the
last draft of the War of the Rebellion, he received ordination before
reporting in Rochester, New York, for duty. He has always recalled
with pride that his ordination sermon was preached by Dr. Colver, who
was fifty years his senior.

The service of three years with the Tabernacle Church was Dr. Col-
ver's last regular pastorate, though he continued to preach as long as
he could stand in a pulpit. He had no thought of ceasing from labor.
After coming to the West he had felt an increasing interest in the edu-
cation of young men for the ministry. In Chicago he entered with
enthusiasm into the plans for establishing the Baptist Union Theological
Seminary. He had strong convictions as to the teaching of theology,
believing that it should be strictly biblical. He was invited to inaugu-
rate the work of instruction preliminary to the establishing of the pro-
posed seminary, and in 1865 and 1866 he taught theological classes in
connection with the old University of Chicago. In pursuance of his
view that instruction should be purely biblical he prepared and gave
to his classes a course of lectures founded solely on the Epistle to the

252 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Romans. Three of his personal friends in New England, W. W. Cook,
of Whitehall, New York, and Mial Davis and Lawrence Barnes, of
Burlington, Vermont, contributed $7,500 for the work of instruction,
given originally to pay his salary, but surrendered by him to the seminary,
and his former church in Cincinnati took preliminary steps to transfer
a piece of real estate.

But this work was cut short by a call that had behind it the impera-
tive of nearly half a century of warfare for the freedom of the slave. A
movement was organized to educate colored men for the ministry among
their own people, and Dr. Colver was induced to undertake the
inauguration of the work of instruction for the freedmen in Richmond,
Virginia. In feeble and failing health he began this new service in May,
1867. But a year of heroic toil brought him to the end of his strength,
and he returned in 1868 to his home in Chicago to rest from his labors.
He had lost his wife in April of that year. He himself died two and a
half years later, on September 25, 1870, in the seventy-seventh year of
his age. But the work in Richmond did not die. Started in Lumpkin's
jail, an old slave pen, it developed into Colver Institute, now known as
Richmond Theological Seminary, a part of Virginia Union University,

Dr. Colver was a many-sided, highly gifted man. He had a genial
humor and a very active wit. He rarely, if ever, met his superior in
the give and take of debate. On occasions he was eloquent beyond
almost any of the great orators of his day. He had a natural gift for
poetical composition, writing for the choirs of his churches scores of
hymns which were sung on special occasions. He often thought in
numbers, as once when visiting John G. Whittier and invited by him to
attend the Quaker meeting. Mr. Whittier told him he must keep
silent, that a man named Beach was then in prison for speaking in their
meeting. "It was a silent meeting," said Dr. Colver. "One man got
asleep and so did I." When they returned home and Whittier inquired
how he liked the meeting Colver replied:

Well, John, since thou a Quaker art,
Go to, I'll tell thee all my heart.
Quite plain, but neat, the place I found;
A solemn stillness reigned around.
I took a seat and down I sat,
And gazed upon a Quaker hat,
While all around, in solemn mood,
I ween were thinking something good.
But still I eyed that Quaker hat —
The crown was low, the brim was flat,

NATHANIEL COLVER 253

It canopied a noble pate,
Who still in solemn silence sate.
I thought him thinking of his God,
When lo! the hat began to nod!
The spirit moved to use my speech:
I should, but then I thought of Beach.
I longed his drowsy soul to waken,
But thought it best to save my bacon;
And — would you think me such a chap ?
I gave it up and took a nap.

Dr. Colver was a man of power. He always made this impression:
"In stature higher than the average, the proportions of his figure were,
in the days of his prime, well-nigh perfect, matched as they were by a
face and head that were the fitting crown of a noble form." Men spoke
of his noble presence; and the glory of his eloquence, which was the
expression of an uncommon intellect, made an extraordinary impression
of power. As he approached the close of his career his reflections on all
that he had lost by his lack of early advantages led him to devote his
later years to providing candidates for the ministry opportunities for an
education which he in his youth had not had. This interest in the edu-
cation of young men for the ministry brought him into connection with
the first University of Chicago. It made him one of the founders of
the Baptist Union Theological Seminary and its earliest professor.

This sketch has been written because of a unique succession of
gifts to the University of Chicago. The first of these was made by
Dr. Colver's son, Rev. Charles K. Colver, and was the first cash contribu-
tion for the founding of the University. The amount was $100 and
was paid through the writer of these pages in 1889. A quarter of
a century later the son-in-law and daughter of Charles, people in
moderate circumstances, made the first of what has turned out to be
a series of most interesting gifts continuing through successive years.

The daughter, Susan Esther Colver, was born in South Abington,
Massachusetts, November 15, 1859. She was graduated from the
old University of Chicago, class of 1882, receiving the degree of A.B.,
and later (in 1886) of A.M. She also became an accomplished musician.
She inherited much of what may be called the typical Colver intellect
and character as exemplified in her grandfather and father. She was
noted for generosity, geniality, independence, and energy. She gave
her life unreservedly to the cause of education. She was in the service of
the public schools of Chicago from October 26, 1882, to June 26, 1912.
She was principal of the Horace Mann School from August 20, 1890, to

254 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

March 21, 1911, and principal of the Nathanael Greene School from
March 21, 1911, to June 26, 1912. She was unusually successful both
as a teacher and as a principal. In fact, many persons thought that as
a principal she made her school one of the best in the city, this being
especially true of the Horace Mann School. She was a member of the
Immanuel Baptist Church of Chicago. She was married to Jesse L.
Rosenberger, a lawyer of Chicago, July 2, 1912, as the culmination of a
long acquaintance. She died in Chicago November 19, 1918.

Mr. Rosenberger was born in Lake City, Minnesota, January 6, 1860.
His youth was spent in the village of Maiden Rock, Wisconsin. When
about 17 or 18, he taught several terms of country school.

He was a student at the old University of Chicago, but was graduated
from the University of Rochester, receiving the degrees of A.B. and A.M.
He was graduated from the Chicago College of Law, and received the
degree of LL.B. from Lake Forest University. He was admitted to the
bar of Illinois, and maintained an office in Chicago for the practice of law
until 1915, but gradually came, by preference, to giving more and more
of his time to various forms of writing, principally on legal and business
subjects, for publication, as well as to doing some editing and publishing.

Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberger had been students in the old Univer-
sity of Chicago, and personal reminiscence and family tradition com-
bined to interest them in the fortunes of the new University. In March,
1915, they united in conveying to the University the old Colver home-
stead on Thirty-fifth Street, west of Cottage Grove Avenue, Chicago.
The purpose of this gift was the founding of the Nathaniel Colver Lec-
tureship and Publication Fund, Mrs. Rosenberger desiring to honor the
name and perpetuate the memory of her grandfather in the institution
which was the successor of that in which he had given instruction fifty
years before.

On June 7 of the same year Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberger provided for
the endowment of what will eventually be the Colver-Rosenberger Lec-
ture Fund, in this donation associating with their own name that of
Charles K. Colver, Mrs. Rosenberger's father.

Less than three months later, September 2, 1915, they established
a Colver-Rosenberger Fellowship Fund to provide a fellowship, desiring
in this to associate with their family name that of the father, Charles,
and of the grandfather, Nathaniel.

On February 4, 1916, they provided for the doubling of this fund,
and on the next day they provided for the establishment of what is to
be known as the Colver-Rosenberger Scholarship, again associating with
their own the name of the father and the grandfather.

NATHANIEL COLVER 255

On April 5, 1917, they gave $1,000, later increased to $2,000, to
establish at once a fund for an honor medal or cash prize to be known
as The Rosenberger Medal or The Rosenberger Prize, founded by Mr. and
Mrs. Jesse L. Rosenberger, the medal or prize "to be awarded in recog-
nition of achievement through research, in authorship, in invention, for
discovery, for unusual public service, or for anything deemed of great
benefit to humanity."

On February 10, 1918, Mr. Rosenberger, by a gift of $1,500, estab-
lished in memory of his wife the Susan Colver Rosenberger Prize Fund
to provide prizes for original research in education. The royalties on
his new book, Through Three Centuries, are to be added to this fund.

Here were eight different contributions made during a period of four
years, none of them solicited, all the free-will offerings of these friends
of education.

Because of these gifts they have made their own lives enduringly
significant and made the name of Dr. Colver a part of the history of
the University.

fliiW YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY

, LEI* OX
D

From a painting by Lords Betts

LA VERNE NOYES

LA VERNE NOYES

La Verne Noyes is one of the fortunate men who can look back to an
ancestry belonging to that royal line that laid the foundations of both
religion and education in the United States. The first of the family to
reach the New World was James Noyes, who migrated from Choulderton,
Wiltshire, England, in 1634, and became pastor of the Congregational
Church in Newbury, Massachusetts. His son James also became a
clergyman and had the distinction of serving the church in Stonington,
Connecticut, for fifty-five years, from 1664 till his death in 1719 at the
age of eighty. But he had the still greater distinction of being one of
that illustrious body of ten Congregational ministers who, in 1701,
founded the institution which has developed into Yale University. His
name stood first among the ten appointed by the legislature as trustees.
He was the senior member of the board and as often as he attended the
sessions was made chairman of the meeting. This was the regular
procedure for eighteen years, until his death in 1719. His brother Moses
was also a member of the Board of Trustees for many years after his
appointment in 1703. James Noyes was one of the ministers who
contributed what he designates, in a letter of December, 1701, as his
"full proportion of books" for the library of the new institution.

Is it a reversion to type that, in the seventh generation, has led his
descendant, La Verne Noyes, to make to the University of Chicago one
of the great contributions in the history of education ?

When Mr. Noyes was born, January 7, 1849, his parents, Leonard R.
and Jane Jessup, were living in Genoa, Cayuga County, New York.

In the middle of the last century the Central West was the land
of a sort of romantic attraction for adventurous spirits of the older
states. The possibilities and promise of this new world led them to
abandon established callings and often good business prospects for the
uncertain but alluring promise of the Mississippi Valley. Leonard
Noyes was one of the men who, having heard the call of the West, made
a tour of inspection, and the prairies of Iowa so enchanted him that on
them he sought his future home. In the fall of 1854, therefore, with his
wife and four children, he made the journey in a covered wagon from
Genoa, New York, to Spr ing ville, Linn County, Iowa. He was a pioneer,
but belonged to the most progressive type of pioneers. The following

257

258 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

statement by his son, La Verne, reveals the pioneering difficulties and
gives in brief the story of a highly intelligent farmer. The covered
wagon in which the family arrived at Springville, Iowa, on October 20,
1854, in the boy's fifth year,

served for their shelter for some weeks, for the reason that they could find no home to
live in. Leonard succeeded in buying an empty log schoolhouse in Springville, one
of the four houses which the town contained at that tune, and sold it the next day, with
the privilege of living in it until his house should be completed. With his home thus
established he began building an 18 X 24, story and a half, log house on his farm. This
was completed so that the family moved into it on the nth day of January, 1855, he
having got out all the logs with little or no help, loading them onto the wagon, three
at a time, assisted only by the horses. The house was the best of its kind and generous
in appearance. It sheltered the family well for nearly twenty-two years, when it gave
place to the present residence. Mr. Noyes lived on his farm nearly thirty-seven years,
during which time the face of the country changed from a wild, houseless, treeless
prairie to one of the richest and best farming sections in this or any other state, and
became covered with artificial groves not equaled anywhere in number, beauty, or
size. In this great work of tree planting he was the first and most active, and his
influence contributed very largely to what has been done by others.

The family consisted of four children: a sister, the eldest, who died
just before reaching womanhood, another sister, a brother, who enlisted
in the Civil War and fell in the charge at Champion Hill in the Vicksburg
campaign, and La Verne, five years younger than his brother.

The family home was not far from a creek which furnished the
brothers much of the fun of their early years. In it was a fine swimming
hole where they learned to swim, and it was full of fish. La Verne was
not expected to fish on Sunday, but he sometimes forgot the parental
injunctions. He recalled a memorable Sunday on which, having had
great luck, he returned home hoping to get his fine string into the house
by the back door, unobserved. As he approached the door, congratu-
lating himself that the way was clear, his father suddenly stepped out and
confronted him. Surveying the boy and the fine string of fish, he
sternly asked how it happened that he had been fishing on Sunday.
The boy tremblingly answered that he had been walking along the creek
and happened to see a big school of fish and thought he would catch some.
"Where did you get your pole ?" "I cut a willow I happened to find."
"What did you do for a fish line?" "I happened to have one in my
pocket." "Where did you get your bait?" "I happened to have my
bait box and worms in my pocket too." The father looked at the boy
very sternly for what seemed to the culprit half an hour, but was probably
a few seconds, and then said, "Well, my son, don't let all these things
happen on the same Sunday again" and turned away. The fish,
however, were not wasted.

LA VERNE NOYES 259

The Iowa farms of that early day were few and far between. The
wild grass in the open grew nearly as tall as a man, and terrifying fires
sometimes swept across the open prairies around the farm. The district
schoolhouse stood at the corner of the farm, and there he and his brother
went to school together. One of the memories of his early boyhood
was that of being overtaken, with his brother, distant from any shelter,
by a terrific and destructive hail storm. The brother, five years older,
covered La Verne securely with his own body, himself suffering many
bruises and having his clothes torn into shreds. The farm lay midway
between the Wapsipinicon and Cedar rivers, each six miles distant.
These rivers were the places where the farmers and their families held
their annual picnics. But it may be doubted whether Mr. Noyes had,
in his boyhood, all the opportunities for play and fun every boy ought
to enjoy. He was a farmer's son, in a new country, developing a piece
of wild prairie land into a highly cultivated farm, and time was lacking
for play, as well as opportunities, in so sparsely settled a country. The
life was hard. More than forty years later, in an address at the opening
of the Illinois Farmers' Hall of Fame, in referring to his boyhood and
the gradual introduction of farm machinery, he made the following
autobiographical statement :

My recollections go back to hand planting, hand sowing, cultivating with a single
shovel plow; to the appearance of the harvester, the mower, the drill, the horse rake,
the horse fork and other machinery for handling hay; to the planter and all the imple-
ments that now make life on the farm endurable. I have swung the scythe and the
cradle, handled hay in the most laborious way, followed the old reaper and kept up
my station, cut fields of corn by hand and done every job on an Iowa farm in the
primitive way, and in nearly all of the modern ways. The farm was a good one and
the house was supplied with the best farm as well as other literature of the day, includ-
ing the New York Tribune, the Atlantic Monthly, and the Country Gentleman. To my
mind the greatest effect of farm machinery is not in the saving of labor and increasing
of profits and enhancing of values, but in the effect on the mind of the boy on the farm.
To get up at four or five o'clock in the morning — winter as well as summer — get out
and do the chores and be ready for a six o'clock breakfast is heroic treatment for a small
boy. The effect it had on me was to inspire me with an ambition to get away from the
farm which nothing on earth could have stemmed, and which nothing under heaven
could have inspired so strongly as did my experience there. It was the ruling passion
in life and the only goal which I had in view.

The sixties were pioneer days on an Iowa farm, and the boy experienced
some primitive conditions.

He had, however, peculiar advantages. In addition to an intelligent
and progressive father he had a mother of whom he says:

To the good judgment, serene life and perfect helpfulness of his wife my father
owed much of the success of his long life She dealt gently with all, and was

260 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

never heard to speak an unkind word of anyone, while her influence over her children
was such that they would not quarrel in her presence. One might call her an apostle
of peace; yet to her country she bravely gave up her eldest son. She was extremely
fond of good reading, took a deep interest in the world's progress, in history and the
affairs of the day, and always had the happy faculty of making and keeping friends.

The boy was further fortunate in having a sister, later Mrs. Frances
A. Giffen, seven years older than himself, who was ambitious for mental
improvement and who, securing an education and becoming a very
successful teacher, became an inspiration to her brother and awoke and
encouraged in him the purpose to secure a college training.

The difficulties in her brother's way were great, but he managed to
get one winter in Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, and one winter
in Parsons Seminary, now Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, giving the
rest of the year to work on the farm. Finally in March, 1868, when
nineteen years old, he was able to enter Ames Agricultural College, now
Iowa State College, at Ames, Iowa, for a continuous four years' course
of study. The institution was then in its first year and Mr. Noyes
graduated with the first class.

It was the rule at that time that each student at Ames must give
the institution three hours a day of service. The president, Dr. A. S.
Welch, was a man of taste, and having made a plan for beautifying
the grounds employed a number of the students in carrying it out.
On young Noyes' arrival he was assigned to this work. It was now
that the training he had received under that most expert transplanter
of trees, his father, brought him to the front. The student group had
been placed under a hired foreman. He set Noyes to transplanting
trees, having first carefully instructed him how to do it. President
Welch having come out to see how well the boys were doing their work,
the foreman confided to him that young Noyes knew a great deal more
about setting out trees than he did. The young man was thereupon
himself made foreman and continued in charge of the improvement of
the grounds throughout his college course. The president "builded
better than he knew." It was the interest that these four years of work
in improving the grounds awakened in his mind that led Mr. Noyes,
many years later, to take Mr. O. C. Simonds, the landscape architect of
Chicago, to Ames to study the college campus with a view to its har-
monious and artistic development. Under Mr. Simonds' supervision
Mr. Noyes has since expended many thousands of dollars in beauti-
fying the college grounds. The work has involved the production of
a beautiful lake, which is appropriately known as Lake La Verne. The

LA VERNE NO YES 261

college farm contains about thirteen hundred acres and the campus a
hundred and twenty-five acres. So intelligently have the laws of land-
scape gardening been followed and so well have the buildings been
grouped that the campus is now a large and beautiful park.

A few years ago Mr. Noyes made an address before the students of
Lewis Institute, of which he was a trustee. The makers of the program
assigned him the topic, "The Impudence of Young Persons." To this
address we are indebted for the following incident of his college life:

I profited once by a piece of impudence I perpetrated, because it turned out well.
When I entered the Iowa State College the first year it opened and went into the big
dormitory building that held several hundred students, we were placed under strict
rules. We had been there but a few days when the mail was delivered late. One of
the rules was that the lights should be out at ten o'clock. But the mail had been
delivered just before ten o'clock and many of us kept the lights burning to read our
letters. The president of the institution, a very dignified man who had been a member
of the United States Senate and college president for years elsewhere, read off a list
of thirty or more room numbers, the occupants of which were requested to call at his
office immediately after chapel. Being in the front row I filed in close to the august
gentleman, but without having the proper sense of his great dignity. The room was
filled and those who could not get in looked in from the doorways. The president
drew himself up in austere dignity and said in a very serious tone, "I wonder what this
institution is coming to." I, a boy recently from a farm, responded that it seemed to
be coming to his office. This struck him as funny, attracted his attention to me and
I was indebted to him for much consideration in later years.

During his college course Mr. Noyes was drawn by the bent of his
mind to specialize in the study of physics. For a year before his gradu-
ation he acted as assistant to the professor in that department. They
had almost no apparatus, and the necessities of the situation compelled
the professor and his young assistant to devise and construct much that
was used in the classroom and in their own research work. Once more
the young student found his home training helpful. As a part of the
equipment of the farm his father had provided a shop in which the son
learned carpentry, the repairing of machinery and tools, and, when
necessity required, their construction. The father's shop awoke, and
the assistantship in physics stimulated, the young man's genius for
invention. This creative instinct had resulted before his graduation in
more than one invention.

This urge toward invention was given a new impulse by the business
opportunity that opened before the young man soon after his graduation
in 1872. It was at this time that the Grange movement swept over
Iowa, and a dealer in farm implements in Marion, a nearby village, who
doubted his own ability to deal with this new development among his

262 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

customers, prevailed on the young graduate to assume, on quite advan-
tageous terms in case of success, entire charge of the business for the
ensuing year.

Mr. Noyes was by nature an inventor. But he belongs to that very
small class of men who combine great inventive and equally great busi-
ness genius. It was not only true that he could not be robbed of his
inventions, as so many inventors are, but equally true that he could
put them on the market and manage with wisdom and success any
business, however extended and profitable, then* value to the world
deserved and created. He was gifted with a sort of intuitive compre-
hension of machinery. He could go over a great manufacturing plant
and leave it with an almost unequaled recollection and understanding
of the many and complicated machines he had inspected. And he had
the same unique gift for organizing and conducting business.

It was this unusual combination of gifts that led him, while yet a
very young man, almost without capital, to start out in business for
himself, manufacturing and selling his own inventions. He was twenty-
five years old when, in 1874, he established a business in unproved haying
tools at Batavia, Illinois. Among the things he then invented, manu-
factured, and sold were hayforks, haystacking frames and carriers, and
gate hangers. The business was not a large one but was carried on with
success for about five years and finally disposed of only because larger
opportunities opened before him.

Meantime these years had brought him something more interesting
and important than his business. Two years after he entered college a
young woman wrote to the president asking for admission to the institu-
tion. She wrote a charming letter in clear and beautiful penmanship.
The president at once wrote her to come, and as her form of service,
service being required from all, made her his private secretary. In this
responsible post she continued till her graduation. She was a very
bright student, learning with extraordinary facility and attaining a
prominent place in the activities of the students. This young lady was
Miss Ida E. Smith, of Charles City, Iowa. She was four years younger
than Mr. Noyes, having been born April 16, 1853.

During the two years in which they were in college together the young
people were mutually attracted, as well they might have been, for they
were evidently made for each other. The attraction resulted in an
engagement, and as soon as Mr. Noyes began to see his way in business
they were married. The wedding took place in Charles City, May 24,
1877, Mr. Noyes being then twenty-eight years old. It was an excep-

LA VERNE NO YES 263

tionally happy marriage through all the more than thirty-five years
that followed.

The newly married couple were students and readers and always had
at hand for ready reference Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. Mrs.
Noyes was rather small and slightly built and found the big dictionary
heavy and hard to handle. She suggested one day that Mr. Noyes
should devise and construct something to hold it for her so that it would
be always at hand and she would only have to turn the leaves. He
responded that if she would take over his correspondence and other
writing he would devote two or three weeks to the job she had suggested
and see what he could do. She readily undertook work which was easy
and natural for her and he set his wits to work on the device she wanted.
The result of his efforts was the invention of the wire dictionary-holder.
It seemed to him so good and so delighted his wife that he made half a
dozen and presented them to friends. They elicited such enthusiastic
appreciation from all who received them that Mr. Noyes concluded that
he had invented something that would meet a real need and would sell.
He therefore patented the dictionary-holder and began to manufacture
and put it on the market. The result was surprisingly successful. The
demand was not only almost immediate, but was increasingly large.
He constantly improved and finally completely redesigned the holder.
The business soon became so promising as to convince him that he must
transfer it to Chicago. He therefore sold his old business and moved to
Chicago, establishing a factory for making the dictionary-holder on
South Market Street. This was in 1879, and being the only manufac-
turer of wire book-holders he did a large business, the sales reaching
nearly or quite thirty thousand in a single year. The dictionary-
holder was a money-maker and laid the foundation of Mr. Noyes'
fortune.

Meanwhile he was all the time working out new inventions and
selling them to manufacturers of farm machinery. During the twenty
years following his graduation from college he devised and sold a score
or more of improvements in haying and harvesting tools and machines.
These activities brought him into an enduring acquaintance and friend-
ship with William Deering, the founder of the great house of that name,
which is now a part of the International Harvester Company. His mind
during the eighties was continually and inventively active with things
outside his manufacturing business, and the prosperity resulting from
these manifold activities provided the means for the real and great
business of his life. This was the aermotor.

264 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

It was perhaps in 1886 that Mr. Noyes' attention was called seriously
to the possibility of improving and making a great business out of a
very old and widely used device for generating power — the windmill.
Improvements had, indeed, been made in the windmill of ancient days,
but it was still constructed of wood and was large, heavy, and cumber-
some. Iron and steel construction had been suggested to manufacturers,
but they were slow to change from the old methods. The thing that
distinguishes Mr. Noyes is that when the suggestion came to him he
recognized its importance and began to suspect that its adoption might
transform the business and make it a great, highly useful, and profitable
enterprise. He entered, therefore, on a serious study of the whole
question. He instituted tests and experiments. He and his assistants
devised changes and improvements. The old windmill was transformed.
It was no longer merely a mill. It was a new creation and needed a new
name. What should it be called? Mr. Noyes said to a friend, "What
shall I call it ? It is not a mill. It's a motor. It derives its power from
the air." At that both men exclaimed "air motor," and the name was
found. For business purposes it became the aermotor and the concern
manufacturing it the Aermotor Company.

When perfected, the aermotor was constructed entirely of iron and
steel. Compared with the old ungainly windmill it looked like a mechan-
ical toy. The way in which it gained very wide attention was through
using at the outset an eight-foot wheel and asking that it be compared
with the big wheels of the old windmill. The aermotor runs in a light
wind, is self-regulating in a strong wind, and stands the severest storms.
It lubricates itself perfectly. One improvement has been added to
another until perfection has well-nigh been reached.

Mr. Noyes entered on the business of manufacturing aermotors in
1888, at 42 and 44 West Monroe Street. It was successful from the start .
Speaking to his agents hi 1893 he said, "I commenced the manufacture
of the aermotor in '88; really got at it in '89, and since then have lessened
the cost of wind power to the consumer to one-sixth of what it was at that
time and have enormously increased its use." The business grew so
rapidly that in 1890 it was moved far west to the corner of Twelfth and
Rockwell streets, where ten acres of ground were eventually purchased
and largely covered with buildings. The business has gradually
expanded to include other things, one of the most important being the
making of steel towers which are used for supporting aermotors, for
carrying the cables of electric transmission lines from the hydro- or
steam-generating plants to the places where the power is distributed,

LA VERNE NOYES 265

for wireless stations, for forest observation posts, and for supporting
batteries of powerful electric lights for flood lighting. In thirty years
the business of the company increased several thousand per cent. Mr.
Noyes was asked one day what the field of the aermotor was. Without
hesitation he answered, "The world." The sale of aermotors has been
established in forty countries in addition to all the territories of the
United States.

For some years before his death Mr. Noyes was at work on an exten-
sion of the uses of the aermotor which will make the world its field even
more certainly than it is now. He proposed to transform the winds of
heaven into electrical power and to make electricity do for the owners of
aermotors anywhere in the world whatever they want it to do. Useful
as the aermotor is it can now produce power only when the wind blows.
Mr. Noyes proposed to attach it to storage batteries and thus produce and
store electricity when the wind blows to furnish power when it does not
blow. The aermotor has long been used to produce electricity for light-
ing purposes. In 1895 Mrs. Noyes, in passing through New York City,
wrote to her husband: "You will be delighted to know that the New
York office is enjoying the finest of electric light, the power for which is
furnished by the aermotor" on the roof of the building. Mr. Noyes
and his assistants developed ingenious devices by which the electricity
generated when the wind blows is transferred more successfully than
ever before to storage batteries whence it can be drawn upon in windless
weather for all sorts of services. The batteries of the electrical auto-
mobile can be charged. The house or shop can be lighted at all times.
The farmer can pump his water regardless of the wind. The farmer's
wife can heat her electric irons, run the washing machine, and iron
the clothes. She can renovate the house with vacuum cleaners, make
her ice-cream, toast her bread, make her coffee, ring the bell, and call
her husband from the barn or the maid from the kitchen by the electric
current. By the same current her husband can grind food for his stock,
sharpen his tools, saw his wood, operate the cream separator, and do a
score of other things and thus transform farm life from a terror to his
growing boys to an attraction from which nothing can draw them away.
The electric current will be on tap in all weathers. Rain or snow, cold or
hot, wind or no wind, it will be always available.

It will be the cheapest power and, perhaps, capable of wider applica-
tion than any hitherto produced by the ingenuity of man. Since these
lines were written the final steps have been taken in perfecting the electric
aermotor and putting it on the market. Where it has served hundreds in

266 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

the past it is confidently expected to serve thousands in the future.
It is by no means impossible that in the future, the distant future, when
the last oil well has failed and the coal fields are exhausted, the electric
aermotor will supply for all the world an abundance of heat, light, and
power.

But a man's life does not consist in the things he possesses nor in the
activities by which he gains them. The normal man spends many more
hours of the day in his home and in outside activities than in his office.
Mr. Noyes was a normal man and this was eminently true of him.
His home life was exceptionally happy. The husband and wife were,
from the beginning to the end, devoted to each other. They were
sufficiently alike and unlike to make the attraction strong and enduring.
Both were college graduates and had literary tastes in common. Mr.
Noyes was devoted to business and invention, Mrs. Noyes had a natural
taste for art.

In 1907 Mr. Noyes purchased one of the most attractive homes in
Chicago at 1450 Lake Shore Drive. It was one of the joys of the closing
years of Mrs. Noyes' life to furnish and adorn this beautiful home.
They had lived temporarily in different parts of the West, South, and
North sides. In going into the house on Lake Shore Drive they were
entering their permanent home, where they hoped to spend many happy
years. They made it a hospitable house. They were fond of their
friends and had hosts of them whom it was their happiness to entertain.

Mrs. Noyes had always enjoyed perfect health, and it was a grievous
shock to both husband and wife when she was overtaken by sickness.
The last year of her life she passed as an invalid, but in her husband's
presence she maintained her cheerfulness to the end. She died on
December 5, 1912, at the age of fifty-nine. The president general of
the D.A.R. said of her:

I am stunned as to why this bright, beautiful woman, so radiant with glorious
vitality, bubbling over with wit and humor, so feminine in charm and personality, so
strong in intellect, should have been taken from those who so loved and leaned upon
her. Never again shall we hear from her smiling lips the sparkling, yet stingless
raillery and pleasantry that have charmed and convulsed great assemblies; nor noble
addresses that are stamped as classics — with their ring of truth and sincerity; match-
less in thought and utterance.

It is not surprising that her husband welcomed the opportunity to
commemorate her life and perpetuate her memory in that beautiful
building for the women students of the University of Chicago, the Ida
Noyes Hall. It was less than six months after the death of Mrs. Noyes
when he announced to the Trustees his readiness to erect this hall "as

LA VERNE NOYES 267

a social center and gymnasium for the women of the University." The
proffer was accepted, the plans for the building were made, and the
cornerstone was laid on April 17, 1915. Since April 16 was Mrs. Noyes'
birthday her husband chose to regard that ceremony as a celebration
of the day. Firmly believing in the future life in which she was conscious
and active he addressed to her a very full letter saying among other
things :

I am writing a letter to you this morning, to be sealed in the box in the cornerstone
of Ida Noyes Hall, .... as if I knew that you would consciously receive it and get
information from it and be pleased with its contents, as I know you would have been
before your departure. If it does not come to your conscious mind, it may come to

the hands of some living persons a thousand years hence I have given, in your

name, to the University of Chicago, a very beautiful building — Ida Noyes Hall — as
a home for the social activities of the young women at the University. It will contain
a beautiful gymnasium, natatorium, and many other special, novel and useful features.
It will be an ideal Gothic structure, unsurpassed, probably, by anything in this country
for beauty of design, perfection, and durability of architectural construction, and
adaptation to the varied activities (social and otherwise) of the women student body.
In accepting this gift, the Board of Trustees of the University declared in formal
resolution its "especial gratification that there is to be commemorated in the quad-
rangles of the University the name of a gracious and gifted woman whose rare qualities
are well worthy of admiration and emulation by successive generations of our young
women."

Are souls straight so happy, that, dizzy with heaven,

They forget earth's affections — • ?

Mrs. Noyes had visited many countries and her husband had
followed her, with his letters, to them all. Now, she was to him only
in another country and had not forgotten "earth's affections," and he
wrote to her, a little more seriously indeed, but as naturally as when she
had been in Paris. It was the result of the reaction of a healthy mind
whose "thoughts and beliefs regarding the next transition have been
comforting."

The dedication of the building formed a part of the celebration of the
University's twenty-fifth anniversary, in June, 1916. Ida Noyes Hall
involved a contribution from Mr. Noyes to the University of half a
million dollars, and it has added in an extraordinary degree to the welfare
and enjoyment of the students of the University, men and women alike.
Indeed the life of the entire University has been enriched. To his
contribution Mr. Noyes added a personal interest that led him to
invite the women of the Senior class each year to a luncheon at his house
on the Lake Shore Drive, where they were encouraged to examine the
many objects of interest the house contained.

268 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Mr. Noyes did not belong to that large class of men who have no
interests outside their offices and then: homes. He once said to his
agents:

My real occupation is that of "Dealer in People." .... There is not an office in
Chicago that has a more capable, enthusiastic and pleasanter corps of workers, ....
nor is there a factory in Chicago that has a better satisfied and more efficient corps of
workers than the hundreds and hundreds of men in the aermotor works.

Perfect understanding and accord bound the company and the working
force together.

In politics Mr. Noyes was always a Republican. He was active
in the party for many years, a substantial financial supporter, and
influential in its councils. He was, however, one of that large number
who felt that the National Convention of 1912 had misrepresented and
betrayed the party in preventing the nomination of Mr. Roosevelt.
He therefore joined with enthusiasm in the organization of the Progres-
sive Party and served on the Executive Committee and labored earnestly
for Mr. Roosevelt's election to the presidency.

Mr. Noyes' devotion to business was very absorbing, and it is a
distinct surprise to discover how much time and attention he gave
to public affairs. He would not have accepted any political office, but
through many years, in connection with other public-spirited citizens,
he made the most strenuous efforts to rid his party of a boss who brought
only disgrace on the party and the state.

He engaged in many great enterprises for the public good. In
1900 he was president of the National Business League of America
and worked influentially in securing the organization of the Department
of Commerce and Labor, writing to and appearing before the Congres-
sional Committee and speaking in advocacy of the bill for organizing this
important department of the government.

He was one of the earliest advocates of the creation of the Interstate
Commerce Commission and took part in the preliminary conferences
which largely determined its functions. He later appeared before the
Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce to advocate changes in the
Interstate Commerce Law. Before another Committee of Congress he
advocated those reforms in the Consular Service of our country that
have done so much to improve it. For this important measure he spoke
before influential organizations in different parts of the country. He
labored in the same way in behalf of a deep waterway connecting
Chicago with the Gulf of Mexico.

LA VERNE NO YES 269

For some years Mr. Noyes was president of the Civic Federation of
Chicago and was long prominent in its councils. He was particularly
active in doing away with the division of Chicago into several townships,
each of which was a separate taxing body supporting a lot of utterly
useless officials. To reform this abuse required many arduous cam-
paigns. At the end of his presidency of the Civic Federation in 1902
Mr. Noyes was able to say in his annual report: "The most important
achievement of the Federation during the present administration is the
emancipation of Chicago from its township evils against which there
had been a vain struggle for more than a quarter of a century." He was
able at the same time to report that the Federation had been mainly
instrumental in the passage of the Illinois Primary Election Law.

Mr. Noyes was less successful in the efforts he made, in connection
with others, to unite the various boards of park commissioners in Chicago
into one body.

In 1902 President McKinley appointed Mr. Noyes a delegate to the
International Congress of Commerce and Industry, which met at
Ostend, Belgium, in August of that year. He not only undertook the
service without remuneration, but insisted also on paying his own
expenses. On this visit abroad he took Mrs. Noyes with him. He was
also at this time a delegate of the International Olympian Games which
it was proposed to hold in Chicago in 1904. The Commission of which
he was a member went abroad to secure the participation of the European
nations in the games.

In 1903 he was president of the National Reciprocity League and
labored, though an advocate of the protective tariff, for such a revision
of the tariff as would reform its inequalities and render it just and
equitable to all interests.

For two years Mr. Noyes was president of the Illinois Manufac-
turers' Association. In connection with members of the Association he
visited the West and South. In the winter of 1911-12 he went with the
Association on a trip of inspection of the Panama Canal. The trip was
made on the "Fuerst Bismarck" of the Hamburg line and was marked
by one festivity which will never be repeated by an American group of
tourists. They had a dinner on January 27, 1912, in celebration of the
Kaiser's birthday, and verses composed by Mrs. Noyes for the occasion
were read with great acclaim. Two years before this trip, in December,
1909, the ceremony of the opening of the Illinois Farmers' Hall of Fame
in Urbana and the installation of the name of Cyrus H. McCormick took
place. Mr. Noyes, representing the Illinois Manufacturers' Association,

270 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

made one of the addresses, speaking on "The Manufacturer and the
Farmer," and Mrs. Noyes contributed a poem. The following are the
last four lines of this tribute to the tillers of the soil:

Peace sounds the knell of Armed power,
And now is the triumphal hour
Of Nature's conservation, when
Are raised to fame her husbandmen.

Mr. Noyes' interest in the Art Institute of Chicago began very soon
after he made the city his home. His wife's interest, which first made
her a student in the Institute, continued to the end of her life, and Mr.
Noyes himself became a governing life-member. Mrs. Noyes had some
very handsome pieces of jewelry which together made a valuable and
unique collection. This collection, after her death, Mr. Noyes gave to
the Institute. It was later stolen and has not been recovered.

For some years Mr. Noyes was a trustee of the Lewis Institute of
Chicago. In 1910 an arrangement was made between the Chicago
Branch of the National Metal Trades Association and the school whereby
boys learning trades could study one week and work in a shop one week —
two boys holding the one job and alternating at school and in the shop.
This was known as the Co-operative Course for Shop Apprentices. The
boys were paid by the manufacturers for both the week they spent in the
shop and the week they spent in school. This enabled many boys to
attend school who otherwise could not have done so. Mr. Noyes
became so interested in the experiment that he offered to pay the tuition
at the Lewis Institute of all the boys who entered this course, and this
he did for seven years, from 1910 to 1916. The experiment came to an
end in 1916 because the demand for boys became so great and the wages
offered them so high that many gave up school for work.

But it was in the Chicago Academy of Sciences in Lincoln Park that
Mr. Noyes found one of his greatest opportunities for the exhibition of
public spirit and the play of his unusual powers of initiative, imagination,
and invention. In 1911 he was elected president of the Board of
Trustees. Being given a free hand by the directors he at once proceeded
" to install in the Museum a series of Natural History exhibits based on
the study of the Chicago region, and to make the institution an effective
educational center in the Community." Dr. Wallace Atwood, for many
years secretary of the Academy, was associated with him in this work.
Together they worked into practical form Dr. Atwood's idea of a celestial
sphere for the study of astronomy. Mr. Noyes worked out the difficult
engineering problem of installing the sphere in a remarkable and practical

LA VERNE NO YES 271

way, making the sphere unbelievably light and yet of sufficient strength
for its purpose. It is fifteen feet in diameter and has a seating capacity
for fifteen students. Under Mr. Noyes' direction new and extensive
groups of exhibits were constantly added to the museum, the plan being
to show the environs of Chicago, with their birds, mammals, and plant
life from the dunes on the south to the Skokie Valley and lake region on
the north. The result is indescribably illuminating and attractive.
To be at all appreciated the exhibits must be seen. They are attract-
ing multitudes of visitors, who, as they view them, wonder and admire.
Mr. Noyes' administration saw the renascence of the Academy, a rebirth
to a new life. This cost him much time and much money and made
Chicago very greatly his debtor.

Mr. Noyes was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, a member of the Chicago Historical Society, and con-
nected with many other associations, educational, financial, and patriotic.
He was a member of the Executive Committee of the League to Enforce
Peace and profoundly interested in all measures to win the Great War
and win it in such a way as to make its recurrence impossible.

In 1896 he joined the Union League and the Illinois Club. Later he
became a member of many of the leading clubs of Chicago — the Com-
mercial, the Bankers', the Hamilton, the Chicago Athletic, the Press, the
University, the Chicago Literary, and others. The Forty Club was
a favorite. It was at a meeting of this club that W. D. Nesbit, the
toastmaster, in introducing Mr. Noyes, on the spur of the moment
perpetrated the following:

Rockefeller, Gould, and Morgan,

Noyes has them all skinned.
They do theirs on water,

But he does his on wind.

In the speech which followed this introduction Mr. Noyes soberly
traced the origin of the Forty Club back to the forty thieves of the
Arabian Nights.

He did not begin golf early enough to become a winner of the national
championship. His love for the great game made him a member of
several golf clubs. Midlothian was his first love and there he built an
attractive summer home. But no real golfer can content himself with
a single course, and he later entered the South Shore Country, Chicago,
and Edgewater. He once for a brief period indulged in a yacht and was
a member of the Chicago Yacht Club, but golf was the real recreation of
his later years, and he could show trophies of his skill.

272 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

It must not be forgotten, however, that during all this time the most
difficult scientific and mechanical problems were occupying his tune and
attention and in particular the aero-electrical problem, the solution of
which has vast significance for the future. It is not surprising, therefore,
that in 1915 his Alma Mater, Iowa State College, conferred on him the
honorary degree of Doctor of Engineering, "in recognition of his eminent
success in the field of engineering and his interest in the promotion of
higher education."

His friends found him one of the most companionable of men. With-
out affectations, he was cordial, genial, friendly. A lover of friends,
he was a hospitable host and a delightful guest.

He loved the open. He traveled much. Four or five times he
went abroad and was as good a sailor as Mrs. Noyes was. The rifle,
the shotgun, and the rod took him to many parts of the South and West
and North. He hunted over many a mountain and prairie and fished in
many waters.

He was a man of marked originality. An inventor by nature he
did not look at things just as other men do. The beaten path did not
appeal to him. He sought a better one. He did not take his opinions
second hand; he thought out his views and made them his own. He
did not reject the old because it was old nor accept the new because it
was new. He was neither a radical nor a conservative. He had the
open mind, but did his own thinking.

He was therefore naturally a man of independence. This was illus-
trated by his entire business career. He organized his business himself
and himself conducted it. He rejected all overtures for making con-
nections or agreements with competitors, preferring to conduct his
own business in his own way.

His extraordinary faculty of persistence was evidenced by his
building up an immense business from very small beginnings, with
insufficient capital at the outset and against great odds. An inventor
must be persistent. Mr. Noyes had this quality in such a degree
that he would continue his experiments through all difficulties and
discouragements till the device being worked upon was perfected.
And he showed this same endowment in all the varied activities of his
busy life.

It was a fortunate thing for Mr. Noyes that his strenuous life was
relieved by a refreshing sense of humor. And it was not the manu-
factured, but the spontaneous, variety. It didn't have to be pumped
up, but was always on tap. It appeared continually in his correspond-
ence. He writes his wife that she will be grieved to learn that a serious

LA VERNE NO YES 273

financial disaster has overtaken him. Mr. - - has failed in business,
owing him $4.85. When Mrs. Noyes, on her trip around the world,
had arrived in India, he wrote her: "When asked by any of your thou-
sand friends as to where you are, I point downward, .... in the
direction of Bombay." In the same letter he says: "TheD — s gave me
a cordial invitation to take Christmas dinner with them, and I prepared,
with great care, what I think a fairly good letter, setting forth, in dra-
matic terms, my deep regret at having two invitations and but one
capacity for Christmas dinner. It was fortunate that I prepared the
letter, because I had three other chances to use it on the same occasion.
I am through with it now, however, and would rent it out on moderate
terms." In another letter, referring to her photographing activity, he
presumes " that the Orient is being put on films for transportation to the
Occident. As for me, I am hustling round in the usual way and pining
away and growing thin. It pains me to say that I was weighed the
other day and weighed only 198 pounds." This was in 1898. The
Spanish-American War was coming on but still quite uncertain. Mrs.
Noyes was in Japan. He wrote: " Should there be trouble between the
United States and Spain (which I doubt) you may not find it safe to come
on an American steamer from Japan: it may be preferable for you to
walk. In that case you will lose the use of that ticket which you pur-
chased." These are only samples of the dry humor that filled his cor-
respondence as it also abounded in his conversation. His humor was
not the noisy but the quiet kind. He saw the humorous side of things
as well as the serious.

Mr. Noyes was a man of great liberality. He was a generous giver.
He had this characteristic, among others, of the ideal husband— he
was a good provider. During his wife's absences in Europe she never
asked for money. He always provided it in advance and in abundance.
But his liberality did not stop at home. He loved to be generous to
persons whom he knew to be in need, often seeking the privilege of
helping them. He believed in organized charities, however, and gave
regularly and liberally to the United Charities of Chicago and assisted
substantially the Park Ridge School for Girls (building an $18,000
cottage), the Country Home for Convalescent Children, the Chicago
Nursery and Half-Orphan Asylum. It was said of him that he "has
given annually large sums to established charities and to movements for
civic betterment and public good. A review of the subscription lists for
civic betterment in this city during the past twenty-five years will dis-
close his name on practically every one of them." He was one of the
large subscribers for the Y.M.C.A. Hotel. He gave $25,000 to the

274 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Fourth Presbyterian Church to build, in Mrs. Noyes' name, the Cloister
which connects the church building with the manse. He liberally
assisted Cornell College and Coe College, Iowa, the two institutions
in each of which he spent a winter when, as a boy, he was preparing for
college more than fifty years ago. I am not attempting to give anything
like a list of his benefactions. He could not himself make such a list.
He gave and forgot about it. The thing he never forgot was a machine
he had once seen.

After the building of Ida Noyes Hall he thought much about the
University of Chicago, its students, and its future. One of the things to
which he gave most liberal and enlightened consideration was the
improvement of the Midway Plaisance. The Midway is a part of the
great South Park System. A mile long and, including the streets on
either side which form a part of it, about seven hundred and fifty
feet wide, it runs through the center of the site of the University. A
wide, deep ditch in the middle is, sometime, to be made much deeper and
is to connect as a waterway the lagoons of Washington and Jackson
parks. No satisfactory solution of the problems of the waterway and
the general improvement of the Midway having been found, Mr. Noyes
set himself to their study. He engaged Mr. O. C. Simonds, the land-
scape architect, to assist him and together they worked out a strikingly
complete and attractive plan for the waterway and the entire Midway
from Washington to Jackson parks. Instead of a narrow canal running
straight through the middle, so far below the surface that it could be
seen only from the top of its banks, the plan provides for a lake from
two hundred to four hundred feet wide. From Fifty-ninth Street on
the north and Sixtieth Street on the south the ground descends gently to
the water's edge so that the lake is in full view from both streets. The
shores nowhere show straight lines, but wind about in curves, forming
bays and headlands like any woodland lake. Bridges, each about
seventy-five feet wide, cross the lake at Ellis, Woodlawn, and Dorchester
avenues, and at these points the lake narrows — at Dorchester to about
one hundred and twenty-five feet and at the other crossings to two
hundred or two hundred and fifty feet. On both sides of the lake there
are driveways fifty feet wide following more or less closely the lake's
shore and running under the bridges. Trees and shrubs everywhere
abound among which the paths find their way. There is a waterway
connection with the basement of Ida Noyes Hall through which the
canoes and boats of the young women would find access to the lake.
The plan is one of extraordinary attractiveness and is likely to influence
strongly the final improvement of the Midway Plaisance.

LA VERNE NO YES 275

The crowning philanthropy of Mr. Noyes' life is one of which it is
impossible to write with reserve. It is one of the noblest benefactions
in the history of education. He was profoundly stirred by the Great
War, regarding it as a life-and-death struggle to save and safeguard
the liberties of the world. All that we hold dear as Americans and
as men was at stake. Mr. Noyes looked with intense interest on the
spectacle of the men of fighting age in America responding cheerfully, in a
spirit of utter self-sacrifice, to the call to arms, ready to pay "the last
full measure of devotion" for their country and mankind. Pondering
all these things he began finally to ask himself, "How can I, a man far
beyond the military age, show my appreciation of my fellow-countrymen
who have uncomplainingly laid their all on the altar and set an example
of patriotism, heroism, and idealism for all coming generations?" He
knew that many of them were boys and young men who had interrupted
their studies in high school and college to enter the service, that in many
the experience of war would awaken a new ambition for an education,
that thousands would return disabled for life to mourn that they could
not give opportunities to their children, and that other thousands who
had hoped to do great things for their children would give up their lives
and leave their sons and daughters fatherless. Mr. Noyes concluded
that the greatest benefaction he could make for all these classes would
be to open before those who desired them the opportunities of a liberal
education.

Being already closely connected with the University of Chicago he
naturally decided to propose to that institution that it should unite
with him in this great benefaction to our soldiers and sailors and their
children and children's children. He then laid his plan before President
Judson, who was his intimate friend. The President welcomed the
proposal, and thus it came about that Mr. Noyes made over to the
University property valued at $2,500,000 or more, the contract and deed
of gift being executed on July 5, 1918, the fund to bear the name of the
"La Verne Noyes Foundation." In this great donation Mr. Noyes
conveyed "all real estate and interests in real estate" he owned in
Chicago, including the manufacturing plant and the home on the Lake
Shore Drive. The purpose of the foundation is set forth as follows :

To pay tuition at not to exceed the ordinary rate in the University of Chicago,
whether in its colleges or in its graduate or professional schools, for deserving students
without regard to differences in sex, race, religion, or political party, who shall be
citizens of the United States and who either

First: Shall themselves have served in the Army or Navy of the United States
in the war for liberty into which our Republic entered on the sixth day of April, 1917,
provided that such service was terminated by an honorable discharge; or

276 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Second: Shall be descendants by blood of anyone in service in the Army or Navy
of the United States, who served in said war; or

Third: Shall be descendants by blood of anyone who served in the Army or Navy
of the United States in said war, provided that such service was terminated by an
honorable death or an honorable discharge.

It is declared to be the purpose of the donor in establishing this Foundation at the
same time to express his gratitude to those who ventured the supreme sacrifice of life
for their country and for the freedom of mankind in this war, and also by giving them
honor, to aid in keeping alive through the generations to come the spirit of unselfish,
patriotic devotion without which no free government can long endure or will deserve
to endure.

Such was the origin and such is the purpose of the La Verne Noyes
Foundation.

The news of the establishment of the Foundation was welcomed
with enthusiasm in the Army and Navy and throughout our country.
Mr. Noyes received many letters of appreciation and thanks and con-
gratulation. The newspapers of the country greeted this great act of
beneficence with editorials approving and commending it in the highest
terms.

It has been given to him to help uncounted thousands of young people
through succeeding centuries to enter into life with every advantage a
liberal education can give them, to enrich their lives and, through them,
the life of the world and, as he has himself so nobly expressed it, "to
aid in keeping alive through the generations to come the spirit of unselfish,
patriotic devotion without which no free government can long endure or
will deserve to endure."

In June, 1919, Mr. Noyes was taken sick and almost at once his
sickness became alarming. He died July 24, 1919, in his seventy-first
year. All his plans had been made to be with my family in the north
woods at that time. But, instead, I went from our wilderness home to
speak at his funeral. He had made his will during the preceding winter.
The more he had reflected on what he had done in the University of
Chicago through the La Verne Noyes Foundation the greater had been
his satisfaction with the purpose of that fund. When he came to make
his will, therefore, he simply extended the scope of that beneficence
to other colleges and universities. He left his estate, which consisted,
for the most part, in his very successful business, to three trustees
who had been long connected with the business and who were to con-
tinue it and to distribute the income from it. After provision for the
special bequests, the great purpose of the will was expressed as follows:
"All the remainder of the income of the Trust Estate each year shall

LA VERNE NO YES 277

be expended by my trustees in paying to such university or universities,
college or colleges as my trustees shall from time to time select the
tuition, in part or in full in such universities or colleges .... for
deserving students, needing this assistance to enable them to procure
a university or college training." Then follows the designation of
these students, the same class named in the Noyes Foundation of the
University of Chicago, soldiers and sailors of the Great War and their
descendants.

The number of students enjoying scholarships on the Noyes Founda-
tion in the University of Chicago is now about five hundred and twenty
each year, and will increase.

For the year 1921-22 the trustees under the will awarded 123 in
eight universities and colleges. They make the following statement:
"It is expected that the number of scholarships will be increased yearly
and it is hoped that there will, eventually, be a thousand offered each
year. At the outset it was determined by the trustees that 75 per cent
of the funds should be used in Illinois and 25 per cent outside of the
state. Only men actually needing this assistance are being considered
and the applications reveal many cases where great sacrifice is being
made on the part of students to obtain a higher education."

In making these great gifts and these beneficent bequests Mr. Noyes
was a happy man. He manifested this to me personally in many ways.
One of the most striking revelations of it was the following: When he
had made his will, he brought a copy of it to my house and asked me to
read it. It gave him such satisfaction that he wanted to share the
joy with his friends. The thought of the multitudes of young men and
women his beneficence would help to enter life was constantly with
him in the last months of his life. He lived in them and in the advan-
tages he would give them and the service they would give the world.
Happy man!

From a painting by Ralph Clarkson

ELI BUELL WILLIAMS

ELI BUELL WILLIAMS

AND

HOBART W. WILLIAMS

It was in 1833 that the hamlet of Chicago began to grow into a village.
During that year nearly a hundred men, some of them bringing their
families with them, made their homes in the little settlement. Among
the settlers of that year were Mr. and Mrs. Eli B. Williams, who arrived
in Chicago on April 14, 1833. They came from Tolland, Connecticut,
Mr. Williams being in his thirty-fifth year. The maiden name of Mrs .
Williams was Harriet Bissell.

Rufus Blanchard in his Discovery of the Northwest has preserved the
following incident of Mr. Williams' family history:

At Tolland, Conn., in his father's house, John Buell Fitch planned and built the
first steam engine ever made. He, with his assistants, worked secretly in the basement
of the house and continued their labors till the engine was in practical working order:

the first of its kind While at work on it, says Mr. Williams, the screeching

of files, the clink of hammers, and hissing of steam, heard outside, excited the credulity
and superstition of the age, till witchcraft was suspected and the whole neighborhood
was beset with fear from what was going on in the mysterious basement.

Out of that basement issued a practical steam engine (not of course the
first one), which successfully propelled a passenger boat on the Delaware
River.

Mr. Williams seems to have had some means on his arrival in Chicago.
He came with Mrs. Williams in his own carriage, crossing the Calumet
River at what is now South Chicago, making his way thence through the
oak openings which extended to the new settlement at the forks of the
Chicago River. Nearing the hamlet, they left Fort Dearborn on their
right hand and drove to the forks of the river, where they found a log
tavern kept by Mark Beaubien. Indians were lounging about the door,
and Mrs. Williams, not liking their appearance, persuaded her husband
to go on toward a hotel which they saw on the west side of the south
branch. They drove across the river on a floating log bridge and put up
at this West Side house.

Mr. Williams was looking for a place which promised a good opening
for business. Considering that Congress had recently made appro-

279

280 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

priations for improving the river and harbor, that preliminary steps had
been taken toward digging the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and that
there was a fair prospect that Chicago would in course of tune grow into a
town of respectable size, Mr. Williams decided to make it his home.

In 1833 the population, exclusive of Indians and soldiers, did not
exceed two hundred. But there was a garrison in Fort Dearborn, and
several hundred Indians lived in or near the town. New settlers were
beginning to arrive, and their numbers daily increased. A hundred and
fifty frame buildings were erected during 1833. There were only half a
dozen stores, and Mr. Williams quickly decided that there was a business
opening for him. He therefore concluded to open a store at once. His
place of business was on South Water Street east of Dearborn Street.
There were two other stores on South Water Street. George W. Dole was
located near the corner of Clark Street and P. F. W. Peck near the
corner of La Salle Street. Mr. Williams built the frame of his store
from timber cut from the forests on the North Side and hewn with a
broadax. The weatherboarding came from St. Joseph, Michigan, and
the flooring from a sawmill which Mr. Naper had just built at Naperville,
thirty or more miles southwest of Chicago.

A few months after the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Williams an election
was held, August 10, 1833, to organize the hamlet into a town. The
twenty-eight votes cast at this election show how very few qualified
voters the new town contained. The fact that one year later Mr. Wil-
liams was elected a member of the town board of trustees and in 1836
was elected president of the board indicates how quickly the people recog-
nized his character and ability and how well he deserved the recognition.

The principal north and south highway was Clark Street. In wet
weather it was impassable in low places, and no places were high. A
ditch on both sides of the street was an imperative necessity. There
was no money in the town treasury, and after much importunity
Mr. Williams secured a loan of $60, but only by becoming personally
responsible for the money. The ditches were dug, thus beginning in-
ternal improvements in Chicago and making one street possible of travel
in most weathers.

The town during the period from Mr. Williams' arrival in the spring
of 1833 to the autumn of 1836 had a remarkable increase in population.
The two hundred inhabitants of April, 1833, had increased in three and
a half years to nearly four thousand. A great real estate boom was in
progress, and a vision of the Chicago that was to be had begun to dawn
upon men's minds. The citizens were no longer satisfied with a town

ELI B. AND HOBART W. WILLIAMS 281

government, and a movement was started in the fall of 1836 for the
development of the town into a city. It devolved upon Mr. Williams,
as president of the town trustees, to appoint a part of the committee
to which was intrusted the drawing up of the charter for the new city.

Mr. and Mrs. Williams in 1834 took part in organizing the first
Episcopal church in Chicago, St. James. Mr. Williams was one of a
dozen men responsible for the organization of the parish. After Chicago
became a city he continued to occupy positions of public trust. He was
an alderman for the first ward in the City Council from 1838 to 1839,
and again from 1852 to 1855, when it was a greater honor to represent
the first ward than it has since become. Ten years later he was made a
commissioner of the city reform school.

The year 1838 brought the first theater to Chicago. After a short
season in the spring the management returned in the autumn for a more
extended one. A building called the Rialto, an old auction-room in the
center of the business district on the west side of Dearborn Street,
between Lake and South Water streets, was rented and a license sought
from the City Council. A contest at once arose over the question of
granting it. H. L. Rucker, Mr. Williams, and Grant Goodrich were
appointed a committee to consider the question. Judge Goodrich
vigorously opposed granting the license, first, on moral grounds, and
secondly, because the Rialto was of flimsy wooden construction and,
being located in the center of the business section, its use as a theater
would greatly increase the danger of a conflagration and thus be an eco-
nomic as well as a moral menace to the community. Mr. Williams and
Mr. Rucker, however, satisfying themselves that the citizens generally
desired the opening of such a place of amusement, reported in favor of
granting the license. The Council adopted the report. The incident
is mentioned because this theater brought to Chicago Joseph Jefferson,
who was a member of the company which played in Chicago in the fall
and winter of 1838. He was then a child of nine years and his only part
consisted in singing one or two songs between the acts.

The following year, 1839, the first city directory was prepared, and
in it Mr. Williams appears as "Recorder, cor. Clark & Randolph Sts.
and groceries etc., South Water St." Five years later he was appointed
register of the United States land office. In the directory of 1843 he
appears as "Merchant, res. Washington, between State and Dearborn
Sts." For twenty years or more he occupied public positions of re-
sponsibility. He was interested in all movements connected with the
general welfare. Before the town became a city he assisted in organiz-

282 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

ing its school districts. He was among the foremost of those who brought
about the great River and Harbor Convention of 1847. At the pre-
liminary Chicago meeting called to arrange for that convention he was
made one of the two vice-presidents.

How long Mr. Williams continued to carry on the store he established
in 1833 is not known, but not later than 1846. He began in 1850 to
become actively interested in some of those public-utility corporations
which have since played so important a part in the business history of
Chicago. In that year the Chicago Gas Light and Coke Company was
organized. The plant of the company was on the south side of Monroe
Street near Market Street, just east of the south branch of the river.
From the beginning Mr. Williams was one of the directors of the
company.

In politics he was a Democrat, and in 1852 was a delegate to the
state convention of his party.

In 1853 he was appointed receiver of public moneys and shortly
after disbursing agent for the United States Depositary at Chicago.
The office was in the old post-office on Clark Street, between Randolph
and Lake streets, adjoining the ground now covered by the Hotel Sher-
man. Mr. Williams sometimes took more than $50,000 in gold to deposit
with the United States subtreasury in St. Louis. The need of the office
was passing, however, and Mr. Williams was the last of the United States
tax receivers in Chicago, the office being closed in 1855 and its work
transferred to St. Louis.

In the closing years of his mercantile career Mr. Williams took one
or more partners to whom he finally sold the business. He made very
profitable investments in real estate located at points which turned out
to be in or near the center of Chicago's business district. He had the
foresight to hold these properties and the good fortune to see them
continually increase in value.

The rapid expansion of the Chicago business district soon compelled
Mr. and Mrs. Williams to seek a home for a family residence south of
Washington Street. They went some distance away and built their
permanent home on a large lot on the southeast corner of Wabash
Avenue and Monroe Street, where they would be undisturbed by the
encroachments of business! The lot had a front of a hundred and
sixty feet on Wabash Avenue. Here they built a handsome colonial
frame house, set well back from the avenue and surrounded by large
trees and shrubbery. But in the late sixties business once more drove
them out. Mr. Williams rented the house and lot and for a number of

fl?**^

<';

From a painting by Ralph Ciarkson

HOBART W. WILLIAMS

ELI B. AND HOB ART W. WILLIAMS 283

years the house was known as the Maison Doree and was a high-class
ladies' restaurant and ice-cream parlor. Then came the fire of 1871
and swept it away. In 1876 Mr. Williams replaced the house with a
business block known as the Williams Building, a great, six-story stone
block, covering the entire lot. During their later years Mr. and Mrs.
Williams, when in Chicago, lived in one or another of the city hotels, but
much of their time was passed in travel.

In 1879 an old settlers' reception was held by the Calumet Club at
which "Long" John Wentworth made an address in which he referred
by name to the men present who had settled in Chicago in the thirties
or earlier. In the course of the address he said, "I see the president
of one of the old boards of town trustees, Eli B. Williams, here ....
and in justice to that board it should be said that it was wound up
without owing a dollar." Mr. Williams was then about eighty years
of age. He remained in Chicago another year and then took Mrs.
Williams for a trip to Europe. From this journey he did not return,
dying in Paris on March 24, 1881. Mrs. Williams returned to Chicago
and made her home at the Palmer House. Going abroad again she
visited Paris and in the same city in which her husband had died five
years before she also passed away, June 16, 1886. Both husband and
wife were buried in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. Mr. Williams was
always greatly interested in the upbuilding of the city. He saw it grow
from an insignificant hamlet of two or three hundred people to a great
metropolis of seven hundred thousand and begin to dream of becoming
the largest city in the world.

Mr. Williams was twice married. The wife of his youth was Miss
Elizabeth Fiske Pratt, of North Brimfield, Massachusetts. Two chil-
dren were born of this marriage, a daughter who died in infancy and a
son, Elisha Buell Williams, who was born in Hartford, Connecticut,
in 1829. The young wife dying a few months later, Mr. Williams'
mother took the infant son to her home in Tolland and cared for him
until, in 1833, his father married Harriet Bissell and almost immediately
thereafter took him and the new Mrs. Williams to Chicago. The boy
was often on the lake and river with the friendly Indians who then
abounded in and about the village and conceived such a love for the
water and for the life of a sailor that he finally prevailed on his father
to allow him to follow his bent and go to sea. After following the sea
for some years, being three times shipwrecked and having other escapes
from death that seemed almost miraculous, he returned to Connecticut,
his native state, married and, after spending a year or two at Tolland, the

284 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

old home of the family, settled for life at Hamden, ten miles north of
New Haven, where he died in 1877, while still a young man, forty-eight
years old, four years before the death of his father. His widow, Mrs.
Annis C. Williams, still survives him, living at Cheshire, a village a few
miles north of Hamden.

The only child of E. B. Williams' second marriage was Hobart W.
Williams, born in Chicago, November 14, 1837. He received his early
education in the schools of that city. Much of it, however, he secured
abroad, and spoke a number of modern languages with facility. He was
his father's assistant in business. He was devoted to his parents and,
as he never married, he made his home with them and accompanied
them in their travels after his father's retirement from business. One
who met him a few months before his death, forty years after that of his
father, writes me as follows: "Throughout my conversation with him
I was impressed with the great affection he held for his father and mother
and his desire to link his name with theirs in honorable memory."

Hobart Williams traveled much in his own country and in foreign
lands. There were periods in his life when he yielded to the "Wander-
lust" which had called his brother Elisha to leave his home and sail
the "seven seas." To the seas he added all the great continents,
America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. This seems the more surprising
when one remembers that he was the most quiet, retiring, and reserved
of men. His tastes and habits were the simplest possible. The later
years of his life were passed with the widow of his brother in her home
in Cheshire. Here he lived with the utmost simplicity. He was a man
of very large wealth, but no one would have suspected it from his manner
of life. The house was a modest one with grounds of four acres sur-
rounding it. No one would have suspected that it was the home of a
man worth $5,000,000. With these millions at his disposal he chose to
live so quiet, retired, obscure, and frugal a life that he was hardly known
even in the small community of Cheshire. I speak well within bounds
when I say that his annual living expenses were less than $2,000. He
spent almost nothing on himself that he might have the utmost possible
to distribute to charities and education. His mind was enriched by
study, by travel, and by a knowledge and love of art. But while he
loved art and books and read much, he did not fill his rooms with master-
pieces, nor his shelves with books. He did not care for the automobile
or the telephone or any of the luxuries of our modern life. The very
simple life he led gave him greater freedom and enjoyment. His
business affairs were arranged with such wisdom and completeness that

ELI B. AND HOBART W. WILLIAMS 285

an annual visit to Chicago and perhaps two trips to New York each
year kept them in perfect order.

It is evident that Mr. Williams thought long and deeply on the
question of the disposition of his large estate. The larger part of it was
in real estate in Chicago and he always regarded himself as a citizen of
that city. He informed himself thoroughly about the educational insti-
tutions of his native state and the charities and the University of
Chicago, his native city, where the family fortune had been made.

One of the most interesting facts in the life of Mr. Williams is the
decision to which he came to turn over his entire estate while he lived
and was still in health to institutions of charity, education, and religion.
He evidently desired to witness some of the results of his benefactions
and be certain that the purposes he had in mind would be carried out.

He therefore, through the Merchants Loan and Trust Company of
Chicago, established a trust on his personal estate, amounting to $2,115,-
ooo, in favor of five institutions of learning in Illinois and five charitable
institutions in Chicago. The income from this great sum is to go to
these ten institutions, share and share alike, so that each one of them
will receive annually and in perpetuity from six to ten thousand dollars.
After deliberate inquiry Mr. Williams chose the following as his educa-
tional beneficiaries: Monmouth College, Rockford College for Women,
Illinois College at Jacksonville, James Millikin University at Decatur,
and Illinois Wesleyen University at Bloomington. The five institutions
of charity were the Old People's Home in Chicago, the Chicago Home
for Aged Persons, the Chicago Commons Association, the Chicago
Orphan Asylum, and the Chicago Home for Destitute Crippled Children.

Mr. Williams' real estate exceeded in value the personal property
in this great benevolent distribution. He divided this among the
Chicago Young Men's Christian Association, St. Luke's Hospital, and
the University of Chicago. To St. Luke's he gave the property where
the original Williams store of 1833 stood, on South Water Street, between
State and Dearborn streets. The Clark Street property, north of the
Hotel Sherman, where the depositary of the United States land office
stood sixty-five years ago, he gave to the Chicago Young Men's Chris-
tian Association. To the University of Chicago he conveyed the prop-
erty on the southeast corner of Wabash Avenue and Monroe Street,
having a front of one hundred and sixty feet on Wabash Avenue and a
depth of one hundred and seventy-one feet on Monroe Street. This was
the site of the residence of Mr. and Mrs. E. B. Williams, as already re-
lated, before the corner became business property. The smallest valuation

286 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

placed on it was two million dollars. It was provided that this should
constitute a "special endowment fund in memory and honor of Eli B.
Williams and Harriet B. Williams, the parents of the donor. It is to be
known as the " Eli B. Williams and Harriet B. Williams Memorial Fund."
The income of the property is to be devoted to payment for "instruction
in commercial or business studies or in studies relating or allied thereto,"
and to "the purpose of assisting poor and deserving students" in those
and other studies.

Regarding this gift to the University of Chicago Wallace Heckman,
the Counsel and Business Manager of the University, has made the
following statement in a memorial sketch of Mr. Williams:

He had given a considerable period of time, several years, to the study of the
necessity, as he thought, of the inclusion of the principles of business and administra-
tion in the curricula of universities. He considered this branch of study necessary
since graduates of such institutions, more than others, are called on to take leadership
and responsibility in the conduct of trusts, charities, and public affairs. He reached
his conclusion, independently of suggestion, that such work should be fittingly provided
for, and that his home city in the Central West would be a good location for the
experiment, and finally determined to make his offer to the University of Chicago.

For some years President Judson and Dean Marshall had been working upon the
same subject, and had forestalled his conclusion as to the propriety of such work even
in an institution devoted largely, as the University is, to the classics and pure science.
They had just reached a satisfactory basis and curriculum, but were disconcerted at
the figures involved in making provision for it, since it was in the nature of an experi-
ment, educationally. To find these funds, in addition to meeting the pressing needs of
the institution as already established, was a perplexing problem. Just at that juncture
a voice came over the telephone to the business office of the University inquiring to
whom a deed should run of an important piece of property, the income of which should
be devoted to instruction in commerce and administration in the University of Chicago.
Mr. Williams' deed followed. This coincidence was a comforting justification to the
donor of his long-studied plan.

An outline by Dean Marshall of the scope of the work proposed in the department,
together with the plan involving an educationally valuable research basis for conduct-
ing it, had Mr. Williams' delighted approval. He had builded better than he knew;
the plan accorded with his hope, but outdistanced his expectations. His enjoyment
of the prospective outcome of what he had done seemed deeply exhilarating to him.

Excepting only the gifts of the founder, this contribution of Mr.
Williams was, up to 1916, the greatest made to the University since its
inception in 1889. It was all the more notable from the fact that, as
Mr. Heckman points out, Mr. Williams was entirely self -moved in making
it, proffering the great donation without solicitation from the officers of
the University. Indeed no one connected with the institution so much
as knew that such a man as Hobart W. Williams existed. The first

ELI B. AND HOB ART W. WILLIAMS 287

intimation that the great donation was to be made was that inquiry
over the telephone as to whether the University would accept a gift
of Chicago real estate, and it was only in a subsequent interview that its
magnitude was disclosed. The contribution was made in 1916. It
will build the lives of Eli B. Williams and Harriet Bissell Williams and
their son, the donor, Hobart W. Williams, permanently into the life
of Chicago and of American education.

In making these great contributions, practically his entire fortune,
to these institutions of charity, education, and religion, Mr. Williams
arranged that some portion of the income from the properties and funds
should continue to go to him during his life. Returning to Cheshire
he continued to live the same simple, retired life as before and continued,
as always, to save his accumulations. I made a vain effort to secure
from him biographical material for this sketch. He was too modest to
give me more than the date of his birth.

In the autumn of 1920 he visited Chicago again and made his will.
After providing some slight bequests to distant relatives and friends he
left the rest of his estate, about $450,000, to the Merchants Loan and
Trust Company of Chicago in trust for the same institutions for which he
had established the trust fund of $2,1 15,000 four years before. Thus this
man who had lived so quietly and obscurely as to be quite unknown
outside his own door and who had no history, made himself one of the
great benefactors of homes, settlements, asylumns, colleges, and uni-
versities, distributing among them about $5,000,000. He died Novem-
ber 3, 1921. In accordance with the wish expressed in his will he
was buried in Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, beside his father and
mother, in loving memory of whom all these great benefactions had
been made. In his case that scripture was illustrated which says:
"Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long." Had
he lived one week longer he would have entered his eighty-fifth year.

JOSEPH BOND

JOSEPH BOND

The branch of the Bond family from which Joseph Bond was de-
scended had its home in Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk County, England,
where King Canute built his great monastery, celebrated for its "mag-
nificence and splendor." There lived Jonas Bond three hundred and
more years ago. He had three grandsons who were brothers, all of whom
migrated to the New World. These were Thomas, William, and John.
The first of these settled hi Maryland. William, an "educated mer-
chant," made his home in Watertown, Massachusetts. John Bond,
born in England in 1624, was first mentioned in the records of Newbury,
Massachusetts, in 1642, so that he must have come to America in his
early youth. The records of the town show that on August 5, 1649, ne
married Hester Blakely, and that among their children was John, born in
1650. After 1660 the family moved to Rowley, where a farm was
bought, and they later settled in Haverhill, where the father died in
1675. The son John became a farmer in Beverly and with his younger
brother Joseph was out fighting in King Philip's War in 1676. His son
Edward was born in 1714. Hitherto the branch of the Bond family
with which this narrative has to do had for a hundred years confined
itself to the one county of Essex, the northeasternmost of the counties
of Massachusetts. Edward Bond broke away from the home environ-
ment and migrated to the village of Leicester near the center of the
state. A little after 1760 we find him keeping the public house in that
place, and the total destruction of the house by fire in January, 1767,
was an event of such general interest as to find a place in the records of
the village. He was a selectman of the town. His son Benjamin, born
in 1743, married Elizabeth Harrod, the daughter of an officer in the
Revolution.

Among their sons was David, who was born in 1778. He devoted
himself as he grew up to farming in Brimfield, Hampden County, and in
Hardwick, in the same county of Worcester which had been the home
of his father and grandfather. His son Benjamin was born in Brim-
field, June 6, 1814. He, after reaching manhood, became a farmer in
the town of Ware in Hampshire County, not more than a dozen miles
from his boyhood home in Hardwick. He bought his farm about 1833,
when he was nineteen years old, and made it his home for fifty-seven

289

2QO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

years. He died in 1894, at the age of eighty. He was twice married
and had a family of six sons and two daughters. His second wife was
Louisa Eaton, a lineal descendant of Francis Eaton, who came over in
the "Mayflower" in 1620. Francis Eaton was one of the signers of the
famous "agreement" entered into by the Pilgrim Fathers before they
landed on Plymouth Rock. He signed for himself, his wife Sarah, and
his son "Samuell." Governor Bradford records that the son was a
"sucking child," from which one infers that Francis Eaton was prob-
ably one of the very youngest of that company of famous Fathers.
His first wife died early and he married twice after her death, he him-
self passing away only thirteen years after the landing, but leaving
four children. From one of them was descended Louisa Eaton, the
mother of Joseph Bond, of whom this sketch is written.

He was the second son of his mother and the fifth of his father. The
first Mrs. Bond had three sons, and the second had three sons and two
daughters. Joseph Bond was born on the Ware farm, February 13,
1852. He felt himself peculiarly rich in brothers. One of his early
teachers asked his class one day, "What do farmers raise ?" and Joseph,
raising his hand, promptly answered, "Boys!" In the first group of
boys were Nelson, Sylvester, and David; and in the second, Rufus,
Joseph, and Henry.

The town of Ware is situated on the river Ware, halfway between
Worcester on the east and Springfield on the southwest, about thirty-
five miles from each. It has grown to be an important manufacturing
point and is the nearest place of any considerable size to the center of
the state. It is on the elevated plateau east of the Berkshire Hills.
This table- land has a mean altitude of 1,100 feet above the sea, though
the village of Ware is 600 feet lower, an illustration of the diversities
of level of that whole region — low-lying meadows along the rivers and
smaller water courses, climbing, sometimes gradually, often abruptly,
to lofty hills and uplands. It forms a bench between the lowlands
toward the coast and the mountainous country bordering the Hudson
River.

Thus, while this part of central Massachusetts is called a plateau
and lacks in some measure the charm and variety of the Berkshires and
the ruggedness and sublimity of the Taconic Mountains of western
Massachusetts, it is a most delightful country of small rivers and brooks,
hills, valleys, villages, farms, and forests. The farm of Benjamin Bond
lay two miles north of the village of Ware on a high table-land, so
elevated that it overlooked the surrounding country in all directions,

JOSEPH BOND 291

presenting views of diversified picturesqueness and beauty. It was a
dairy farm of 150 acres. Over the hill was the schoolhouse where the
Bond boys and girls began their education. The soil of the old Bay
State was sandy or stony, but it was unsurpassed in richness for pro-
ducing the men who have built into greatness the American Common-
wealth. On the hill farm of Ware the six boys of farmer Bond grew
into stalwart manhood. The father was a man of great common sense
and of such practical wisdom that his counsel was often sought by his
neighbors. He was physically strong, stalwart, active, and none of his
six sons could ever beat him in a foot race until he had passed three-
score years and ten. One of his sons says of him that he was a strong
man intellectually and physically. His little finger was bigger than
the thumb of any of his sons after they grew to manhood. He was a
kind, thoughtful, and loving father, and his six sons all looked up to
him and respected him, so that his word was always law to them. He
was of a strong religious character and was a deacon in the Baptist
church till the meeting-house was burned, when, the house not being
rebuilt, he took his family to the Congregational church. He taught a
Sunday-school class for many years. He maintained the custom of
family worship. Deeply religious, he was the companion and leader of
his sons. He never said "Go!" to them, but "Come!" He entered
into their sports and games, ran races, and pitched quoits with them,
and they were naturally devoted to him. He retained his activity and
vigor down to old age.

The mother being of like spirit with the father, the large family was
admirably brought up under strong, wise, affectionate, Christian disci-
pline. The children were unusually fond of each other, and there were
enough of them and things enough to do to make their youth exceed-
ingly interesting. The labors of the farm with so many hands to help
were not too burdensome. Their number made it possible for them to
avail themselves of all the schooling the country schools afforded. They
were fortunate in living in a region which was a wonderful boys' country.
In summer and autumn the woods and streams invited them. In the
winter there was coasting on the hills and skating on the river and
ponds. There were manhood memories of a dog, the companion and
playfellow of the boys and a continuous occasion of interest and amuse-
ment. Joseph used to tell with joyful remembrance of the day when
he, with his brother Rufus, in the woods for a day's fun, treed a gray
squirrel. Like true boys they determined to capture it alive and take
it home and tame it. Joseph, ten years old, climbed the tree to

292 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

dislodge their prey, while Rufus, the next older than himself, remained
below to capture him. Joseph followed him out on a limb and suc-
ceeded in shaking him off. As he came down, Rufus, careless of conse-
quences, caught him with his bare hands as he "would a baseball." He
was, of course, badly bitten, but held on, and the young hunters carried
their captive home in triumph and made a pet of him. Brought up in
the country on a farm, these brothers were not without the joy of life
and the fun boys ought to have.

Mr. David Bond, the second older brother of Joseph, still lives in
Ware. He has drawn for me so true a picture of life on a Massachu-
setts farm sixty years ago that I cannot forbear giving it to my readers.

Our lives were so closely linked together that I cannot take one out by itself.
In our family were six boys and two girls, who were the youngest. My two older
brothers were in the Civil War during those four years, and I was anxious to go but
was too young. We first went to the district school. I remember it was sometimes
difficult to reach the schoolhouse, as the hill down which we went across lots to the
school would be covered with ice. We would have to sit down and make a hole in
the ice with our heel and draw ourselves down to that and then make a hole with
the other heel and draw ourselves down to that, and so on till we reached the foot
of the hill. You could hardly call it rapid transit.

We did not have much time for play, for when we reached home there would be
the chores to do. In winter there would be wood to chop, but in the evenings we would
crack nuts, pop corn, play checkers, etc. In the summer after our work was done we
would run and see who would get first to the swimming pool, half a mile away, or we
would try high jumping, pitching quoits, the three-legged race, etc. We were strong,
active boys, always ready for fun, and liked to play tricks on each other. We were
so far from town we did not have other boys to play with, but depended on each
other and were happy by ourselves.

We used to hunt grey squirrels and always had one in the house. One Sunday
father had gone ahead in the carriage to church and we boys were to follow on foot.
As we were walking along through the woods we saw a squirrel run into his hole in a
tree. In those days we wore high-topped boots reaching half way up to the knee.
One of us took off a boot and clapped it over the hole. Another climbed the tree to a
hole higher up and with a long stick we gave him managed to drive the squirrel into
the boot, which we then pinched together and we had him safely. By this time it
was too late to go to church.

At another time we had been reading about how Daniel Boone practiced snuffing
a candle with a rule ball so that he could hit a deer's eye in the night. In some way
we got hold of an old pistol, and after father had gone to town in the evening on some
errand we boys would go up to our bedroom, take the tallow candle that was in use
those days, and, placing it on a chair at one side of the room, try with our pistol to snuff
it out. The walls to this day bear the marks of the bullets.

About that time we four younger boys formed the B.A.C. — the Bond Agricultural
Club. We adopted a constitution and by-laws, elected officers, and held regular
monthly meetings. At these meetings we held discussions and debates. Later we

JOSEPH BOND 293

made an older brother, who had returned from the war, married, and settled in Ware,
an honorary member. We often met at his house and had merry times, for he and his
wife were not lacking in the spirit of fun. The above is a true account of our every-
day life on the old farm.

These boys naturally developed the virtues of virile young Ameri-
cans. They inherited the tendencies of a long line of God-fearing
ancestors. Thus they grew up clean, strong, high minded, but quite
unlike in their aptitudes and ambitions. Joseph, the youngest boy
but one, early developed a taste for and a purpose to seek a business
career. He was fifteen years old when the country emerged from the
Civil War and began to gather itself together for entering that extraor-
dinary business expansion in railroad building, manufacturing, inven-
tion, building great cities, and combining capital for large enterprises
in commerce which during the past half-century have transformed
our national life. His mind responded to the new spirit of the times
and he became a part of the new age in which he found himself
growing up.

He was too young to enter the Civil War, but he saw his older
brother, Nelson, a student in Amherst College, and Sylvester, who was
in Monson Academy, leave their books to fight for their country.
When he was fifteen, eager to get into the world's work, he went with
his uncle Darius Eaton to learn the mason's trade. The uncle lived
three miles away, but the boy, continuing to live at home, walked the
three miles to his work in the morning, carrying his lunch, and back
home at night. It was not his purpose to remain a mason, but he wisely
reasoned that a good trade to fall back upon, if necessary, would be a
valuable asset. He continued in this apprenticeship between two and
three years, when he concluded that if he ever found his way into business
life, as he fully intended to do, he must acquire a greater knowledge of
books. All his older brothers had been in college or academies. In
1868 Rufus had been a student in Kimball Union Academy, at Meriden,
New Hampshire. This was one of the feeders of Dartmouth College
and was located about one hundred and twenty-five miles due north of
Ware, the home of the Bonds. His brother brought back so good a
report of Kimball that in the fall of 1869 Joseph made his way there.
Intent on a business life he gave his studies a business direction, begin-
ning among other things the study of accounting.

Returning home, the next two years, his eighteenth and nineteenth,
were spent on the farm and in working at his trade, in which he had
become an expert. He had, however, no intention of following his trade

294 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

permanently. He earned large wages for that day and his father urged
him to be content with what was one of the best-paid trades in the
country. But his heart was set on a business career. He was always
a modest man, but it needed no vanity to assure him that his brain
would carry him incomparably farther than manual labor alone. He
had before his eyes in the industries of his home town, Ware, growing
manufacturing establishments, illustrations of the business possibilities
of the new era succeeding the Great War. He was not overwhelmed by
what he saw of big business with a feeling of his own incompetence and
insignificance. He was a mere boy, brought up on a farm, a worker
with his hands, but he had an irremovable conviction that what he was
made for was the management of big business. He did not talk about
it but it was always in his mind, as every step in his subsequent
career proves.

He had the sense, however, to see that in mounting that ladder he
must start at the bottom, and he was on the lookout for an opportunity
to get his foot on the lowest rung, confident that if he could do this he
could make his way toward the top. Of this period his brother David
says:

After I had bought the Waltham Grain Store and before I took possession, while
at home, Joseph told me he would like a business life as he did not wish to be tied to
a trade. Father tried to argue him out of this notion, but Joseph seemed to be set in
his plans. After I went to Waltham I received a letter from him asking me to find
a place for him in some business house. I went up to Richardson Brothers' hardware
store and asked for Mr. Richardson. The man I found there told me the partners
were out and asked if he could do my business. I told him I had a brother who wanted
a place in which he could grow up. This man was Mr. Pierce. He said that he was,
just then, out of business, but was looking for a place, and if he found one would want
a young man such as I had described Joseph to be. He asked me further if I knew
of any stove and tin store for sale. I answered yes, and spoke of the Marsh Stove
Store in Ware. He said he would go and see it, which he did, and bought it. The
next time I saw him he told me he wanted my brother and after he took possession of
the store he wrote me to have my brother call on him. I therefore wrote Joseph and
told him to go to the Marsh store and I thought he would get a position. He went
and that was when and where he first met Mr. Pierce.

This meeting was one of the most important events in Mr. Bond's
life. He was still a boy, just arriving at his twentieth year. Mr. J. B.
Pierce was much the older, but between the boy and the man a most
unusual attachment grew up which united them for life. This meeting
changed and gave final direction to the current of the boy's life, and was
no less eventful for the man. So important, indeed, was this first
meeting that it made an indelible impression on the older man's mind

JOSEPH BOND 295

and he recalled it distinctly thirty years later. For young Bond fairly
precipitated himself on the new owner of the store. To show that this
is not an extravagant statement and to give the story of the extraordi-
nary friendship that resulted, I quote the words of Mr. Pierce, who,
after telling how he had just bought the business for $2,800, continues:

After a week or two had passed and the people in town had become reconciled
to the change, I found it was necessary for me to have assistance and in some way I
made the fact known. A few days thereafter, late one afternoon, the door opened
quickly. I looked up and saw a boy, a young man, coming down the center of the
store toward my desk as if he had been shot out of a gun. My first impulse was to
get out of the way and let him go by, but he managed to stop himself in season to
avoid a collision and made himself known and stated his errand. True to his instinct,
even at that early day, he was the first applicant for the place, the first on the ground.
Through our conversation I learned he was at that time earning $3 . oo a day, but was
ready to quit if he could only obtain some opportunity to begin a business life, regard-
less of compensation, even in opposition to the wishes of some of his people. It did
not take me long to decide that in him was the material I wanted.

Monday, February 12, 1872, the day before his twentieth birthday, Joseph Bond
began his life-work with me. His salary for the first year was $350.00. On August i
following, he by his urgent request began work on the books, and subsequent to that
date all the posting was done by him and nearly all the day-book entries were also

made by him During the few months we were together in that little store

there was formed a tie, a bond of affectionate esteem, that could be severed but once
and in only one way. He came to board with me and we went to business in the morn-
ing together and came home to our boarding-place together at night. In business
and out of business we were together. After our day's work was done and we had
returned to our home we usually read the Boston paper. We could afford but one, so
made that suffice by tearing it in half and exchanging sheets. During these evenings
together we discussed various subjects and I was much interested, as well as amused,
by his account of a recent trip he had made to the Hoosac Tunnel, the farthest west
he had been up to that time. He was so enthusiastic in regard to it that everything
seemed to begin and end with some account of, or some mention of, that trip. I can
now recall the hours, the days, and the weeks at Ware as among the happiest of my
life. In February, '73, I had an opportunity to sell out and quickly accepted, leaving
Joseph to start off the new firm for a few weeks and to settle up some of my own
matters, while I started out to find some new and more satisfactory location in a larger
field, better suited to the ambition of both, intending to call him to me as soon as I
was able to find a location or business that would warrant it.

Such was the beginning of a very exceptional friendship that con-
tinued with increasing mutual confidence and regard to the end of Mr.
Bond's life. Mr. Pierce was the elder by nine or ten years, a man of
nearly or quite thirty when the younger man was twenty. Mr. Pierce
had some business experience and a little capital. Each recognized
business abilities in the other that supplemented his own. They believed
in themselves and in each other. Both were ambitious. They had been

2 96 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

drawn together into a unique friendship and they agreed to reunite
their fortunes as soon as circumstances permitted. Their plans were
temporarily interfered with by the changed circumstances of both the
friends. Mr. Pierce failed to find the new business location he was look-
ing for and Mr. Bond accepted a clerkship in Waltham, Massachusetts,
in the hardware store of Richardson Brothers. In two years his un-
usual business ability won him a partnership and the firm became
Richardson and Bond.

Mr. Bond was twenty-three years old, in vigorous health, and pos-
sessed of extraordinary energy and initiative combined with unusual
executive ability. The business prospered. The firm dealt principally
in builders' hardware, but added to this many related lines of goods.
Waltham was becoming a manufacturing town and growing into a
thriving city. The business was a good one, with prospects of reason-
able and permanent success. It looked as though Waltham might be
Mr. Bond's permanent home, and he entered heartily into the life of
the town. It was here that his openly confessed religious life began
and he connected himself with the First Baptist Church, of which, though
a young man, he became a pillar during his residence of eight years in
Waltham. He was made an officer of the Sunday school, became a
teacher of the men's Bible class, and was active and influential in the
Me of the church, exhibiting in his religious life the enthusiasm and
energy that from the beginning characterized him in business.

It appears to have been the members of the Waltham Fire Depart-
ment who set the example in our country of striking and leaving the
community unprotected. Among the citizens who volunteered to fill
their places was Mr. Bond, who served for more than a year as a member
of Hose Company No. 4.

At the end of five years, in 1880, he found the retail hardware busi-
ness too restricted to satisfy his ambition and, selling his interest in
Richardson and Bond, he associated himself with the Union Manufactur-
ing Company of New Britain, Connecticut. He said to one of his
brothers-in-law in explaining this business change, "It requires no more
effort to sell a carload of goods than to sell a single bolt or lock." He
evidently made this change as one of the steps he must take in develop-
ing, as he was determined to do, from a retail merchant into a manu-
facturer and wholesaler. During his continuance in the new business
he still made his home in Waltham.

The Waltham period was a very memorable one in his life. He
there achieved the first ambition of his life in establishing himself in

JOSEPH BOND 297

business. This was no less gratifying to his father than to himself.
Mr. Pierce once told this story, showing the deep affection Mr. Bond's
father cherished for his son and the high hopes he entertained for his
future. While the son was still a clerk in Waltham Mr. Pierce said:
"I met his father on the train near Orange, Massachusetts. Our con-
versation naturally turned toward Joseph, and among other things,
and with a voice trembling with emotion, he said, 'Mr. Pierce, if Joseph
ever has an opportunity he will make his mark in the woild.' His
first opportunity came in Waltham. He improved it and at twenty-
three was partner in a promising business.

Another thing that made the Waltham period memorable was his
marriage. Among the young people of the church he made the ac-
quaintance of a most attractive young woman, Miss Mary Adelia
Olney. Mutual attachment was followed by an engagement, which, at
the end of three years, in 1879, resulted in their marriage. It is said
that all the Olneys in the United States spring from a single family
which came from England in 1635. Olney, the town which was long
the home of the family in the mother-country, situated in the northern
part of the county of Buckingham, may be found in any good map of
England.

Thomas Olney, born in the adjacent county of Hertford, came to this
country in the ship "Planter" in 1635 an(^ settled in Salem, Massachusetts.
Sympathizing with the views of Roger Williams, he was banished with
him and became one of the thirteen original "proprietors" of Provi-
dence, Rhode Island. He was chosen the first treasurer of the new
colony. He was made a commissioner to form a town government for
Providence and a judge. He was one of the grantees of the royal
charter granted to Rhode Island by Charles II. He was one of the
founders of the First Baptist Church of Providence and for a time was
acting pastor of that now ancient church. It is evident that he was a
leading spirit in that infant colony of political and religious heroes.
The historians have called him a "manager of men."

Charles Olney, of the eighth generation from Thomas, the Providence
magnate, was born in Watertown, New York, in 1833, in 1858 married
Julia A. Haynes, and in 1860 moved to Waltham, Massachusetts, and
became connected with the Waltham Watch Company, continuing with
that company through the rest of his life. He had four children. There
were two sons, Lewis, now of New York, and Charles, who is secretary
of the Waltham Watch Company, and two daughters, one of whom
married Dr. Emory W. Hunt, an eminent Baptist clergyman and

298 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

educator, now president of Bucknell University. As has already been
told, the other daughter, Mary Adelia, became the wife of Mr. Bond
when he was twenty- seven years old.

Another thing that made the Waltham period memorable was an
acute illness that brought all Mr. Bond's plans to sudden and apparently
complete and final ruin. He was stricken with Bright's disease. His
physicians gave him not to exceed two more years of life. They assured
him that to prolong his life even two years he must abandon his business
and betake himself to Poland Springs, Maine, for prolonged rest and
treatment. The opinions and advice were so positive and final that he
could not disregard them without the fear that he would incur the guilt
of suicide. This overthrow of his hopes and plans occurred in 1880,
the year following his marriage. He sold his business, and having by
this time accumulated sufficient means to indulge himself in the rest
and treatment prescribed, went to the Springs to drink the waters and
take the one chance in a thousand left him to prolong his life.

What, meantime, had become of Mr. Pierce and the plans the two
men had formed to become permanently associated ? They had never
lost sight of each other, but Mr. Pierce had found great difficulty in re-
establishing himself in business. Toward the end of 1873 he had made
a start in Buffalo, but the panic of that year interfered with his progress
and he had, as he says, "ample occupation, physically and mentally,
to keep above" the general wreck and ruin that surrounded him.
"Years passed before I sufficiently recovered and was in a position to
call Joseph to my aid." The time for their reunion seemed to have
come in 1880, and a little before his breakdown, in the summer of that
year, Mr. Bond went to Buffalo for a conference. The two men went
together to Bradford, Pennsylvania, with a view of opening there a
hardware and general supply store, but after a thorough investigation
decided that the field was too small. They separated, but with the old
purpose still strong in their hearts to go into business together as soon
as the way opened. Theirs was, if such a thing can be, a romantic busi-
ness friendship. Mr. Bond's last word to his older friend as they parted
had been, "I am ready to come when you say the word." In con-
tinuing the story Mr. Pierce said:

In the summer of '81, through a little rift in the clouds of business depression,
I thought I could detect signs that the time for which we had waited years was at
hand, and I wrote him to come to Buffalo. In a few days he was there. Though his
physician had given him but six months to live and of this time much had already
passed, his coming to me seemed to give him new life, and he was as full of energy and
enthusiasm as if in perfect health.

JOSEPH BOND 299

The year previous I had built on leased ground a little shop of second-hand
lumber, costing, complete, about five hundred dollars, and had begun making steel
boilers. Here we made the first home of the Pierce Steam Heating Company.

Under this name and in these humble quarters the two friends became
partners.

Mr. Bond did not die, as the doctors predicted. The treatment he
had taken and the regimen to which he had subjected himself had
benefited him beyond belief and he had returned to business with a
courage few men could have commanded. He willed to be well enough
to work; but he was never again, during the twenty years he continued
to live, a well man. He lived on a prescribed diet. He drank always
and everywhere, at home and abroad, the same kind of water. Customs
officials in Europe found it quite incredible that a traveler should be
carrying bottles of water about the continent, where there was wine
or beer or vodka to drink. Never again well, he was often very ill,
but he prosecuted his business with tremendous, quite unbelievable,
energy.

In 1882 he took his family to Buffalo. A daughter, Elfleda, had
been born in Waltham, and later another, Louise, was born in Buffalo,
which remained the home of the family for ten years.

Mr. Bond soon recognized the new opening in Buffalo as the great
opportunity of which he had long dreamed. His business gifts were of
the highest order. His organizing and executive talents were of the sort
that command success. As has been intimated, the business qualities of
one partner complemented those of the other. Mr. Pierce was con-
servative, perhaps slow to seize opportunities. He was apparently
content to allow his business to develop slowly. Mr. Bond was aggres-
sive. He wished to push the business to the utmost. He was con-
stantly on the lookout for new openings through which it might be
developed. All this is perfectly apparent in the following statement
made by Mr. Pierce in speaking of the extraordinary kindliness of Mr.
Bond's disposition. He said: "Impatient at times I may have been,
while striving to hold in check his almost resistless energy, or while
veering this way or that, to avoid the ruts in the highway of our
progress."

This is a most illuminating picture of the characteristics and relations
of the two men: one perhaps ultra-conservative, suspicious of too rapid
development, a little afraid, at first, of tackling big business; the other
eager, progressive, welcoming development, afraid of nothing in the
way of legitimate progress. Neither had, hitherto, had anything to

300 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

do with big business. Mr. Bond not only sought and welcomed it,
but, as it came, grew into it easily, naturally, as men born with the in-
stinct for large affairs do. And large development was not slow in
coming to the new firm.

It began by manufacturing steel boilers. This business led in no
long time — within a few months, in fact — to the necessity for manu-
facturing steam radiators. The two lines of business belonged together.
Each was incomplete and was conducted at a disadvantage without the
other. Various efforts were made to get the radiators made by outside
manufacturers. These efforts failing, the two partners, with orders,
and indeed with contracts, on hand, faced a serious situation. Finally
they sat down in their office, took their pencils, and made a sketch of
the radiator they wanted and took it to the best pattern-maker in
Buffalo and had a pattern made. This they patented and went out to
get it manufactured.

Then their real difficulties began. At every foundry in Buffalo they
were told that radiators could not be made from the pattern. "At all the
largest and best foundries in Boston" they were told the same thing.
Undismayed, they leased a little foundry in Westfield, Massachusetts,
and made the radiators themselves. These were indirect radiators.
During the next two or three years the business so increased that orders
could not be filled through the small foundry at Westfield and it was
found necessary to build a much larger one in Buffalo. "The union of
conservative business ability and executive enterprise soon gave evidence
of progress toward a wider sphere and a greater business accomplish-
ment." This growth of business in indirect radiators soon led to a
demand for direct radiators. Patterns were made and obstacles were
again encountered. "A representative manufacturer, who was con-
sidered a high authority in all matters pertaining to cast-iron radiators,"
told the partners they could not be made, "as he had repeatedly tried
it and failed." But Mr. Bond would not be discouraged and pushed
on to success where others had failed.

This success in the field of direct heat radiation led to a rapid and
large expansion in the business, and the firm was soon enjoying large
prosperity. The growth of the business was almost bewildering. The
partners were fairly driven to one step of expansion after another.
The senior partner acknowledging that a "kind Providence outlined the
way," makes this na'ive confession: "Blindly, almost stupidly, I followed,
only because I was compelled to, though contesting to the utmost every
step." One cannot help connecting this with that other confession as

JOSEPH BOND 301

to his impatience, while striving to hold in check Mr. Bond's "almost
resistless energy."

Mr. Bond had charge of the outside work. He got the orders which
Mr. Pierce, in charge of the manufacturing plant, filled. Mr. Bond
had an extraordinary gift for securing business. It was this gift and
the driving force behind it that caused his partner so much concern.
One who knew the facts at first hand told the writer how on one occasion
Mr. Bond brought in two very large orders and his partner broke out
in sudden consternation, "How could you do such a thing as that?
We can't possibly execute two orders of such magnitude on time."
These expostulations were received with serenity and with the sug-
gestion that they look into the matter thoroughly and see what they
could do. A day or two of reflection and examination and discussion
made it clear that the works were quite equal to the demand made upon
them and the orders were filled on time. Mr. Bond was constantly
reaching out after new business and pushing forward and was rec-
ognized by all who were familiar with the facts as the "money maker"
of the concern. If Mr. Pierce's conservatism held Mr. Bond's resistless
energy in check to some extent, the executive genius of the latter carried
the concern on to larger and ever larger success. In 1889 it was incorpo-
rated with Mr. Bond as treasurer and a capital of $150,000.

In this year also, Mr. Bond, accompanied by Mrs. Bond, made his
first trip abroad. Always frail after his breakdown in 1880, he found
himself in imperative need of rest. But he made this period of travel
and rest minister to his business as well as to his health. It will be
recalled by older readers that the first steam and hot-water radiators
were far from attractive in design and were not regarded as decorative
furnishings. One of the objects of Mr. Bond's first trip abroad, there-
fore, was the obtaining of improved designs to make the radiator more
artistic and decorative so that, instead of diminishing, it would increase
the attractiveness of any room. England, France, and other countries
were visited. Several months were spent agreeably and profitably.
Mr. Bond's health was improved; new and more artistic designs were
brought back; and the conception of extending the business to foreign
countries began to take shape in his mind.

Meantime the home business was growing beyond their ability to
care for it, and early in the nineties steps began to be taken which resulted
in 1892 in the organization of the American Radiator Company. An-
other factor also was influential in creating the new organization. Other
radiator companies came into existence and began a keen competition

302 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

for business. A cut in prices by one company led to a greater one by
others. Profits diminished to the vanishing-point. The business of
the Pierce Steam Heating Company was large and increasing but it
began to look as though it could not continue to be profitable. A
struggle for existence between heating companies impended. The more
far-sighted men in the radiator business began to see the necessity of a
combination of companies large enough to cut down greatly the over-
head charges, reduce generally the cost of production, and thus benefit
the public and at the same time increase the business.

The preliminary efforts toward this end were initiated by John B.
Dyar of Michigan. The first negotiation was conducted by Clarence
M. Woolley with Mr. Pierce in Buffalo in the early autumn of 1891.
The progressive leaders of the three leading companies, the Pierce
Steam Heating Company of Buffalo, the Michigan Radiator and Iron
Manufacturing Company, and the Detroit Radiator Company, the two
latter of Detroit, then got together to consider whether these companies
could not be combined into a single corporation. From this time Mr.
Bond's influence became an important element in helping the various
parties to reach a final agreement. One acquainted with all the circum-
stances says, "Mr. Bond from the very inception of the negotiations
recognized the potential possibilities, and had it not been for his in-
fluence with the late John B. Pierce I do not think it would have been
possible to have carried the original conception through to a successful
conclusion. I therefore do not think it would be fulsome praise to ac-
cord to Mr. Bond the credit of having played the most important part
in the negotiations" which resulted in the formation of the American
Radiator Company.

The difficulties in the way of reaching an agreement were many and
at times must have seemed almost insuperable. The Pierce Company
was the largest of the three, and the interest of the president of that
company was larger than that of all others. Very conservative, he was
reluctant to enter into new and large schemes. But Mr. Bond was so
completely confided in by him, as to be able to convince him and win
him over to the proposed combination. He finally assented to the
plan on one condition, that Mr. Bond should be made president of the
new corporation. The spirit and practical business wisdom of Mr.
Bond had so won the esteem and confidence of his fellow-negotiators
that they were quite ready to meet this condition.

The plan adopted was a simple one. A new corporation was organ-
ized— the American Radiator Company, with Mr. Bond as president,

JOSEPH BOND 303

John B. Pierce and Edward A. Sumner as vice-presidents, Clarence M.
Woolley, secretary, and Charles H. Hodges, treasurer. The company
was organized under the laws of Illinois and the principal office was
located in Chicago. This company "purchased all the rights, titles, and
interests" of the three companies, and the American Radiator Company
was ready to begin business.

It was then that the real difficulties began. Mr. Bond immediately
moved to Chicago and entered on the work of organizing the business
of the new concern. Eleven years later Mr. Pierce said in an address
to the board of directors:

Some of you do not know and cannot comprehend the chaos that existed in this
organization, or rather disorganization, January i, 1892, and perhaps it is well that
you do not, for you would never believe it possible that such a beautiful whole had
been conceived and brought forth from such a confusion of parts. It was like the
bringing together of the multitudinous parts of three different machines and so adjust-
ing each separate part to the others that all the delicate mechanism performed its
work, and all the while keeping every wheel in motion.

When in 1892 the American Radiator Company was formed, I believe I am
correct when I state that no one of us original stockholders had any comprehension
of what was before us, or of the magnitude our business would reach after ten years
under the leadership of Joseph Bond.

He possessed the faculty and power of imparting to others, to an astonishing
degree, his own force, and his associates and every employee of this company with
whom he ever came in contact have felt the thrilling and magnetic touch of his en-
thusiasm. We who have been his associates for years, when hereafter discussing
business problems, will often ask ourselves unconsciously what line of action Joseph
would pursue, or what he would say if he were here to speak.

One of Mr. Bond's associates relates the following of his method of
dealing with customers. When in the early years of the American
Radiator Company a man would come in with a large order and say,
"I suppose you will guarantee these goods?" Mr. Bond would say,
"Let me tell you a story. When I was a young man in a little hard-
ware store in Ware, Massachusetts, we used to sell axe heads to men
cutting trees in the woods. They were guaranteed to us and we guaran-
teed them to the wood choppers. They were often brought back split
open and we would replace them. But a company proposed to sell us
a new brand of axe heads, and when we asked if they would guarantee
to replace every one that split they said, 'These axe heads will not split
and need no guarantee. They will cost you a little more because they
are of so superior a quality that they will not split open or break.' We
decided to try them, and sold them without any guarantee on their
merits. And they never split or broke. That experience taught me a

3°4

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

great lesson — to make goods of the best quality, that will sell on their
merits. That is the kind we are selling you." And the customer would
give his order and go away satisfied.

During the nineties Mr. Bond made several trips abroad for pleasure
or for his health or in the interest of the business. The foreign demand
for the new heating, which he had foreseen, now developed. England
and the continent of Europe began to order heating equipment and the
negotiations sometimes required the presence of some of the higher
officers of the company. This foreign business continually increased
until it became apparent that plants for the manufacture of heating
appliances must be constructed in distant countries. An Illinois cor-
poration was not at that time authorized to hold stock in other corpora-
tions, and in 1899 the company was reincorporated under the laws of
New Jersey. In the annual report to stockholders — his last — issued in
January, 1902, Mr. Bond said:

The foreign business has for some years continued to grow, until its proper care
and development necessitated the construction of a plant in France, which is in suc-
cessful operation, and, although steam and water-heating appliances are thus far
used to but a limited extent in that country, a good beginning has been made.

In Germany it has also been found desirable to construct a plant, which is nearing
completion and which will be in operation within a few months, the introduction of
American methods of manufacture proving to be the best policy and promising better
for the future than any other course.

This policy has been continued by the company until plants exist in
England, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Austria, and Canada, in
all of which countries subsidiary companies have been organized.

This growing foreign business, although Mr. Bond lived to see its
beginnings only, took him abroad more than once. In the spring of
1898 he took his family for an extended tour through England and
continental Europe. Sailing from New York March 26, they returned
August 12, after an absence of four and a half months. After spending
eighteen days in London and other parts of England, they went to Paris
and a week later to Switzerland. Three weeks in May were given to
Rome and the other Italian cities. After ten days more in Switzerland,
they visited Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, and Berlin. From Germany
they went by way of Poland to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other
cities of Russia. Sweden, Denmark, and Holland were next visited.
Proceeding to London, a few days more were given to places of historic
interest in England, and the last days of July and the first days of August
were given to the principal cities and the highlands of Scotland. From

JOSEPH BOND 305

Edinburgh they proceeded to Liverpool and sailed for home August 6
on the " Campania," which had taken them over. It was a memorable
trip, never to be forgotten by Mr. Bond's children.

The demands of business had, however, required a good deal of his
time. Conditions in France and Germany were maturing for the
construction of manufacturing plants, and Mr. Bond was frequently
called upon to leave the family and spend days or weeks in studying
conditions, consulting business men, examining possible sites, and
initiating negotiations which later led to large results. The more
immediate of these results was the erection of the first foreign plants in
France and Germany, the plant in France being the first one completed.
These months were very busy ones for Mr. Bond. He spent as much
time as possible with his family, but while they were visiting Switzer-
land, Holland, and Scotland, he was engaged in laying the foundations
of the business which has since assumed the large proportions already
described. But although he worked hard much of the time, he returned
from this tour "much benefited in health," as an associate in business
wrote, to resume his intense and strenuous application to the work of
which he was so fond and for which he was so peculiarly fitted.

The business meantime grew to larger and larger proportions, both
at home and abroad. Notwithstanding the frailty and uncertainty of
his health, Mr. Bond continued for ten years to conduct it with the
greatest skill and efficiency, until it became the largest of its kind in the
world. And he did more than this. He might well have excused
himself from all labors outside the exacting demands of his business;
but he was a devout man, deeply interested in the progress of the
Kingdom of God and the welfare of young men. His pastors testified
that he was always in his place in the church on Sunday and at the mid-
week meetings. After making Chicago his home, he united with the
Immanuel Baptist Church. Going into the Sunday school he took the
fragment of a class of young men and built it up into a great organiza-
tion of a hundred and fifty young men, which the church named the
Bond Bible Class. He became a trustee of the Divinity School of the
University of Chicago and here also manifested his interest in young
men by giving the money to send a graduate student to Egypt and Pales-
tine for study.

Mr. Bond was a Republican in politics. He did not have time or
strength to devote to club life, his own business and that of the King-
dom of God absorbing him. He was, however, a member of the Chicago,
Union League, Quadrangle, and Onwentsia clubs. At the Quadrangle

306 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

he met the University circle, and the Onwentsia gave him the exercise
and recreation of golf.

For more than twenty years Mr. Bond fought a heroic battle against
physical infirmities. Nine men out of ten with his bodily handicap
would have regarded themselves as invalids, unfitted for labor or business.
In 1880, given by physicians not more than two years to live, and a
little later only six months, he not only survived twenty-two years but
during all that time did the work of two of three men in vigorous health.
He had frequent sicknesses but rallied from them by apparently supreme
efforts of the will and with sublime courage grappled again with the
heavy responsibilities of a new business. I say a new business, for
during all these years his business was always a new one. The Pierce
Steam Heating Company's business was so new that he had to lay its
very foundations and mark out its policies. It developed in such unfore-
seen directions that during the ten years of its rapid enlargement it was
never the same for six consecutive months but always new, calling for
new plans, new methods, and new mental resources in the director of its
policies.

In the organization of the American Radiator Company, again every-
thing was new, calling forth powers hitherto unused. The marvelous
development of that company, so much greater than its projectors
dreamed of, and the new fields it entered made the experience of every
year a novel one. The experience must have been mentally exhilarat-
ing in the highest degree. But the president had a singularly alert and
resourceful mind. To every fresh demand made on his powers he
responded with a facility and readiness of resource that showed a mind
innately constituted for business. Nature, with experience added,
made him a great business organizer and administrator.

The physicians were not entirely at fault in their diagnoses. The
disease that prostrated him in 1880 never left him. Dr. 0. P. Gifford,
one of his pastors, said:

For two and twenty years this man withstood disease In 1880 his physi-
cians gave him the warning of death — that he had but a few months to live. He
went aside and said to the Lord, "I have done nothing yet" (few men have done
much at thirty), "give me twenty years that I may do a man's work." When the
final summons came he turned to his companion and said, "God has been good. I
asked for twenty years. He gave twenty-two, good measure, pressed down, run-
ning over." Again and again during these twenty years he walked to the edge of the
Valley of the Shadow, looked in, girt the loins of his strength by an act of will, and
said, "Not yet," and came back to the land of the living. Of this man it might be
said death crouched at his door. Death was his constant companion, present as one's

JOSEPH BOND 307

shadow on a sunny day. It ever closely followed, except at times when the shadow of
its presence stepped in front of him. He knew not when the silver cord would be
loosed — the golden bowl broken — but manfully, bravely, he toiled on.

We know not all that he resisted. He carried a load of disease upon one shoulder,

and to balance it he took a burden of business upon the other He conquered

success where most men would have been conquered by disease He lived a

simple life. He lived as an athlete lives. What might have been right in perfect
health became wrong when fighting disease. His self-restraint gave him power.

But alas, his power was not sufficient to carry him beyond the year
1902. He had seen his older daughter, Elfleda, happily married, and his
younger daughter, Louise, grow to womanhood. He had seen the new
business combination extraordinarily successful even in the first ten
years he lived to administer its work, and so wisely organized and solidly
founded as to insure the remarkable development that has since char-
acterized it. And then the end came.

In the spring of 1902 his health was finally broken. After an illness
of three months he passed away on August 8. Dr. Gifford said, "When
the final call came against which he could no longer struggle, he said,
turning to his companion, ' God knows best. He has the wider view.'

But the pity of it! He was still a young man, only fifty years of
age. If he were living today his powers would just be ripening. He
had had only twenty years to improve the opportunity his father craved
for him, but in that short time he had made his mark in the world.
What would he not have done had he lived to a good age ! His pastor,
Dr. Johnston Myers, said of him, "He was able at the close of his life to
know that he stood at the head of one of the largest and most respected
business enterprises in the world. He was well on the way to become
one of the great factors in finance. Had his life been spared he would
no doubt have amassed a great fortune." He certainly would have
participated in the prosperity of the great business over which he
presided.

Mr. Bond's death was followed by many touching and significant
tributes to his memory. Just before the funeral service in his home
church Sunday morning, August 10, 1902, one hundred and twenty-five
members of the Bond Bible Class met and pledged themselves to carry
on vigorously the work of the founder and first teacher of the class. The
final service was held the following day in the Delaware Avenue Baptist
Church in Buffalo, in which city he was buried. One of his associates
wrote of these services:

Nothing could better show the fond esteem in which Mr. Bond is held than was
manifested by the presence of the large delegation from the Company's organization

308 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

and by the tender care and the affection with which each individual member devoted
himself to see that in the last rites every honor was done to the man whose kindly sym-
pathetic nature has ever been an inspiration to us all, whose aim and act had been to
duplicate himself in others.

So completely did Mr. Bond project his great and comprehensive personality
throughout the center and circumference of our company that if we can show our
worthiness to carry on the work in which he so splendidly led we cannot help but
feel the touch of his presence in all that we do in the years which are to follow. The
joy and pride of the creative workman ever filled him with that wonderful energy and
enthusiasm which so often amazed us. His duties were his pleasures. His pleasures
were his duties.

Few men exhibit the remarkable balance of qualities that was seen
in Mr. Bond. He was at the same time strong and gentle. He had
none of the brusqueness that is usually found in the strong, nor any of
those negative traits that so often characterize the gentle. He had a
singular purity and sweetness of nature which, combined with strength
and vigor, won affection and commanded respect and confidence. His
partner of twenty years, who was profoundly impressed by his ''almost
resistless energy," felt just as deeply the nobility, goodness, and sweet-
ness of his character. He said of him:

Tender and considerate of the feelings of others, his whole nature abounded in

love He had a kind word for everybody, and on all occasions, and in the days

of our beginning, days that try men's souls, he was at his best He possessed

most remarkable self-control, if with him self-control were necessary, which I doubt.
I never heard him utter an unkind word, nor did I ever hear him speak unkindly to
or of any person. Apparently there was no source in his nature from which an unkind
word or act could spring.

These were words spoken to Mr. Bond's immediate associates in business
who knew him almost or quite as well as the speaker.

His though tfulness for others greatly impressed his pastor, who said :
"A consulting physician who was present in the sick room in the last
hours said, 'I have never seen a case quite like this. Here is a dying
man looking after my comfort.' He would occasionally say to the
pastor, "You are not looking well this morning. Now I insist upon it
that you go away for a few days." Then he would suggest a good place
to visit and provide the means.

He loved to give to good causes. He said that he made money
with the thought that he was to do good with it. His minister said, " He
made thousands and gave thousands each year." Giving was the spon-
taneous expression of his nature. Had he but lived to our time he
would have been one of the great givers to those great causes that
appeal to men of this new day.

JOSEPH BOND 309

Mr. Bond had two daughters. The elder, Elfleda, was married in
1901 to Edgar J. Goodspeed, now professor of Biblical and Patristic
Greek in the University of Chicago. The younger, Louise Pierce Bond,
in 1906 became the wife of Joseph F. Rhodes, a young business man,
and they made their home in Pasadena, California. They have growing
up about them four boys — Foster Bond, Robert Edgar, Kenneth Olney,
and David Eaton Rhodes.

Mr. Bond was the companion and ideal and idol of his children.
The happiness of his family was his chief concern. When he left his
office he left his business behind him. Home was not disturbed by its
cares. There he gave himself to his family with the same devotion
that he gave himself to business in business hours. When he entered
the door of his house the happiness of his wife and children became his
business. He had a keen sense of humor which there was given full
play.

One of the most extraordinary things about him was that, although
he never knew a well day during the last twenty-two years of his life
and often suffered cruelly, he always brought into his home an at-
mosphere of courage, cheer, good humor, and happiness. His family
waited for and welcomed his return from business. His daughters
flew to greet him. Sunshine flooded the house. His love and cheer-
fulness made it a happy place.

He carefully trained his daughters in habits of observation. Every
evening they were expected to give him the story of their day, in which
he was sympathetically interested. In their travels together they
were encouraged to observe everything of interest and at the close of
the day to recount what they had seen and discuss with him every
incident of interest. He thus sought to store their minds with inter-
esting memories and turn their education into practical channels. His
method of teaching, in his Bible class and at home, was the Socratic
method. He awakened interest and provoked discussion by suggestive
questions.

Since his death Mrs. Bond has spent much of her time with her
daughters, giving part of the year to each. She has long cherished a
purpose to build some enduring memorial of Mr. Bond. As he had
been a trustee of the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, her
mind naturally turned to that institution. She had felt strongly in-
clined to make the memorial in a fund for fellowships and scholarships.
Funds, however, having been given the University for the erection of
a Theological Lecture Hall, she listened to the proposal that she should

310 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

put the memorial into the form of a Divinity Chapel to be independent of,
but connected by a cloister with, this Lecture Hall. In, 1917, therefore,
she gave the University $50,000 for this purpose. Since that time the
securities have increased in value and the interest has accrued so that
when the Bond Memorial Chapel is erected the contribution will amount
to a much larger sum than was originally given. The plans for the
building have been made and its erection only waits for the time when
construction costs so react as to be within reason.

The Divinity School Chapel is to be a typical collegiate chapel in
the English Gothic style. Its interior dimensions will be: width, 28
feet, height, 42 feet, and length, 84 feet. It will accommodate two
hundred people, besides having room in the chancel stalls for twenty
more. It is to stand at right angles with Haskell Museum and the
Divinity Halls, centered on the north side of the Graduate Quadrangle.
It will be entered from a glazed cloister connecting it with the new
Theological Building. Within, it will be wainscoted to a height of twelve
feet, that is, up to the base of the fourteen great traceried windows that will
fill the upper walls and give the building, whether seen from within or
without, the Gothic rhythm. The upper walls are to be finished in
Bedford stone, and the roof will be timbered. The most richly decorated
part of the building will be the east front, as one approaches it under
the bridge which is to connect the Theological Building with Haskell.
But its symmetry of design and its carefully studied proportions will
make it an attractive feature not only of the Graduate Quadrangle but
also of the new theological group of which it is to form a part.

The chief distinction of Mr. Bond's life was his intimate connection
with the infancy, development, and vast expansion of one of the great
industries of the modern world. Within a little more than a generation
methods of heating have been revolutionized. Only forty years have
passed since stoves and hot-air furnaces were the ordinary, almost the
only, means of heating homes and business places. All this has been
changed by the steam and hot-water radiator, which is now found
everywhere. Mr. Bond was one of the principal agents in bringing
about this extraordinary revolution. He helped to lay the foundations
of what has now become a very great industry, drafting the models of
some of the very first radiators. He was one of the introducers of hot-
water heating and one of the organizers and the president of the principal
radiator company of the world. He made this a more comfortable
world to live in, distinctly advanced the general happiness and health,
and made himself a benefactor of mankind.

JOSEPH BOND 311

This sketch cannot be better concluded than by quoting from two
tributes to Mr. Bond made by his successor in the presidency of the
American Radiator Company, Mr. Clarence M. Woolley. Both were
made before the directors of the company, who knew Mr. Bond inti-
mately. The first was made at the first meeting of the board after
his death in 1902.

Those of us whose good fortune it has been to be his associates on this board
can bear testimony to the greatness of his character, the gentleness and sweetness of
his spirit, and the inestimable value of the distinguished service he has rendered the
company he loved so well.

The merging into effective corporate existence of interests that had for years been
pursuing a policy of aggressive, competitive warfare was not an easy or a simple task.
The principle was then comparatively new. We could not call to our assistance the
advice and counsel of those who had had practical experience along these lines. Mr.
Bond's task was, therefore, all the greater and his performance all the more admirable,
for it was largely by his influence that the orignal component parts of this corporation
were brought together in a manner so harmonious that the splendid record with
which we are all familiar was made possible.

More than any person whom we have ever known, Mr. Bond possessed to a con-
spicuous degree the qualities that were essential for this, his great life-work. Endowed
with unusual strength and keenness of mentality, he had also what seemed to be a
constitution of iron, which many of his closest associates only learned after many
years was subjected to the menace of a fatal malady.

He surrendered himself absolutely and completely to the well-being of our busi-
ness. In all the years that we knew him he was never known to shield or withhold
himself, however great the cost of time or strength.

Shoulder to shoulder, and in the same office with him for a decade, his immediate
associates learned to honor his integrity and to appreciate the Christian qualities and
principles from which he never departed. His methods were all direct. He was
never known to resort to artifice, exaggeration, or deception. Gifted as very few men
are for debate and argument, he gained his points by the force of his logic and never
resorted to methods that compelled him to compromise his high ideals.

He was one of the kindest, most gentle, most considerate men we ever knew —
qualities that very rarely blend themselves so conspicuously with the unusual strength
of mind that he possessed.

He was courteous to all men. He never expressed an unkind, impatient, or
selfish thought, and was tolerant to a remarkable degree. His power to concentrate
the entire wealth of his ability upon the thing he had to do was quite unusual, and yet
he was easily approached and ever had time to listen to the most obscure person in
our organization. He worked with great enthusiasm and great intensity. When he
focused his powers he accomplished in a few hours what it would have taken many
men days to achieve. He had that remarkable and unusual subtlety and magnetism
which inspired his colleagues and associates with enthusiasm, and which extended
through the length and breadth of our organization. It is to this quality, perhaps,
as much as to any other single cause that he owed his success as a leader.

Cautious, deliberate, and careful before acting, he never lost the main chance
by postponement. He devised the plan that seemed best to him, firmly believing it

3i2 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

to be the only one to accomplish the purpose in hand. He never doubted for a
moment, nor gave heed to thought that suggested failure. He never retreated once he
decided to advance. He believed so enthusiastically in the efficiency of his plans
that this very element became an important factor in making for their success. He
possessed to a rare degree this essential quality of leadership.

To show that this generous tribute to his predecessor in office was
not merely inspired by the then recent death of Mr. Bond, but by the
profound and enduring impression made by his great qualities, I quote
from remarks made by President Woolley to the directors fifteen years
later, in 1917.

Joseph Bond, the first president of the company, served in such capacity until
his demise, August 8, 1902. A man of exceptional brilliancy and boundless energy,
kindly of heart and humane in spirit, he was ever active in promoting the welfare of his
fellow-associates.

He was infinitely patient, always tolerant, and never lacking in sympathetic
comprehension for those who sought his counsel and advice. These qualities, how-
ever, did not enfeeble his will to do justice, nor obscure the clearness of his vision.

Active in church work and fervent in his accepted faith, he did not preach his creed
but practiced it in all his dealings. He therefore commanded not only the profound
respect of his associates but won their affectionate regard.

The rectitude of his conduct and the fineness of his spirit were infectious. A
wise and just counselor, he naturally became the example and pattern which the
younger men of the company have constantly held before them for emulation.

In a true sense the traditions of his service have been transmitted as a heritage
to the company and to those on whom has fallen the duty of carrying on the work he
so splendidly began. All who were brought closely in contact with his personality,
in high as well as in lowly places throughout the organization, have ever sought to
perpetuate by daily application those principles which he exemplified.

We think it appropriate on this occasion to pause for an instant again to record
this tribute to our departed associate, Joseph Bond, whose brilliant leadership, great
ability, and high character laid the enduring foundations of company success.

It is delightful to write the story of the life of a good man who was as
strong as he was good, in whom every spiritual, moral, and social excel-
lence was matched by equal intellectual and practical business qualities;
who loved the Kingdom of God and was a good citizen of his country;
who was active in good works and energetic in his business ; who was an
idealist and a practical man of affairs; who was amiable and at the
same time dynamic; who was at once gentle and powerful; who spoke
kindly and wrought mightily; who was unpretentious in word but
efficient in action. Such was Joseph Bond, one of those rare person-
alities who combine in themselves qualities at once dissimilar and yet
essential in making the ideal man. Nearer than most he approached
that ideal.

FREDERICK A. SMITH

FREDERICK A. SMITH

I first became acquainted with Fred A. Smith sixty years ago when
he was a boy of sixteen. From 1860 to 1862 we were students together
in the first University of Chicago. Ten years later he was one of my
parishioners in the Second Baptist Church of Chicago. A few years
later, and thereafter for the rest of his life, a period of forty years, we
were associates on four boards of trustees, first of the Baptist Union
Theological Seminary, and later of Rush Medical College, the Chicago
Manual Training School Association, and the present University of
Chicago. It was only because I was four hundred miles away in the
wilderness of northern Wisconsin at the time of his death that I could
not, as he desired, speak at the funeral of my long-tune friend. It will
therefore be easily understood that the preparation of this sketch of
Judge Smith's life is a labor of love. He and I were friends from that
autumn day in 1860 when we first met until the day of his death in 1919,
a period of fifty-nine years.

It was a member of the great Smith family who planted the first
colony of white men in the new world. Ever since the days of Captain
John Smith there have been Smiths in America in ever-growing numbers.
More than fifty thousand of them represented our country in the recent
world-war. That branch of this great family to which Judge Smith
belonged came to the West from Washington County, New York, one
of the easternmost counties of the state, lying east of Lake George and
the Hudson. They were among the pioneer farmers of Cook County,
Illinois.

The wooded regions of southern Illinois were settled long before
the prairies of the north. One of the chief reasons for this was the late
lingering of hostile Indians in the northern part of the state. They did
not take their departure till 1835 and 1836, and even after the last
large migration many scattered families remained behind. For nearly
twenty years after Illinois was admitted into the Union as a state the
Indians possessed the northern half of it. But there were two other
reasons why the settlement of the prairies of the north lagged behind
that of the forest-covered areas of the southern part of the state. The
first was the curious hallucination that the soil of the prairies was not
fertile. How, men demanded, could a soil that would not grow trees be

313

314 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

expected to produce crops ? The other reason was that the sod of the
prairies was so thick and tough that it could not be broken up by the
light plow of a hundred years ago. It was not till long after the opening
of the nineteenth century that a steel plow was devised strong enough
to break up the soil of a wild prairie farm. As soon, however, as that
was done and the extraordinary fertility of the soil demonstrated, the
rumor of its richness was spread abroad and the farmers of the east
began to flock to the prairies of northern Illinois.

Both because of this migration and in order to encourage it, the
general government established a land office in Chicago and a great
sale of public lands was advertised throughout the country to be held in
that frontier settlement in the spring and summer of 1835. Chicago
was then an insignificant village of about 2,000 people, built along the
Chicago River, between its forks and Fort Dearborn, which was still a
military post, and which quite cut the small hamlet off from Lake
Michigan. Half the buildings or more were still built of logs. It was a
forlorn, straggling frontier settlement, with almost no well-defined
streets or sidewalks, the level of the land so little above that of the river
that in the spring floods, the water of the muddy stream filled the drainage
ditches and made the village site little better than a swamp.

But in the early thirties the little village had some enterprising
citizens, among whom were Gurdon S. Hubbard, P. F. W. Peck, Eli B.
Williams, Silas B. Cobb, and Philo Carpenter.

The year 1835 is a most important one in the early history of the
town. During that year the population more than doubled, increasing
from less than 2,000 in January to more than 3,000 in December. Prob-
ably fifty men who later became prominent hi the growing city made it
their home in 1835. Among them were William B. Ogden, Arthur G.
Burley, Thomas (Judge) Drummond, Abram and Stephen F. Gale,
Elijah M. Haines, Tuthill King, Edward Manierre, Julian S. Rumsey,
J. Young Scammon, John Turner, Seth Wadhams, and others who
long remained leading citizens in the rising metropolis.

But the great events of 1835 in the history of Chicago were the sale
of farm lands by the government and the birth of the real estate boom in
the village itself. The land office was opened on the first of June.
Immigrants intending to settle in any part of the district of northern
Illinois had to buy their farms at the Chicago office. There was "an
immediate and immense influx of people desiring to enter lands."
From June i to the end of the year 370,043 acres of farm lands were

FREDERICK A. SMITH 315

sold at $1.25 an acre. There were more than 20,000 purchasers.
Among these was Gustavus V. Smith, the first representative of the
Smiths of Washington County, New York, who entered land on the
"Ridge," in Jefferson township, only ten miles northwest of Chicago
at that time — now a part of the city itself.

Gustavus sent back to the family such favorable accounts of the
new country that in March, 1836, two brothers, Israel G. and Marcellus,
packed their few belongings (they were young and unmarried) into a
primitive sort of sleigh known as a pung or jumper, drawn by two horses,
and started on the thousand-mile journey for the new world of the
West. They traveled from thirty to forty miles a day and, taking their
way from Buffalo through Canada, though the winter was ending,
the sleighing continued good. As they were nearing Detroit, however,
the pung which had lasted astonishingly well, finally gave out. It was
abandoned, the baggage loaded on the horses, and the last third of the
journey was made on horseback.

The two boys reached their destination on April 10, 1836. When
they came in sight of their brother's home they were astonished to find the
whole country east of the " Ridge" under water as far as they could see.
A great spring freshet was on. The north branch of the Chicago River
had overflowed its banks and the whole country was inundated ; that is,
the whole country east of the " Ridge." The "Ridge" itself stood fifteen
or twenty feet above the flood. It must have been a welcome sight to the
weary travelers. Many miles in length, covered with groves of oak,
it is a most attractive feature in that prairie country. It is not strange
that Israel Smith decided that his farm must run across it and include
some of those groves. The great sale of farm lands was still on. In
1836, 202,364 acres were sold. Everyone bought as near Chicago as he
could, and thus Cook County, after a start was once made, was soon
filled with farmers.

Israel G. Smith, one of the brothers who made the journey just
described, was the father of Judge Smith, the subject of this sketch.
Born in 1816, he was twenty years old when he settled in Illinois, and
perhaps twenty-one when he secured his farm. Buying it at the Chicago
land office, he held it by a warrant from the government, and the title
is one of the few titles in Cook County that have been transferred but
once during the last eighty -four years.

The Smith brothers were very fortunate in the location of their
farms. They came early enough to buy near Chicago, and enjoy

316 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

the enhancement in values attending proximity to the future great city.
No one, indeed, then dreamed of what Chicago has since become. But
though a small town in the thirties of the last century, to the farmers who
settled near, it supplied a convenient market for whatever they could
raise and in its stores they could buy whatever they needed. They thus
escaped many of the privations and hardships of those pioneers who
settled far away from markets and centers of supply. They had another
advantage. They were near neighbors, and other farmers soon occupied
the surrounding country. Their father quickly followed them to their
new home. In 1837 John Pennoyer and the following year his sons,
Stephen and James Pennoyer, became part of the community. Mancel
Talcott, later well known in Chicago, was also one of this pioneer group.

In 1838 the Smith brothers, Mr. Talcott, and others held a meeting
at the house of John Pennoyer to consider their need of a school and
after a full discussion voted that "all adult male citizens, including
bachelors, should each contribute five dollars to purchase lumber for
a schoolhouse." The assessment was paid, the lumber bought, and all
the able-bodied members of the community assembled with their tools
and built the schoolhouse, one of the first, if not the very first, erected
in the county outside of Chicago. No sooner was it finished than a
school was opened, the first teacher being Susan, a daughter of John
Pennoyer, who was thus one of the earliest country school teachers of
northern Illinois. She did not, however, long remain with the school,
leaving it to become the wife of Israel Smith.

The Pennoyers were an English family some members of which
were men of wealth in the old country. William Pennoyer, a merchant
of London nearly three hundred years ago, is said to have been a liberal
contributor to the funds of Harvard College. His brother Robert
came to the new world in 1635 and from him descended the branch of
the family to which Susan, the mother of Judge Smith, belonged. In
1648 Robert Pennoyer made his home in Stamford, in the southwest
corner of Connecticut, and that place long remained the principal home
of the family. But a hundred years ago John, the father of Susan
Pennoyer, left the old home for the western frontier. He had within
him the urge of the pioneer and in 1818 took his family to Cayuga
County in central New York. But this did not prove to be near enough
the frontier, and nineteen years later, in 1837, he joined the colony of
farmers in Cook County, Illinois, and there tasted the joys and experi-
enced some of the privations of life on the real frontier. He and his
sons were men of intelligence and public spirit, apparently leading the

FREDERICK A. SMITH 317

community in the movement to provide the first schoolhouse in which
his daughter Susan taught the first school.

At about the time the schoolhouse was built, ground for a cemetery
was purchased and the first burial in it was that of Henry, the father
of the Smith boys, who survived his arrival in his new home only two
or three years.

Israel Smith entered early into the public life of the new community.
He was elected justice of the peace at the first election held in Jefferson
township. He and his brother-in-law, Stephen Pennoyer, were promi-
nent men for many years. In 1873, in connection with other citizens,
they secured with much difficulty the organization of the new township
of Norwood Park, now a part of Chicago. I say with much difficulty,
for the townships out of which it was carved carried their opposition to
the legislature of the state. Stephen Pennoyer was made supervisor of
the new township and Israel Smith one of the commissioners of highways
and treasurer of the board.

Israel Smith and Susan Pennoyer were married April 13, 1843, by
Rev. C. Billings Smith, a well-known clergyman of that day, and pastor
of the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Chicago. There was no church near
them in the country and they became and remained for many years
members of this church. Mr. Smith had a strong leaning toward busi-
ness, and three or four times during the thirty years following his mar-
riage yielded to this inclination. At one time he conducted a grocery
store on State Street and at another a boot and shoestore on Lake Street.
These ventures brought his family for brief periods to the city, so that
the children were both country and city bred. The great fire of 1871
brought the last of these excursions in merchandising to an end and led to
Mr. Smith's final return to the farm. These adventures in business were
all of short duration and the farm was the real home of the family for
sixty years.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith had seven children, four sons and three daugh-
ters, of whom one son and one daughter are now living. Edwin D.
Smith still makes his home in Norwood Park, near the place of his birth.
One of the daughters, Emma I., married Mr. Henry R. Clissold, a
Chicago publisher and editor and one of the most prominent and useful
Baptist laymen of Illinois.

The first of this large family of children, the subject of this sketch, was
born February n, 1844. He was named Frederick Augustus, but was
generally known as Fred A. Smith. Israel Smith had accomplished
his purpose of making the "Ridge" a part of his farm, and it added

318 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

wonderfully to the picturesque beauty of his hundred and fifty-odd
acres. Owing, doubtless, to discrepancies in old surveys, the farm was
a scant quarter-section. The " Ridge," long known as " Smith's Ridge,"
ran through the farm north and south a few rods from the east line. It
was the outstanding feature of a wide region, as, of course, it continues
to be. Covered with groves, mostly of oak, but with here and there
stately elms and big cottonwoods, it transformed what would otherwise
have been a flat, treeless prairie into a diversified and attractive country-
side. The " Ridge " made a fine site for the family home, which was sur-
rounded by stately trees and commanded east and west, through the
oak openings, extensive views only limited by the distant forests. The
surrounding country, except for the ridge itself, was destitute of those
natural features in which a boy delights and which so minister to the joy
of youth. There were no mountains or hills, no forests, lakes, or streams
near at hand. The nearest water was the north branch of the Chicago
River and this was three or four miles away. The Des Plaines River
on the west was more distant still. The new country was thinly settled
in Fred Smith's youth and there were few boys of his age. Their only
common meeting place was the schoolhouse. There they found a way,
after the manner of boys, to amuse themselves. The schoolhouse,
the same in which Mrs. Smith taught before her marriage, was something
more than a mile from the home. In the winter the small boy, who had
come into the ownership of a pair of skates, often made his way to and
from school by the "ditch route" which followed the improved roads,
lengthening the distance by half a mile or more but making the journey
a lark instead of a labor. Over the door of the 20X30 schoolhouse
the boys inscribed in charcoal this legend: "Temple of Knowledge."

Two things unfamiliar to boys of this generation gave interest and
variety to Fred's boyhood. Only a short distance north of the farm
were the "reservations" assigned by the treaties of 1821 and 1833 to a
number of Indian chiefs and their families, and many of the red men
still lingered in the neighborhood or occasionally returned to visit their
former hunting grounds. They sometimes appeared at the farmhouses
and were familiar to the boy in his earlier years.

Then too, the country abounded in game. Prairie chickens and
quail were almost without number, as were ducks along the North
Branch to the east and the Des Plaines to the west. There were many
deer, occasional bears, and the wolves, both prairie and timber wolves,
were very numerous. The boy learned the use of a gun. He early
developed enterprise and courage, and these experiences of his youth
helped to make him the virile man he became.

FREDERICK A. SMITH 319

Being the oldest of the seven children, Fred was the first to become
his father's helper on the farm. All the farmwork became familiar
to him. It was not altogether drudgery. He early developed a fondness
for horses, which he never lost. He took great delight in breaking colts,
in which he became very skilful. He was very much at home on the
back of a horse and, naturally, fond of riding. His father raised stock
and Fred became familiar with the care of all the animals about the
farm. As he grew up, the plow and the mowing machine, planting,
sowing, cultivating, and harvesting unfolded their mysteries to him.
He was in a fair way to become a full-fledged farmer when an event
occurred which gave a new direction to his life.

When he was fourteen years old the father took his family to Chicago,
perhaps for one of his business ventures in that city. This was in the
autumn of 1858. They found a home on the West Side on Jackson
Street, between Des Plaines and Halsted streets, a part of the city which,
now entirely overrun by business, was then a pleasant district in which
to live. Only two blocks away was the old Scammon School, and there
Fred had his first experience in a regularly graded school. Chicago's
first and at that time only high school was less than a block away from
the Scammon, and was an object of such interest and pride to the entire
city that the boy, who had reached the age of youthful idealism, began
to feel the stirrings of scholarly ambition.

Another event of that period deepened these aspirations. His
parents were Baptists. The Tabernacle Baptist Church to which they
belonged was only three or four blocks north of their place of residence.
The Baptists during those years were engaged in founding the first
University of Chicago. In 1856 Senator Stephen A. Douglas had given
them a site of ten acres on the South Side at Cottage Grove Avenue
and Thirty-fourth Street, and in 1858-59 they were erecting the Uni-
versity building. The churches of the city and country were deeply
interested in the movement. A great subscription, for that day, was being
raised and every public-spirited Baptist was subscribing. Israel Smith,
Fred's father, was among these. The mother had been a teacher and
was deeply interested in her oldest son's education. The new Uni-
versity was a frequent subject of conversation in the family. Fred was
more and more deeply stirred by an ambition for an education and it
came to be understood that he was to be a student in the new institution.
He pursued his studies with new interest and about the first of Septem-
ber, 1860, in his seventeenth year, he entered the preparatory department
of the University of Chicago. It was then that I first met him. Two
and a half years his senior in age, I had entered the University as a

320 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Freshman just a year before. The south wing of the University building
had been completed in 1859 and the work of instruction hi it began in
September of that year.

This south wing, later known as Jones Hall, was a four-story and
basement structure of rough-faced limestone, designed for a dormitory,
with an extension northward two stories lower. This north extension
contained the chapel, three or four recitation rooms, the president's
office, and apartments hi which President Burroughs and his family
lived. Some of the professors and their wives also lived in the building,
giving it something of the atmosphere of a home. There was a dining-
room in the basement which was entirely above the surface of the
ground, well lighted, and spacious.

When young Smith entered the University he found it very much in
the country. The street cars, then horse cars, ran on Cottage Grove
Avenue only as far south as Thirty-first Street, nearly half a mile north of
the University. On Thirty-fifth street, just west of the Avenue, was a
small, dingy saloon, appropriately named "The Shades." There was
but one building, a small one-story cottage, on Thirty-fifth Street
between "The Shades" and State Street, nearly a mile west. There
were a few houses to the southeast — Cleaverville — but none to the south
or southwest, and only two or three between the University and Thirty-
first Street. Across the Avenue from the University was "Okenwald,"
the Chicago home of Senator Douglas. A fine oak grove covered the
ground for several hundred feet on both sides of the Avenue and the
whole country south of the University was a region of oak openings,
every slight ridge being covered with trees.

The University opened in 1859 in its new building with twenty men in
its college classes — eight Sophomores and twelve Freshmen — and one
hundred and ten preparatory students. The following year when young
Smith entered he found himself one among a hundred and thirty-six
hi the preparatory department. There were thirty-seven men in college
classes. Fred entered college as a Freshman in 1862 in a class of twenty-
two. Meantime the Civil War had broken out and every year the army
claimed more and more of his classmates, until in 1864 the class was
reduced to six. Smith was one of the younger members of the class,having
just passed his seventeenth birthday when Fort Sumter was fired on and
the war began. Records of his college life are meager, but they are suf-
ficient to indicate the serious way in which he went about it and his
standing with his fellow-students. It was during the early years of his
college course that he joined the church of which his parents were
members. That great pulpit orator, Dr. Nathaniel Colver, was pastor

FREDERICK A. SMITH 321

and welcomed the young collegian into the church. The religious and
missionary organization of the University was the Berean Society and
of this he became an active member. The largest literary society was
the Athenaeum, and he was made its president in his first year.
Honors, indeed, clustered thick upon him and he was chosen president
of the Freshman class. College athletics \vere almost unknown and
students had to content themselves with primitive baseball. A few
adventurous spirits, the Neptune Club, maintained a boat on Lake
Michigan. But there was a military company — the University Cadets,
the first captain of which lost his life in the war. Fred Smith in his
Freshman year was second lieutenant of the company.

In the spring of 1864 Grant began the campaign which resulted
in the capture of Richmond and the surrender of Lee, and at the same
time Sherman began his advance which culminated in the fall of Atlanta
and the march to the sea. All the veterans in the northern armies were
needed in these great campaigns, which were intended to end the war
and did end it by winning it. To relieve them for this service the
governors of Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois tendered to
President Lincoln a force of 100,000 men to serve for a hundred days
and to garrison necessary posts, repress guerrillas, and maintain order
in the occupied areas of the South. Fred Smith immediately volun-
teered in this force and on May 20, 1864, was sworn into the service
at Camp Fry in the North Division of Chicago. It would appear that
most of the University Cadets volunteered at the same time. Among
them were five of the eleven members of Smith's class. The company
they entered was so largely composed of college men that it was called
the University Guards. Smith was mustered in on May 27 as a mem-
ber of the One Hundred Thirty-fourth Regiment, Illinois Infantry,
and on June 3 the regiment took the train for Cairo. Remaining there
only a few hours, it went down the Mississippi to Columbus, Kentucky,
where it remained on duty eight weeks, or more than half its term of
service. Smith was made a member of the provost guard, which kept
order in the town, arrested disturbers of the peace, and guarded rebel
prisoners captured on Island No. 5. This was regarded as a distinction,
the members of the guard being carefully chosen from the most reliable
and intelligent men. While at Columbus the young soldier learned to
swim in the great river, thus correcting one of the defects of his education
as a boy.

The first of August the regiment was transferred by river to Paducah,
Kentucky, and a week later marched twenty-five miles directly south
to Mayfield. Thus by a journey of perhaps two hundred miles on the

322 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Mississippi and Ohio rivers and a short march by land they reached a
point less than thirty miles directly east of Columbus, which they had
left a week before. Here they remained during the next five weeks of
their service. They had some trouble with guerrillas, who were repressed
with a strong hand. In these fourteen weeks of service their work
had been to garrison and keep in order the western border of Kentucky
while Grant was battling his way toward Richmond, and Sherman was
driving the Confederate Army out of Atlanta in what his chief character-
ized as "one of the most memorable campaigns in history."

The hundred-day men had fought no great battles, but they had
well performed the task assigned to them, which was considered an
essential part of the grand strategy of the general campaign. But the
progress of the war showed that they were needed for a much longer
period than a hundred days. The genius of Lee and the valor of his
troops delayed the final triumph of the Union armies for nearly a year.
Every veteran was needed to fill up the depleted ranks. A new army
had to be created to drive the Confederates out of Tennessee. It
was found impossible to dismiss the hundred-day men at the end of that
period. Even after the return of Smith's company to Chicago alarming
reports that Price was threatening St. Louis took them posthaste to
Missouri for another two weeks of service. As late as October 25 they
had not been mustered out, but on that day Smith re-entered the Uni-
versity and resumed his studies. His hundred days of service became
before his final release nearly two hundred.

The University of Chicago men who went into the army were not
raw recruits. Before the war began, a military company had been
organized. Its captain had drilled his command with the greatest zeal,
and the students who entered the army were well trained and were
prepared from the day of their mustering in for efficient service; many
of them became commissioned officers. As has been told, Fred Smith
had been a lieutenant of the University Cadets. He was, however, only
twenty years old when he became a soldier. He was too young and his
service too short to allow him to aspire to a commission in active service
in the field. But brief as his experience in the army was, it both tested
and benefited him. One of his friends and close associates in the service,
now an aged clergyman, has assured me that he was recognized as one of
the reliable, upright, Christian men of his company. As the oldest of
a large family of brothers and sisters he had already developed self-
dependence, manliness, initiative, and all these qualities his military
service encouraged and developed. He had lost about three months

FREDERICK A. SMITH 323

out of his university course, but in consideration of his patriotic service
was readmitted to his class. He was a good student and was able to go
on with his classmates without serious difficulty. The class, which
originally numbered twenty-two, had been cut down by the war to
eight, and all the classes in the University had been cut down pro-
portionately.

Smith was graduated in 1866. The reporter of the daily paper in
writing up the Commencement reveals the changes wrought since that
day in graduating exercises. He wrote that the chapel was filled to
overflowing and that "the oration on 'The Influence of Climate upon
Thought,' delivered by Mr. F. A. Smith, Jefferson, was a truly original

production At the conclusion of this gentleman's remarks he

received the most violent applause and was literally showered with
bouquets." Since that day the orations by the graduates and the
bouquets have disappeared.

Smith did not belong to that class of ingrates who remember their
instructors with nothing better than criticism and belittle the benefits
received from their college studies. He looked back on his college
course with grateful interest and was one of the most loyal of the alumni
of the old University. Long after 1886, when it ceased to exist, he con-
tinued to be a faithful attendant at the annual reunions of its former
students and was more than once elected president of the Alumni
Association.

At the time of his graduation Smith was twenty-two years old. He
had already chosen the law as his profession and in the autumn of 1866
entered the Law School of the University, of which Judge Henry Booth
was dean. He received his degree of LL.B. in 1868, but all the records
affirm that he was admitted to the bar on August 20, 1867, and opened
an office and began practice at that time. His partner was Christian C.
Kohlsaat, who later became a judge of the United States Circuit Court.
The two young men had been students together in the University, where
they had contracted a warm friendship. They had corresponded during
Smith's service in the army. They were of the same age, members of
the same church, and a little later Kohlsaat married Smith's cousin.
The friends formed a partnership under the firm name of Smith and
Kohlsaat. They remained together five years.

Meantime, during the years of this first partnership, events of great
interest and importance to Smith outside his business had occurred.

When in 1864 by a union of the Tabernacle Church and a number
of members of the First Church the Second Baptist Church was formed

324 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

with my brother, Dr. Edgar J. Goodspeed, as pastor, both Smith and
Kohlsaat had become members of the new organization. Both entered
vigorously into the remarkable activities of what grew rapidly into a
great and strong church. Both were highly valued helpers of the pastor.
Both were members of the great Union Band Bible Class and active in
the mission work which made that class notable. In this class and its
social and mission activities and hi the great chorus choir of the church
Smith became associated with Miss Frances B. Morey. She was a culti-
vated and attractive young woman of an excellent family. Her father,
Rev. Reuben B. Morey, was at that time pastor of the Baptist Church
at Merton, Wisconsin. A brother, William Carey Morey, has been
professor of history in his Alma Mater, the University of Rochester,
for thirty-seven years, retiring, as this sketch is being written, at the
age of seventy-seven. He is an author of distinction, a student of rare
scholarly attainments, a most successful teacher, a man greatly loved
and admired hi every period and activity and relation of his long life.

His sister Frances was worthy of her brother. All who knew her
felt her charm. Fred Smith found her very attractive. Their associa-
tion in musical and mission work resulted in mutual affection. They
were married by Miss Morey's father in Merton, Wisconsin, in July,
1871. The bridegroom was twenty-seven years old. It was a marriage
of affection and continued to be a happy one. They had no children.
Mrs. Smith was devoted to good works. She was a member of many
clubs and organizations of charity. She was active in the Daughters
of the American Revolution and the Fortnightly Club. She was presi-
dent of the Board of Managers of the Illinois Training School for Nurses
and a member of the boards of the School of Domestic Arts and Sciences
and the Chicago Home for the Friendless.

In 1872 Mr. and Mrs. Smith were my parishioners in the Second
Baptist Church of Chicago. In the autumn of that year, the year after
the great fire, they moved to the south division of the city and trans-
ferred their membership to the First Baptist Church. Smith and
Kohlsaat married in the same year, 1871, Kohlsaat, as has been
said, marrying Smith's cousin, so that the two young lawyers, both
later to become judges, were related in manifold ways — by marriage,
as partners, as members of the same church, as earnest advocates of the
policies of the Republican party, and in all religious and political activi-
ties. I had renewed my early acquaintance with both of them during
nine months of a student pastorate in Chicago in 1865. This acquaint-
ance now ripened into a friendship that continued throughout the

FREDERICK A. SMITH 325

lives of both these exceptional men. We recalled and lived over again
our experiences in the old University.

From 1873 Mr. Smith conducted his law practice without a partner
for twelve years. It was during this period that he began a kind of
public service for which he developed exceptional gifts, in which he
became highly useful and influential, and which in an increasing degree
he continued to the end of his life, a period of forty years. This service
was his trusteeship in educational institutions. It began in 1879 when
he became a trustee of the Baptist Theological Union, located at Chicago.
This corporation was struggling to maintain and endow the Baptist
Union Theological Seminary. The institution was passing through a
period of grave difficulty. Its future was uncertain. To be one of its
trustees required a spirit of devotion and sacrifice and faith. Yet the
foremost men in the denomination in Chicago were its trustees. Such
men only were sought for its managing board. Mr. Smith was only
thirty-five years old, but such was his weight of character even at that
age, and such recognition had his abilities won, that he was elected a
trustee of the institution. The position was an honor as well as a
responsibility.

All that has been said of the Theological Seminary was equally true
of the old University. The trustees of that institution followed the lead
of the Seminary only two months later and appointed the same rising
young lawyer a member of its board. He welcomed the latter appoint-
ment as a loyal alumnus who was devoted to his Alma Mater. The
election to the trusteeship of the Theological Seminary he accepted as
an obligation he owed to his denomination. With the University he
remained six years. In 1885, recognizing the hopelessness of rescuing it
from its overwhelming difficulties, he retired from the board and the
following year saw the end of its educational work. With the Seminary
he remained forty years, his connection with it ending only with his
death. He was one of its most faithful and efficient trustees and had the
satisfaction of seeing it gradually emerge from its difficulties, multiply
its resources and attendance, and finally become the Divinity School of
the present University of Chicago and one of the great theological
schools of the world.

It was when Mr. Smith entered the Seminary board that he and I
again became closely associated. I was a trustee and the financial agent
and secretary of the board and I had every reason to become acquainted
with his faithfulness to duty, his wisdom in counsel, his courage through
long years of discouraging struggle, and his abounding liberality. I

o

26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

was often compelled to call on him for contributions, and he never
failed to respond with cheerful and, to me, cheering generosity.

In June, 1889, 1 left the service of the Theological Seminary to engage
in the effort for the founding of the present University of Chicago.
In the same spirit of devotion he always manifested, Mr. Smith assumed
the duties of recording secretary of the Seminary board and performed
them for nearly three years, until, the University having been founded
and the Seminary united with it as its Divinity School, I resumed the
duties of secretary of the Divinity Board and relieved him, he meantime
having become a member of the Board of Trustees of the new University
of Chicago.

This record of trusteeships has covered thirteen years. During that
period Mr. Smith had continued to advance in his profession and in
general reputation. In 1887 he had been president of the Law Club
of Chicago. In 1890 he had received the high honor of election to the
presidency of the Chicago Bar Association. As a good Republican
active in politics he early became a member of the Hamilton Club and in
1891 and 1892 was its president. During this period also he had formed
a partnership with S. P. Millard which continued for three years or more
following 1885.

It was in 1890 that his most important partnership began. Together
with Frank A. Helmer and Frank I. Moulton, both of whom were his
juniors in age, he organized the well-known firm of Smith, Helmer, and
Moulton, with offices for some years at 132 Clark Street. This partner-
ship continued for above twelve years. In 1895, by the admission of
Henry W. Price, the firm became Smith, Helmer, Moulton, and Price.
The combination was a strong one and prospered. The election of
Mr. Smith to the judgeship in 1903 led to his retirement from the firm,
but Messrs. Helmer and Moulton are still associated after a partnership
of thirty years.

Mr. Smith was not what is commonly known as a "jury lawyer."
One who knew him well says of him:

He did not seek open court work, except in chancery matters, but did not seem to
shun it, and was always thoroughly prepared in entering upon a trial. And, in a way,
he was strong with a jury, as his plain common sense way of presenting his side of a
case, his evident frankness and sincerity, his straightforward analysis and deductions
from the evidence, often proved more convincing and effective with a jury than a more
rhetorical effort.

The evident high character of the advocate was eloquent and con-
vincing.

FREDERICK A. SMITH 327

One of his partners makes the following revealing statement:

Judge Smith was imperturbable, patient, and courteous in his intercourse with
men and attorneys and not easily disturbed under great provocation. I can recall but
one instance in thirteen years of association with him in which he displayed anger or
resentment. In that case he believed that the demands made upon his client were in
the nature of blackmail, and he called the attorney for the claimant to his office and
said to him in very plain language that he considered the demand blackmail, that if the
threatened suit was filed, he, the attorney, would immediately be served with a
warrant of arrest and prosecuted for blackmail; and then rising from his desk in anger
he showed the attorney the door and told him never to show his face in the office
again. It is needless to state that the demands were dropped and suit was not brought.
He had eminently the judicial temperament. He found on the bench his real place.

In confirmation of this last statement Mr. Smith's unusual quali-
fications for the bench were early recognized by the Republicans of
Chicago and in 1898 he was nominated for the position of judge of the
Superior Court. It was, however, a Democratic year and he failed
of election. In 1903 he was nominated for judge of the Circuit Court of
Cook County. His election was recommended by a large majority in
the Bar Association primary, a most flattering indication of the favor-
able opinion of the lawyers of the city. Once more it was a Democratic
year, all but three of the candidates of that party being elected. Mr.
Smith was one of the three successful Republicans.

An incident of the campaign illustrates the positive qualities and the
independent character of the man. It was the period of the Lorimer
regime and Judge Elbridge Hanecy was one of the nominees for the
Circuit Court who was regarded as specially representing Lorimer.
Feeling ran high and personal vituperation was freely indulged in by
newspapers and candidates. In one of his speeches Hanecy lambasted the
independent newspaper which was opposing him, and particularly its
editor. The meeting was composed of his warm adherents, who gave
him enthusiastic applause. Another candidate followed indicating his
agreement with and approval of Hanecy. But this did not move Smith,
who said, "I am not here to attack the newspapers. To indulge in
such criticism is far from my purpose." He then went on to impress on
the audience the importance of the business of electing competent
judges. His immediate hearers shouted for Hanecy, but on election
day the people voted for Smith and relegated Judge Hanecy to private
life.

That Judge Smith had exceptional qualifications for the bench was
soon made evident. In December, 1904, eighteen months after his
election, the Supreme Court of the state conferred on him the honor of

328 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

an assignment to the Appellate Court of the Chicago district. In 1906
he was reassigned to that position and was later made Presiding Justice
of the Court.

At the end of his first term in 1909 Judge Smith was re-elected, and
again in 1915 was elected for a third six-year term. It is significant of
the excellence of his record as a judge and the growing approval of the
community that in his third election he received a much larger vote
than ever before, his majority approaching fifty thousand. He con-
tinued his public service as a judge of the Circuit Court for sixteen years,
the closing years of his life.

In looking up cases brought before our judges, the ordinary citizen
is astonished to find how many trivial cases are carried up by appeal to
the Supreme Court of the state. He may be pardoned for some disgust
when he remembers that he is being taxed to permit litigants to carry to
the highest judicial tribunal of the state insignificant quarrels that
ought never to be permitted to go beyond the jurisdiction of a justice of
the peace. Another thing that astonishes the ordinary citizen is the
fact that in half the cases, perhaps more than half the cases, carried by
appeal to the state Supreme Court, the decrees of the lower courts are
reversed or the cases remanded for a new trial. No stronger argument
than this can be urged for choosing competent judges. Highly intelli-
gent men, indeed, often differ in their opinions, and the most intelligent
and conscientious judges have their decisions reversed. But this has
become so common in our courts as to be almost a scandal.

Judge Smith was more fortunate in having his decrees approved by
the Supreme Court than many of his fellow- judges. In one of his
campaigns, perhaps in both of those which resulted in his re-election,
this fact was advanced in the press in his favor.

One of the interesting and important cases in which the decree of
Judge Smith was sustained by the Supreme Court decided the question
of the right of holders of real estate along the lake shore to accretions to
their property thrown up by the waves. In 1909 the legislature passed
a resolution reciting that the rights of the state to land along the shore of
Lake Michigan had been usurped by private individuals and an investi-
gating commission was appointed. The commission reported and the
attorney-general was instructed to pursue the investigation and institute
proceedings to regain possession for the state of shore lands rightly
belonging to it. A test case was brought as to a tract of ground in
Evanston where an acre or more of new land had been added to a lot on
the lake shore by the construction of breakwaters and piers by other

FREDERICK A. SMITH 329

parties than the owner of the lot. The decisions of the Circuit and
Supreme courts agreed in determining the following points:

The line at which the water usually stands when free from disturbing causes is the
boundary of land in a conveyance calling for the lake as a line.

The shore owner has the undisputed right of access from his land to the lake.
This right cannot be taken from him without just compensation.

The whole doctrine of accretions rests upon the right of access to the water, and it
must be convenient access. The right to preserve his contact with the water is
one of the most valuable of a riparian owner.

Such owner cannot himself bring about accretions by artificial means
and thus add to his lawful holdings; but the courts decreed that "the
owner of land bordering on Lake Michigan has title to land formed
adjacent to his property by accretions, even though the formation of
such accretions is brought about, in part, by artificial conditions created
by third parties." In the case in question it had been brought about
by third parties and the state failed to gain possession of the accretions
thus formed.

Another case establishing an important principle was the following:
The wife of a drunkard had secured a judgment against a saloonkeeper
for selling intoxicating liquor to her husband and thus injuring her means
of support. Finding the judgment could not be collected from the saloon-
keeper, she sued the owner of the building in which the saloon was located,
to subject the premises owned by him to the payment of the judgment.
Judge Smith gave a decision and entered a decree in her favor. The
case was carried to the Supreme Court and the decree of Judge Smith
was affirmed, that court deciding that the judgment recovered against the
owner of the building was "a personal judgment, for the payment of
which all of his property is subject."

The abilities and character of Judge Smith were so highly appreciated
by the judges of the Supreme Court that they kept him, during a large
part of his judicial service, "in the first branch of the Appellate Ccurt
of Illinois for the First District." During the closing period of his life
he was the Chief Justice of the Circuit Court of Cook County. After
his death his fellow-judges of that Court united in the following estimate
of him.

Judge Smith's outstanding characteristics were his courteous, gentlemanly nature,
his patience in hearing, his firmness and fearlessness in decision, his unswerving integ-
rity, his dignified bearing on the bench, his urbanity with his associates and friends.
He was a tower of strength in times of stress. He held the scales of justice with even
poise. He was a light to the bar and an example to his judicial associates worthy of
emulation. He was well grounded in the theory of law, and always abreast of the

330 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

decisions of the day. He was a learned and scholarly man and his opinions in the
Appellate Court are monuments to his learning and legal erudition.

Judge Smith was a lovable, kindly character with a keen sense of justice and right.
No maudlin sentimentality or sinister influence affected his judgments; they reflected
the law of the land impartially administered. Friend and foe alike received justice
at his hands, measured and circumscribed only by the law. His reputation as a safe,
reliable, and sound judge was universally conceded by bench and bar alike.

Judge Charles M. Thomson, who succeeded Judge Smith as Chief
Justice of the Circuit Court, said of him: "He was one of the ablest
judges who ever sat on the bench of our county. His fine temperament
and genial disposition were never absent and made it a pleasure either
to be associated with him or to appear before him as an advocate."
The following statement by a successful lawyer will be recognized by
those who knew him as a true characterization of the man: "As a judge
he became noted among the trial lawyers for his thorough independence
and promptness in rulings according to his convictions of the law, regard-
less of individuals or interests before him."

The founding of the new and greater University of Chicago brought
me into a new intimacy with Judge Smith. He was grieved and humili-
ated over the destruction of the old University. He lamented it as an
alumnus, as a Baptist, as a citizen, as a friend of learning. No one
rejoiced more sincerely when it began to appear that a new University
of Chicago might be founded on a broader foundation and with larger
promise. It gave him particular satisfaction that the alumni of the first
University were to be recognized as alumni of the new one. He was
among the early subscribers to the first million-dollar fund raised in
1889-90. Such was his interest, ability, and standing that as a matter
of course he was selected as a member of the first Board of Trustees. I
was secretary of the Board and of its committees and he became
vice-president of the Board and chairman of the standing Committee on
Instruction and Equipment, positions of importance and influence
which he occupied continuously to the end of his life. Through
his committee appointments of all members of the Faculties were
recommended to the Trustees. As chairman of the committee he
worked efficiently, first with President Harper and then with President
Judson, for nearly thirty years, from 1890 to 1919. He was not a man
of large means, but was a frequent and liberal contributor to the funds.

Faithful in attendance at the frequent meetings of the Board and
the various committees of which he was a member (the Board itself
meeting regularly once a month), as well as in the performance of every
service required of him, deeply interested in all the new questions con-

FREDERICK A. SMITH 331

stantly arising, strong in his own convictions and frank in their expres-
sion, and at the same time considerate of the opinions of others, and
supporting loyally every policy finally agreed upon ; conservative in all
matters relating to the great trust committed to him and his fellow-
trustees, contributing freely the large resources of his special knowledge
and experience, fitted by his training and sympathies to consider intelli-
gently the educational plans and policies of the presidents, accustomed
to do his own thinking but at the same time having a mind singularly
hospitable to new views; devoted with never- waning zeal to the interests
of the University, an excellent presiding officer, contributing the full
weight of his large influence to the unity and harmony which has always
characterized the University Board, it may be truthfully said that Judge
Smith was an ideal trustee hi one of the most remarkable educational
origins and developments of any age or any land. He had the satisfaction
of seeing the University he helped to found accumulate assets aggregat-
ing above $46,000,000, and enrol more than 10,000 students a year,
taking its place in the twenty-nine years of his trusteeship among the
leading universities of the world.

Judge Smith's relation to the University made him a trustee in two
other institutions. When Rush Medical College and the Chicago
Manual Training School became a part of the University system, he was
elected to the boards of both schools and served them continuously from
1897-98 for more than twenty years, as they gradually developed hi to
the University's larger work in the Medical School and the School of Edu-
cation.

Other positions of trust and honor came to him. In 1893 he was
vice-president of the Chicago Law Institute and in 1913 was elected
its president. He was vice-president of the Union League Club. He
became an annual governing member of the Chicago Historical Society,
in the affairs of which he took a deep interest. Among his clubs were
the Marque tte and the Chicago Literary Club.

The mother of Judge Smith lived to see the old farmhouse replaced
by a fine brick mansion with wide verandas, which still stands embowered
in trees on the " Ridge." She died in 1893, three years after the son she
sent to the old University as a preparatory student hi 1860 had become a
trustee of the new University of Chicago. The father lived to the
advanced age of eighty-eight, dying in 1904, a year after his son's first
election as judge.

The crowning affliction of Judge Smith's life was the death of his
wife in 1910. As he had no children he was left quite alone for the last

332 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

nine years of his life, except for the brother and two sisters who survived
him, and the friends he had made. The year before Mrs. Smith's death
he had been re-elected judge of the Circuit Court.

Sometime after the death of his father, acting for himself and the
other heirs, he sold the old farm, and it became the home of the Ridge-
moor Country Club. The Smith mansion, as has been said, still stands,
and south of it, farther along the "Ridge," a very attractive clubhouse
has been built and the fine natural advantages of the location have been
happily adapted to the purposes of a golf club. Judge Smith was him-
self a lover of golf and during the closing decade of his lif e was accus-
tomed to spend a month or more each whiter with some congenial
friend on the shores of the Gulf in Mississippi, at Summerville, South
Carolina, Birmingham, Alabama, and other golfing resorts of the
South.

The malady which ended his life was a slow and distressing one
developing into cancer, and probably was, from the first, incurable.
When death finally came, he welcomed it as a relief from suffering.
He died July 31, 1919, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. He did not
leave a large estate, but testified that his interest in the University, of
which he had been a trustee for twenty-nine years, was real and pro-
found by making the following provisions in his will:

My set of the Illinois Supreme Court Reports and my partial set of the Illinois
Appellate Court Reports to be placed in and become a part of the Law Library of the
University of Chicago.

I give to the said University of Chicago the sum of $25,000 to be used by the
Trustees of said University as a scholarship endowment fund and administered by the
said Trustees in their discretion for the welfare of said University and the assistance
of needy and deserving students of said University in obtaining an education.

The terms of the scholarship bequest, leaving large discretion to
the Trustees hi administering the bequest for the "welfare of the Uni-
versity," were evidently dictated by his long experience as a member of
the governing board. The books were early placed in the Law Library
and a year after his death the scholarship fund was paid into the Uni-
versity treasury.

In the memorial which the Trustees of the University entered on
their records immediately after the death of Judge Smith they paid him
this well-deserved tribute:

Our sense of bereavement relates not only to the kindly, courteous, and patient
qualities that marked him in the long period of service on the Board, but perhaps
more so to the conspicuous gifts of wisdom, prudence, conservatism, fidelity, and
vision that he brought to the consideration of the University's affairs and problems.

FREDERICK A. SMITH 333

His funeral was attended and in part conducted by the George H.
Thomas Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, of which he was a
member.

The judges of the Circuit Court, whose estimate of him as a jurist
has been already given, also said of him:

A kindly Christian gentleman has gone from our midst. We revere his memory
and mourn his passing away. He will be greatly missed by his associates for his
sage counsel, his inspiring presence, and manly virtues. We thank God for the gift of
his noble and exemplary life.

An attorney was once asked: "What manner of man is Judge
Smith?" His answer was extraordinarily apt: "A physical portrayal
of substantial justice." Of medium height, heavily built, his head big
and bald, his face clean shaven except for a heavy mustache, broad of
chin and firm of mouth, his appearance without the slightest air of
pretention was dignified and impressive and his title fitted him perfectly.
He was every inch a judge.

If I should attempt a further estimate of Judge Smith I should only
repeat what has already been said on some page of this sketch. He
rendered an important service to the great city by his sixteen years on
the bench as a just and able judge. He once said : " It is my ambition to
be a good judge rather than a great one." And as one of the best of
judges, he was exceptionally useful to the community he served.

But he rendered a vastly wider service than to the community
of the great city, a service that carried his influence far abroad and will
perpetuate it through many generations to come. By his influential
relation to the University of Chicago he ably assisted in the beginnings
and the development of a movement that we may well believe will
continue with increasing power to bless, not a single community, but
the world as long as civilization endures. He aided efficiently in found-
ing and shaping the policies of an institution that will train the minds
and mold the lives of succeeding generations of students who will
extend its influence to the ends of the earth. Such long-continuing and
wide-extending influence, growing in power as it continues and expands,
attaches inevitably to those who become by their services or their gifts
a part of the life of a great institution of education. This is doubly
true of those who, like Judge Smith, by both services and gifts become
a part of that expanding life. On the foundation stones of the University
of Chicago the letters of his name are cut deep.

fift r-

Tfcr

HIRAM W. THOMAS

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS

Chicago has been generally regarded as a city wholly given to
business, absorbed in material things, and quite destitute of interest in
spiritual ideals. It may seem, therefore, a curious fact, but it is a quite
unquestionable one, that the seventies and eighties of the nineteenth
century formed a period of widespread and profound interest in that
city in the central and fundamental questions of Christian theology.
The character of God, the person of Christ, the atonement, sin, penalty,
forgiveness, the inspiration of the Bible, were subjects much in men's
thoughts and were common topics of conversation. This unusual
interest in religion had its origin in the experiences of two prominent
clergymen, Professor David Swing and Dr. Hiram W. Thomas. Pro-
fessor Swing was a Presbyterian and Dr. Thomas a Methodist. They
passed through almost identical experiences, Professor Swing in the
middle seventies and Dr. Thomas a few years later. The public interest
aroused in the career of the first was deepened and prolonged by that of
the second, with whom this sketch has to do.

His parents, Joseph and Margaret (McDonald) Thomas named
him at his birth Hiram Washington. He had three brothers and two
younger sisters. His father was of German- Welsh descent and in religion
a Quaker, while the mother was of Scotch-English blood and a Methodist.
He was born April 29, 1832, on his father's farm in the Allegheny Moun-
tains in Hampshire County, which is near the northeastern corner of
what is now West Virginia. When he was a year old the family moved
fifty miles west to Preston County, where he grew up as a farmer's boy.
His early school advantages were slight, but the hard work of the farm
was lightened by occasional terms in the district school. The region in
which he spent his boyhood was a paradise for sportsmen, and young
Thomas embraced its opportunities with such ardor that he early became
an expert horseman and a crack shot. The family was poor and the life
primitive. The boy, "in the summer plaited his own hats with rye
straw that grew on his father's farm, and in the winter made his caps
of the furs of the wild animals he captured in the chase." A story he
told in a sermon fifty years later reveals the conditions under which his
boyhood was spent. It told of himself, a boy of ten or twelve years,
barefooted and clad in a cotton shirt and very cheap homemade trousers.

335

336 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

One summer day his father, returning from town, brought him a ten-cent
straw hat. Hastening out of the house with this prized possession, he
climbed the rail fence and sitting on the top examined and admired
and exulted in his new hat. Looking over the unfertile acres of the hill
farm and at the log house he said to himself, "How rich our family is.
What a fine house we have. What a splendid farm we have, and what
good horses and nice stock. We have everything we need. And now
my father has brought me this new chip hat from the store, so much finer
than I could make for myself, so much more stylish and elegant. I am
a very fortunate boy. I can't think of another thing I want." He was
a contented and happy boy, and if he lacked anything he was fortunate
enough not to know it.

From his youth up he was physically frail, and no doubt it was to his
early life in the open and to the tonic air of the West Virginia hills that
he owed such health as enabled him to meet the sorrows and labors of his
later life.

He reached the age of eighteen before he made a profession of reli-
gion and joined the Methodist church. It is curious, therefore, to hear
him say, "I always had the conviction, without being able to explain its
cause, that I should some day be a minister, if I lived. I was rather
laughed at for the idea among my companions and in my family, but I
could not shake it off. I am certain that it resulted in my being one."

Very soon after his conversion, with little education and without any
preparatory theological training, he began, in his nineteenth year, to
preach. His drawings toward the Christian life had begun several years
before this time, but he yielded to them and made his way slowly.
He says, "I had a hard struggle of it: it was a weary way finding the
light; it was plod and plead and pray." This spiritual struggle had been
attended by an intellectual quickening. It created in him such a desire
for a better education that he left home and found his way on foot
nearly a hundred miles to Hardy County, southeast of Preston, where he
found a little village academy and supported himself by working morn-
ings and evenings through a winter's study. His conversion and decision
to devote his life to preaching greatly increased this desire for a better
education. Full of evangelistic zeal, he began to preach wherever oppor-
tunity offered, and with such promise that at the age of nineteen he was
admitted to the Pittsburgh Conference of the Evangelical Association,
an organization of German Methodists. He preached and studied
at the same time. For two years, from 1850 to 1852, he took private

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 337

instruction under a Dr. McKesson, of his neighborhood, who was a
prominent German Methodist minister. Later he attended for a single
term an academy at Cooperstown, Pennsylvania, and still later studied
for a short time in the "Seminary" at Berlin, a few miles northeast of
his home and across the Pennsylvania line. During this period of
four or five years he continued to preach, for two or three years being
assigned a "circuit" by the Conference with a salary of $100 a year.

We get one interesting glimpse of the young preacher of those early
years. He was in his twentieth year when he applied for a license to
preach. The presiding elder of his district was a very able and eloquent
man, Rev. Uriah Eberhart, a brother of Professor J. F. Eberhart,
who was a prominent citizen of Chicago for many years, one of the early
teachers of Dr. Thomas and his life-long friend. The presiding elder
makes the following statement:

I was holding a quarterly meeting in Virginia in 1852, when there came in a young
man of slender build, long red hair, dressed in a suit of homemade clothes, dyed with
butternut bark. A brother near said, "That is Hiram Thomas. His case is coming
up for license to preach." "Well," I replied, "I shall have to hear him try before I
could sign a license for so unpromising a youth." I heard him that night, at my
request. Long before he was through, my doubts disappeared, and he got his license
and a God-speed.

On the advice of the presiding elder the young man went to the
Berlin Seminary, which was in charge of Professor J. F. Eberhart, who
says:

I will never forget his appearance as I first saw him. He was mounted on a bay
horse, with saddle bags, long overcoat, leggings and boots coming nearly up to his
knees, such as were worn in that day, and a bundle roll strapped on behind the saddle.
Such was the full outfit for circuit preachers of that age.

In reply to my questions as to what studies he wanted to pursue he said mental
and moral philosophy, logic and rhetoric, and he wanted to learn Greek so as to be

able to read the Testament in the original His face was serious and looked a

representative of the solemn, sincere and strenuous Christianity of that day

When he got into the school his solemnity seemed to change. He was all attention and
sparkling and bright in his nature. He was more intelligent and cultured than the
ordinary students and, being attentive, took in every thought and fact of his recitations
with great avidity. He enjoyed natural philosophy, metaphysics, mathematics, and
mastered the Greek verb "to be" with all its many irregularities, in its various voices,
moods and tenses, in less time than I ever knew any student to accomplish that feat
of arbitrary memory. No one ever enjoyed his studies more and no student was ever
more satisfactory to his teacher.

After he left school he was appointed to the Sugar Creek circuit
near Franklin, Pennsylvania. It was while he was riding this "circuit"

338 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

that a great piece of good fortune came to him. He was holding a series
of evangelistic meetings in Mercer, one of the extreme western counties
of Pennsylvania, when one evening a hilarious company of young people
came in and out of pure mischief nearly broke up the service. The
leading spirit in the mischief was a girl of nineteen or twenty years, Miss
Emeline C. Merrick. She belonged to one of the most prominent and
well-to-do families in the village. The meetings continued. She went
again, became interested, and was soon numbered among the converts.
The young minister found the girl who had nearly broken up his meeting
so attractive that he promptly fell in love with her. She who had first
gone to his meetings to mock and then had remained to pray ended by
giving her heart to him and promising him her hand. Born in Pleasant-
ville, Pennsylvania, August 31, 1832, she had received her education at
Ashtabula, Ohio, where the family had lived for some years. Her
father died suddenly while on a journey through Illinois sometime
between 1845 and 1850, and the family later returned to Pennsylvania.
The daughter had meantime received a good education, which she sup-
plemented by wide reading. She was very attractive, with a warm,
sunny disposition, and at the same time she had a practical, executive
mind and great force of character. Her forbears were from New
England, and she inherited their practical characteristics. She was
thus ideally fitted to be the wife and helpmeet of the somewhat dreamy,
reflective, unambitious young preacher she was to marry. Dr. Thomas
fully appreciated the part she had played in his life in the way of stimulus
and driving power when he said of her after her death, "But for her I
should still be riding the circuit in little western towns."

They were married near Franklin, Pennsylvania, March 19, 1855,
when she was twenty-two years old and he not quite twenty-three. The
railroads had reached Chicago three years before. They had crossed
Illinois and entered Iowa. The great West lay open, inviting settlement.
The rich soil of the prairies called irresistibly to the dwellers among the
hills and moun tarns of the East. All the Atlantic states felt the lure of
the new world in the valley of the Mississippi. Men by the hundred
thousand turned their possessions into money and settled in Illinois and
Iowa. Every year an army of new settlers invaded those states. The
father of young Thomas, with his family, joined the army of 1854 and
went far toward the border line of settlements in southeastern Iowa.
He was an abolitionist and uncomfortable in a slave state.

More than fifty years later Dr. and Mrs. Thomas visited the old
West Virginia place, which appears to have been still known as the

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 339

"Thomas farm." It comprised 400 acres, and when the Doctor, from
an elevation commanding a wide view, pointed out to his wife the farm
with its slaty, stony soil he assured her that for agricultural purposes
it was not worth two cents an acre. This was probably a pessimistic
view, as his father had sold it for $10 an acre. A short time before this
visit it had again been sold for the same price. Then came a change.
The stony soil was discovered to be so rich in glass sand that glass was
being manufactured. But this was not all. The surface was found to
be underlaid with coal. The new proprietor had given up farming.
The old homestead had been torn down, and a new and modern house
had taken its place. The products of the old farm were no longer the
meager and hard-won crops of hay and grain and potatoes of former
years but rich royalties on the output of the coal mines and the produc-
tion of glass. If the boy on the rail fence had only known, how right he
would have been when he said, "How rich our family is."

Was it sympathy with his father on the slavery question or his
mother's letters telling him of the need of preachers in that new land
that moved the son to follow the family to the little Iowa hamlet of
Pilotburg, sixty miles west of Davenport? However that may be, he
joined them with his wife in their far western home in the spring of 1855.
But his purpose of entering at once on the work of preaching in the
new settlements was temporarily shattered by a severe, protracted, and
well-nigh fatal ilhiess. The change of climate from his native mountains
to the valley of the Mississippi was too great a shock for his fragile body,
and he "was brought to the very verge of death by a siege of congestive
chills and fever." The physicians gave him up, the community awaited
his funeral, but he began suddenly and rapidly to improve, and the whole
country round about was, as he said, greatly excited over what seemed a
miraculous recovery. But many months passed before he was able to
enter on the work of the ministry.

He did not find German Methodists organized in the West, and in
1856 he was admitted to the Iowa Conference of the Methodist Episcopal
Church and entered on his work as an itinerant Methodist preacher, his
full connection with the Conference dating from 1858. The capabilities
of Mrs. Thomas began at once to appear. Referring forty years later
to those early experiences Dr. Thomas said, "We had the experience of
itineracy in a new country, not only its romance, but its hardships.
My salary was $300 a year for the first three years and the next year $400.
But we were happy. Mrs. Thomas was a fine economist. It seemed to
be as easy to be six weeks ahead as six weeks behind; we were never in

340 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

debt, and only once were we without money in the house, and then
only for a few hours." Mrs. Thomas early recognized her husband's
unusual powers. She did this before he was himself conscious of them.
Frail in body, naturally a student, an omnivorous reader, he might have
yielded to his love for a quiet, sedentary life had he not felt the spur of her
vigorous personality. She was ambitious for him if he was not for him-
self, and he said after her death, "One could hardly do less than his best
under the pressure of such an intense life."

He therefore did his best and began to be known beyond the limits of
his circuit. But there are almost no records of his Iowa ministry. He
kept no diary and wrote no account of his life. In a sermon on the
atonement delivered in the late seventies of the last century he said,
"The world will never be troubled with a journal of my poor life; for
I am writing none. Only the date of my birth and the day — the coronal
day — of my marriage, have I committed to paper, save this: that a few
points in my religious experiences so impressed me that I wrote them
down." We have therefore no authentic record of his life and work in
Iowa. We know only two or three facts. We know that while prose-
cuting his work he sought the help of two strong men to assist him in
and direct his private studies. These were Dr. Charles Elliott and
Dr. W. J. Spaulding, successive presidents of the Iowa Wesleyan Uni-
versity. This is only an indication of how essentially scholarly the
young preacher was. He continued to be a most earnest student all his
life. One has only to read his sermons to learn how broad his reading
had been, how completely he had mastered what he had read, and how
profoundly and independently he had thought on the great themes of
philosophy and science and theology. Though his early educational
advantages had been few he became an unusually well-educated man.
And he was no ordinary student, who held himself to his task by force
of will. He literally pursued knowledge. He had an extraordinary
power of concentration. The subject of his study absorbed him so
wholly that he was perfectly oblivious of what was taking place about
him. No noise disturbed him. No interruption attracted attention for
more than an instant, and his wife was sometimes compelled to resort
to extreme measures when her necessities required his assistance.
Whether the following story is apocryphal or not I do not know. It
is declared to be a true tale, and its date is somewhere in this early Iowa
period :

Mrs. Thomas was doing her own house work, and — expecting company for
dinner — had put bread in the oven, when the fire went out for lack of fuel. She had

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 341

asked Mr. Thomas, who was intently studying near by, to go at once and cut some
wood. He paid no attention to her request, and she spoke again and several times
tried to impress him with the fact that the bread would be spoiled if there was not a
fire immediately. Still he paid no attention, until, as a last resort, she took the
remaining coals on a shovel, and, stepping behind him, held them close to the cane
bottom chair on which he was sitting. The chair soon ignited and the flames made
it uncomfortably hot. He then "raised " rather briskly for him, but still deliberately,
and asked good naturedly, "Emma, what was it that you wanted ? "

It was with this absorbing interest that he studied natural science in
his early ministry when receiving a salary, in obscure charges, of from
$300 to $600 a year, and he continued throughout life to follow the
marvelous developments of science with the same devotion.

No doubt Dr. Elliott and Dr. Spaulding introduced him to the study
of philosophy. Unlike most of us he loved it and pursued it with eager
interest. He had the philosophic spirit, and when he stepped into the
realm of philosophy one can imagine him recognizing his own country
and saying with Rob Roy, "My foot is on my native heath," and there
thenceforth he dwelt. Philosophy remained his favorite study. With
the same intense interest, indeed, he pursued the study of history, but
it was as a student of the philosophy of history. Where the pessimistic
and cynical Henry Adams found only chaos in history Dr. Thomas
discovered "Unity, Continuity, Purpose, Order, Law, Truth, the Uni-
verse, God." Philosophy remained a life-long pursuit. Of course
theology did also, and he made himself familiar with the history of
theological thought. But philosophy, " the application of reason to its
legitimate objects," ruled his thinking in all departments of study and
reacted powerfully on his preaching all his life.

Few young ministers give themselves to such a wide range of reading
and study or become absorbed in it. Young Thomas was accustomed
to study far into the night. As a result he slept in the morning until
roused by his wife. "On the morning after the celebration of his silver
wedding, in the spring of 1880, his wife waked him early, with the words,
'Come, Hiram, it is time to get up,' when he sleepily replied, 'Emma,
that's the first thing you said to me, just twenty-five years ago this morn-
ing, and I have been hearing it ever since." There is a verisimilitude
about this story that commends it. But it is worthy of note that his
wife not only encouraged him in these studies and, perhaps, incited him
to them, but that she was herself a student. From a child she had
been a great reader. Her husband said of her, "In the lines of history
and literature she was remarkably proficient, and in many things
she was considered a critic." Thus intellectually husband and wife
progressed together.

342 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

The twelve years of ministry in Iowa are illuminated by one other
ray of light from a sermon of Dr. Thomas preached in 1895. This was
a sermon, "In Memory of Our Dead," delivered in the People's Church.
He refers at length to Judge Boyles, saying among other things:

I first met Judge Boyles when pastor of the Methodist church at Fort Madison,
Iowa, in 1858. There was no parsonage, the church was run down, we lived in three
little rooms, paid our rent, did our own work. I got $400 a year and it was hard work
to get that. The first we heard of Judge Boyles was a ten-dollar bill he sent us; and
to help the church along we reported it on the salary. His family then attended the
Presbyterian Church; but they came over to hear me and he encouraged me by
remarking that "if that man's legs hold out, that head might be heard from."

Fort Madison was the young preacher's second appointment in
Iowa. The first at Marshall, where the son, Dr. Homer M. Thomas,
the well-known Chicago physician, was born in the summer of 1858,
had ended. There he had received a salary of $300. It was in the
autumn of the same year that he was appointed to Fort Madison with a
salary of $400. One is at a loss to decide which is the most interest-
ing fact of the year beginning in autumn of 1858 — the promising
young preacher, twenty-six years old, giving a year's service for this
meager pay; this exceptional family of three living in three rooms;
the gifted wife and mother doing her own housework and making her
home a social center in the village ; or the fact that she did this on that
meager salary and not only did not allow her less careful husband to
get in debt but managed to have money always in the house and to keep
six weeks ahead of the expenses. Perhaps as interesting as any was the
action of the husband and wife in turning in to the church treasury for
application on his salary a large ten-dollar bill sent, not to the church,
but to him personally by a stranger.

The man's legs held out and his head began to be heard from. The
church prospered, and after the first year at Fort Madison salaries of
$400 became things of the past. In those years the Methodist itinerancy
was a two-year term. At the end of his term Mr. Thomas was appointed
chaplain of the state penitentiary, which was located at Fort Madison,
so that his residence in that place was prolonged to four years. His
reputation, however, was growing. Churches were asking for his
services, and in 1862 he was assigned to the church at Washington.
Mount Pleasant next secured him, and his last pastorate in Iowa was in
Burlington. Meantime he was becoming every year more widely known.
The churches he served prospered. The congregations increased, the
membership grew, and his fame as a preacher crossed the Mississippi.

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 343

It reached Chicago, and in 1869 the Park Avenue Methodist Church
of that city succeeded in securing his transfer from Iowa and his appoint-
ment to its pulpit. His old teacher, J. F. Eberhart, was chiefly responsi-
ble for bringing him to Chicago. He writes:

In 1869 he [Dr. Thomas] attended the General Conference in Chicago. I enter-
tained him at my house About that time I met a leading lawyer from Burling-
ton, Iowa, who said, in answer to my inquiry, that in the morning Dr. Thomas had
the largest audience in Burlington, and in the evening he had all the people.

Very shortly thereafter I invited Dr. Thomas to make me a visit and sent him
transportation. I was then a member of the board of trustees of the Park Avenue
Methodist Church. Dr. Bayliss was then our minister. I told Dr. Bayliss that I had

a country minister visiting me, and I thought he would preach for him if invited

He looked quizzically at me and said, "I will invite anyone you recommend."

The official members of the church spread the news, and on Sunday morning the
audience was larger than usual The evening audience packed the house.

Next morning Dr. Bayliss called at my house before Dr. Thomas was out, and I
asked him his opinion of the "country preacher." He said, "There are few men
living who can preach such sermons as he preached."

The official board at once made an application to have him transferred.

When he settled in Chicago he had been preaching about eighteen
years. He had served his apprenticeship and had become a master-
workman. He had supplemented the defects of his early education by
wide reading and earnest study until there were few more scholarly men
in the Methodist ministry. There were almost none who possessed
an equal acquaintance with science and philosophy. He had developed
into a preacher of very uncommon attractiveness and power. And he
was still a young man, being only thirty-seven years of age. He went
from a small town to what, even then, was considered a great city. It
was a deserved recognition when in 1870 the Indiana Asbury University
conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity.

In 1869-70 Chicago was a city of about 300,000 people. Its popu-
lation was increasing at the rate of 40,000 every year. It was the
metropolis of the Northwest, and ministers not unnaturally felt that a
Chicago pulpit opened opportunities of influence and usefulness that
could be found nowhere else in the West. To be called to Chicago was a
recognition of ability and promise. To be appointed to Chicago by the
bishops of the Methodist church was a similar recognition.

The Park Avenue Church, to which Dr. Thomas was called by the
people and appointed by the bishop, was located on the corner of Park
Avenue and Robey Street, which at that time was far out in what is known
as the West Division of Chicago. It was in the midst of a community

344 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

of families belonging to the middle class. It had a membership in 1870
of 298. This increased during the pastorate of Dr. Thomas to 368.
The great Chicago fire of October, 1871, did not reach within two miles
of the Park Avenue Church, but many of its members lost their property,
and the pastor surrendered $500 of his $3,000 salary to lighten the
burdens of his people.

In 1872 Mr. Thomas was appointed to the Clark Street, or First,
Church, which held its services in the well-known Methodist Church
Block on the corner of Clark and Washington streets. The building
was in the very center of the path of the great fire of 1871 and was of
course utterly destroyed. The Church Block, as the Methodists called
it, was a block of stores and business offices, with an audience room,
classrooms, and Sunday-school rooms reserved for a free church. Here
a church was conducted, $1,000 a year from the income of the business
block being annually appropriated to help pay its current expenses. All
the rest of the income was devoted to aiding feeble societies in erecting
houses of worship. Several thousand dollars a year were being appropri-
ated for this purpose when the fire came and destroyed the building. The
site being in the midst of the business quarter it was at once rebuilt in
more substantial form than before. The new block was a "four-story
building containing ten basements, eight stores, a pastor's study, lecture-
rooms, parlors, and a large auditorium." It was intended to constitute
a perpetual endowment of Methodist missionary and extension work in
Chicago.

At the time Dr. Thomas took charge of the church it was entering the
newly erected block and gave him an ideal field for his peculiar gifts.
It was central, in the business district indeed, and far from any residence
quarter, but at the point where all lines of transportation came together,
equally accessible from the North, South and West sides of the city,
as well as near the great hotels, thus inviting the mass of strangers always
in the city. It was an attraction to many that the new pastor's views
were spoken of as under suspicion by the rigidly orthodox, and he was
soon preaching to large congregations.

Soon after he took charge of the Clark Street Church his interest in
philosophy resulted in the organization in October, 1873, of the Philo-
sophical Society, which held its meetings in the Church Block. This
Society was composed of men and women interested in the discussion of
questions of philosophy, social science, natural science in its broader
aspects, history, and moral philosophy. The members were of widely

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 345

divergent views. The meetings were open and the discussions frank and
free. The Society quickly reached a membership of nearly three hun-
dred. Dr. Thomas was its second president, and for a time it was not
only prosperous but received a good deal of public attention, too much
indeed for the peace of mind of the pastor of the Clark Street Church.
Occasionally public lectures were given under the auspices of the Society
in the auditorium of the Church Block.

It so happened that two such lectures were delivered by two some-
what prominent skeptics, Gerald Massey and Judge Henry Booth.
"This was thought to be a great outrage on Christianity — infidel lec-
tures from a Methodist pulpit — and Dr. Thomas was held responsible
for it."

Of course he was in no way responsible, as it was understood that all
shades of views were held in the Society, and no one was responsible for
the utterances of any speaker except the speaker himself. The breeze
against the pastor blew over, but the incident awakened in some minds
and deepened in others grave suspicions as to his orthodoxy. Two
parties began to appear in the Rock River Conference, of which he was
a member. These parties might be called the conservatives and liberals.
The conservatives insisted that their preachers must adhere strictly to
the Methodist Standards of Doctrine and Articles of Faith. The liberals
held that theology was a progressive science, that Methodism was organ-
ized on a liberal basis, and that the pastors must, within somewhat
broad limits, have freedom of thought and speech. There was undoubt-
edly a third party composed of those who believed in liberty and progress
but hated trouble, deprecated theological strife, and hoped to achieve
progress without sacrificing peace.

A number of incidents occurred during the three years of the Clark
Street pastorate which awakened criticism, but none of them was of
sufficient importance to imperil the pastor's position in the church. He
remained in good standing in the Conference, but the bishop thought it
best to remove him from Chicago to a less conspicuous post, and in the
autumn of 1875 he was appointed to the First Methodist Church of
Aurora, Illinois, where the salary was little more than half of what he
had been receiving. The Centenary Church, the largest Methodist
church in Chicago, paying a salary of $4,000, double that paid in Aurora,
had made strenuous efforts to secure him, but the authorities stood firm
and sent him to Aurora. For many years his home in Chicago was at
535 West Monroe Street. It was convenient to the Centenary Church,

346 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

and that church wanted him, but Methodist discipline required obedi-
ence, and the man under authority obeyed, packed up his goods, and
moved to Aurora.

His stay in that city was limited to two years, but it was one of the
most fruitful periods of his ministry. He found the church with 296
members and left it with 434. He built up an evening congregation
that filled the house. One of the notable things of his pastorate was the
preaching of a series of sermons in the winter and spring of 1876. The
sermons were all on great themes, such as " God or First Cause," "Origin
and Antiquity of Our Race," "The Problem of Evil," "The Government
of God," "Immortality," "The Resurrection," "Future Punishment,"
etc. They were delivered extemporaneously but were stenographi-
cally reported for the Aurora Herald and first printed in that paper.
Congregations that filled the house listened to them with absorbed
attention and growing interest. A year later they were published in
book form under the title The Origin and Destiny of Man.

These sermons are interesting reading. The questions discussed are
among the greatest in theology. They are presented with simplicity,
sincerity, and ability. The sermons contain the germinal thoughts that
made up the body of the preacher's later views. Save on a few points,
such as a place of material hell fire, there is little dogmatic teaching.
When he did not feel certain he confessed his uncertainty and led his
congregation along lines of inquiry. Indeed one of the charms of the
sermons was the fact that he talked with his congregation as a friend
with friends. He said in the last of them, "In the beginning of this series
I had no thought whatever that they were to appear in print. When the
publishers of the Herald requested my manuscript for publication, I had
to tell them I hadn't any, for to not one of these discourses have I ever
done anything in the way of written preparation more than what might
be noted on half a sheet of paper."

Few families are called upon to suffer the domestic afflictions that
fell on Dr. and Mrs. Thomas. Of their seven children six died in child-
hood. This series of sermons was broken into by a succession of heart-
breaking troubles. These were so many and so great as to draw forth a
letter of sympathy from the Philosophical Society of Chicago. In
answering it Dr. Thomas wrote, "We have indeed passed through no
ordinary affliction. For eight long weeks we have had severe sickness
in our house, prostrating each one of our family, and, what is saddest of

all, taking from us our dear little Lollie For more than a week

I was but partially conscious." He had been prostrated by typhoid

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 347

fever and was kept out of his pulpit for two months, having returned to
life from the very gates of death.

At the end of his first year in Aurora the Centenary Church of Chicago
renewed its efforts to secure him, but the Aurora church would not give
him up. At the end of his second year the Centenary people insisted
that they must have him, and at the Conference of October, 1877, he
was appointed their pastor. This was at that time the leading Methodist
church in Chicago. No other had half its membership, which was about
900. No other paid so large a salary. It was the best appointment in
the Conference, and of course in the entire West. If there were places
of larger influence the successful occupancy of this pulpit pointed directly
toward them. Dr. Thomas was one of the ablest and most popular
preachers in the denomination. He might have aspired to any pulpit.
Had his ambition led him in that direction a bishopric was not beyond
his reach. When he went to the Centenary Church in 1877 he was still
a young man, only forty-five years old, with a quarter of a century of
vigorous activity before him. There lay before him a plain path to
certain and large success in the denomination to which he belonged.
That was the path of conformity. The path to inevitable trouble was
nonconformity, not so much in his views as in the promulgation of them,
in his insistence in his preaching on the points in which he differed from
his church.

The pastorate in the Centenary Church marked for him the parting
of the ways. He had reached in his theological thinking views that
differed, not so much from the Articles of Faith, but from other stand-
ards of doctrine of the Methodist church. The differences related princi-
pally to inspiration, the atonement, and future punishment, not as to
the fact of inspiration, or of the atonement, or of future punishment,
in all of which he believed, but as to speculative theories regarding them.
A less conscientious and more ambitious man would have contented
himself with preaching these great doctrines without explaining how his
views differed from those held by others.

This, was, however, not the method of Dr. Thomas. He had a
philosophical mind. He loved to turn a fact over, view it on all its
sides and in all its relations, and reach a theory regarding it that satisfied
his mind. Having done this he was so constituted that he must pro-
claim the result, and being a preacher he proclaimed it in the pulpit.
His theories on the atonement, inspiration, and future punishment differ-
ing from the general Methodist view awakened criticism and alarm
among the more conservative and became matters of popular interest.

348 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

His sermons were printed in the newspapers and created bitterness among
the more strictly orthodox Methodist preachers.

He had not reached the views he held on these doctrines except
through long-continued study and struggle. We get from his sermons
an occasional glimpse into his inner life that reveals something of the
experiences he went through in reaching settled convictions. In a
Centenary Church sermon on the atonement he said:

For the sake of other struggling souls I would have this that I wrote in this city,
January n, 1870, live: "For years I have had the most painful and perplexing doubts
on the subject of the Atonement, especially on its Godward bearings, as usually held
in the churches accounted strictly orthodox. So uncertain, unsatisfactory and com-
fortless have these views seemed to me, so difficult to understand, and of so little
power on my own heart, that I have had but little spirit to try to preach them to others.
And yet I have felt that Christ must be preached; but not seeing my way at all clear,
I have tried to do the best I could, often believing that I was more of a moral lecturer
than a gospel minister.

"Thank God! My long agony — and none but those who have had similar trials
can know how great it has been — has this day been removed by clearer views: and
with them came such a feeling sense of the divine love as filled my soul and caused me
to weep long and loud for joy. The light came while reading Bushnell's Vicarious
Sacrifice. May God keep me in this peace and help me to preach it to the world."

That day I got the full view that God loved me; that he was in the sacrifice of a
vicarious love to save me, and to save the world.

This moral-influence theory, or, as he always called it, moral theory of
the atonement, he thenceforth held, rejecting all others.

He had the same sort of struggle over the question of future punish-
ment. I have an impression that in his youth and in the somewhat
primitive region in which he had been brought up Dr. Thomas had heard
a good deal of preaching on the endless torment of the wicked in a lake
of fire, and made the mistake of supposing that that sort of preaching
still prevailed in a city like Chicago. Against this conception his heart
and mind revolted. As a matter of fact other ministers had without
any great mental struggle quietly abandoned these conceptions. It does
not seem to have been so with him. These old views of a material lake
of fire and brimstone caused him a world of trouble. In his farewell
sermon at the Centenary Church he said:

The subject is so large that before it I stand almost speechless. I have looked
into this question a good deal. I attempted to study it under a realization of what
the subject was fifteen or twenty years ago. It was such a gloom upon my mind
that / scarcely smiled for years. I was not conscious of the state in which I was. I
read all I could get. I could not settle the question in argument one way or the other.
I got relief in prayer.

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 349

He accepted the doctrine of future punishment but turned more and
more to what was known as the "larger hope," that if in the future life
men repented and turned to God there was hope for them. He did not
know that they would, but he was not without hope that they might.

When he preached this farewell sermon in the autumn of 1880 he had
not been tried but had for two years been under censure for heretical
views and was about to go to the annual Conference in great anxiety and
utter uncertainty as to what awaited him. The question of his ortho-
doxy had come before the Conference two years before, in 1878, and
was quite certain to come up again.

His ecclesiastical troubles were really brought upon him by the
Chicago newspapers, and this not because of their enmity, but because
of their excessive friendliness. Discovering that his views differed
somewhat from those of other ministers they began to print his sermons.
The time came when these papers gave his sermons to the public every
Monday morning. They gave out the impression, though the sermons
themselves did not convey it, that the other pastors were preaching the
doctrines of reprobation and a material lake of fire and brimstone. They
held him up as, in addition to Professor Swing, the one progressive thinker
in the Chicago pulpit, all other pastors being either not quite honest or
ignorantly conservative. Dr. Thomas was not responsible for this
impression, but it was made and other clergymen resented it. The
wrath they ought to have directed at the press was visited on him, and
the Methodist ministers were so wrought up by this excessive attention
to and praise of one of their number, with the implied or expressed cen-
sure of themselves, that the time came when they were incapable of
dealing with him wisely or justly.

This was the state of affairs when he went up in 1880 to the Confer-
ence. As the outcome of that meeting he was asked to withdraw from
the church and was left without an appointment.

He declined to withdraw, saying, in the course of a written state-
ment he submitted, "I cannot go out of the church at your request,
nor should I be forced out of it unless it be under the forms of law and
after such thorough investigation as shall settle definitely the points at
issue."

It is worthy of note that on the motion asking him to withdraw,
while no voted in the affirmative, 65 were absent or refused to vote,
and 49 voted in the negative. Among the 49 were several men who were
or became presiding elders and at least one who was later made a bishop.
Measures were now taken to try Dr. Thomas for heresy.

350 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

For some reason action was delayed, and the case did not come up
for trial until September, 1881 . The case was then tried in a preliminary
way before the presiding elder of the Chicago district, who reported to
the Conference on October 5 that " a Committee of Inquiry had examined
charges against him and that he had been suspended from the ministry."
Whereupon "a select number" of fifteen was ordered for the final trial
of the case. The trial took place immediately and was ended before the
close of the Conference.

The result of the trial was that as to the doctrine of inspiration he
was acquitted by a vote of eleven to four. As to the atonement and
future punishment he was found guilty and was expelled from the
"ministry and membership" of the church.

What were the views of Dr. Thomas on these great doctrines ? They
had been published in a hundred sermons, but he repeated them with
fulness and frankness to the trial committee, concealing nothing. He
then gave a brief summary of them as follows :

And now, what is the substance of what I believe and what I deny ?

I hold to the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures; that in matters of
doctrine and duty they are final; the authority of God. But I do not accept the
"verbal" theory of inspiration; nor claim that all parts of all the 66 books of the Bible
are of equal authority, inspiration, or value; nor that all parts of the Old Testament are
critically infallible. And in these things am I not in accord with the best scholarship

of our own church and of the world ? Certainly I am I hold to the doctrine

of a vicarious atonement; but I hold it in that form that is called moral or paternal;
or in other words I hold to the governmental view with the penal idea left out. I deny
the doctrine of a literal penal substitution. It is, I think, both unreasonable and
unscriptural. The moral view finds a place and a necessity for all that is said of the

sufferings of Christ He is the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world";

the "Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world"; He is a "Mediator"; He is the
"propitiation for our sins"; He is our "sacrifice," our "atonement"; we have
"redemption through His blood"; He was "wounded," "bruised," "bore our sins in
his own body on the tree"; "by his stripes we are healed"; "He died for us."

I hold to the strength and integrity of the government of God ; that all sin will be
properly punished; but I do not believe in a material hell fire; nor in the terrible ideas
of future torment that have come down to us from the past I hold to the end-
lessness of the law by which sin must be punished, and hence to endless punishment
for the endlessly obdurate, if such there be; but, assuming, as I do, the freedom of souls
after death, I cannot affirm that any soul will, or will not, forever remain in sin, and
hence I can neither affirm nor deny endless punishment for any soul. But, postulating
endless punishment upon endless sinning, I am logically bound to suppose that, if the
sinning come to an end, the suffering must also come to an end — unless, indeed, it be
that suffering of loss that in the nature of things seems to be remediless. And I have
a hope — a hope that has come to me through much suffering and prayer, and that
seems to be strengthened by the nearest visions of God — that, somehow, all the divine

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 351

love and striving to win and save souls will not end with this poor, short life; but that
the work of discipline and salvation may go on in the immortal world. And it seems
to me that whilst there is upon some texts a surface look of finality, there is a deeper
and a far-reaching vision of other texts, and of the Scriptures as a whole, on which
this hope may rest.

It seems incredible that a man of the noble character of Dr. Thomas
should for views like these have been expelled not only from the ministry
but from membership in the church. It seems still more incredible that
the Judicial Committee should have refused to hear his appeal, because
having no other pulpit he was preaching for the People's Church.

The stormy period in the life of Dr. Thomas was now over. He was
forty-eight years old when his ministry in the Methodist church ended,
but he still had before him a peaceful, fruitful, and highly successful
ministry of more than twenty years. Within two weeks after the
Conference had placed him in the supernumerary list, without a charge,
he was the pastor of a new church.

Immediately after the adjournment of the Conference in October,
1880, some of his friends met together to consider some plan by which
he might be retained in Chicago. They decided to organize a church and
call him to the pastorate. They worked fast. Twenty men signed a
contract pledging themselves to a guarantee fund to the amount of
$250 each, and this continued to be done annually. These guarantors
constituted the board which chose the trustees of the church. On
October 28, 1880, the organization was completed, and the trustees
wrote to Dr. Thomas, saying, "We, the trustees, as authorized by the
board of directors, extend to you a call from The People's Church of
Chicago, to preach the gospel upon such a broad and evangelical plat-
form as to you may seem in accordance with the will of God and best
promotive of His cause in the welfare of mankind."

Dr. Thomas immediately accepted this call. Hooley's theater was
engaged and the first service was held November 7, 1880. The pulpit
labors of Dr. Thomas were therefore interrupted for one month only,
which gave him a very short vacation after the exhausting experiences
attending his double trial.

The People's Church was established on the following basis, set forth
by the trustees:

As its name implies, it is the aim of The People's Church to provide a place of
worship for all; for strangers and those without a religious home, and those of much
or little faith, and of different beliefs; and to unite all in the great law and duty of
love to God and Man, and in earnest efforts to do good in the world.

352 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

In form The People's Church is independent Congregational, and requires no
theological tests as conditions of membership. We think, and let think.1 We hold
that upon the great questions of the Christian faith and life, the freedom of reason
should not be bound by the opinions of men, but that all should search the Scriptures
and believe and do what they think, is true and right; and The People's Church wel-
comes to its fellowship all who are in sympathy with its spirit and work.

At the opening service the pastor stated that they had no desire to
start a new denomination. From the first Sunday the attendance was
very large. In September, 1885, the Society removed to the Chicago
Opera House, and in 1886 it was said, " It is difficult to obtain even stand-
ing room when Dr. Thomas preaches." At a later date the services
were transferred to McVicker's Theatre.

The organization was not so much a church as a congregation.
The "Articles" adopted November 4, 1889, lodged all power in the
congregation, that is, the holders of seats. They chose the pastors,
the trustees, the deacons, and the advisory council. They succeeded
the guarantors in full financial responsibility for the enterprise. This
change brought its anxieties, the trustees in February, 1890, in appealing
for an increased rental of seats, saying, "With our uniformly large
audiences — on many Sundays the capacity of our commodious audi-
torium is inadequate — it may be a surprise to many to learn that the
number of sittings taken thus far in the current year is less than five
hundred."

Dr. Thomas labored all his life under the handicap of frequent and
serious illnesses. Perhaps Professor Eberhart was referring to the
fourteen years spent in Iowa when he says, "He had a severe attack of
typhoid fever almost every year." He also related the following: "At
one time he and his wife both had a siege of sickness. He was in a
house on one side of a small lake and his wife on the other side, where
they could see each other when well enough to sit up, but neither one
was able or permitted to visit the other for several months."

During his first year with the People's Church he was kept out of his
pulpit four months by sickness. With all this sickness we do not wonder
that it was said of him, "His body is frail, his walk unsteady, and there
is a sort of Lincoln lankness about him. He has hardly enough flesh
to cover his bones." We only wonder that he found the courage and
strength to do anything. The amount of labor this frail man performed
is astounding. He was an invalid who through fifty years performed the
labors of a Hercules.

'"We think and let think" was a quotation from the "father of Methodism,"
John Wesley.

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 353

His sicknesses were sore trials, but his sorrows were greatly increased
by the loss of six of his seven children. In almost every pastorate a
child was taken from the family. In his farewell to the Centenary
Church he said, "We have buried our children in four cemeteries and two
states."

The crowning affliction, however, came in 1896 in the death of the
wife of his youth. Dr. Thomas had always considered her his main
support and chief assistant. "Her active temperament, capacity for
work, and old-fashioned common sense made her just the helpmeet
needed when he organized the People's Church and much of its success
must be attributed to her." She had a winning personality and she
made her home a social center. She had a great fund of anecdotes and
a keen sense of humor which made her interesting and attractive. She
died on January 5, 1896.

Considering his physical frailty Dr. Thomas might very properly
have confined his labors to the immediate duties of his pastorates. He
found this, however, impossible. For many years he was in great
demand as a lecturer in different parts of the country. When the
Alliance, a semireligious paper, was started in 1875 he became one of
the editors, and in his later years was an associate editor of Unity. He
was president of the Congress of Religions organized after the World's
Fair of 1893. For fifteen years he presided over the Chicago Peace
Society. While, however, he was an earnest advocate of peace, he was
not a peace-at-any-price man. In 1880 he was made chaplain of the
First Regiment, Illinois National Guard, and served the regiment for
more than a quarter of a century, being retired at his own request in
1908. In association with the young men of the regiment he renewed
his youth. He went out with them to the rifle ranges, and they said
of him with affectionate pride, "He wore upon his breast two medals
of which he was supremely proud — the 'Long and Honorable Service'
medal of our regiment, and the 'Sharpshooter's' badge of the Illinois
National Guard."

The ministry of Dr. Thomas in the People's Church continued from
1880 to 1902, from his forty-eighth to his seventieth year. There could
be no more convincing evidence of the unique quality and extraordinary
ability of the man than he gave in maintaining a great congregation in the
center of the business district of Chicago for twenty-two years. The
wonder grows when it is remembered that he carried on this successful
work, not in the vigor of physical strength, but in bodily frailty and
precarious health, not in the morning, but in the afternoon and evening
of life.

354 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

In 1899 Dr. Thomas married Miss Vandelia Varnum. She was of
English parentage, was born in Lynden, western New York, was edu-
cated at Ten Broeck Academy and Alfred University, and later took
graduate studies at Cornell. For some years she was a teacher in
Ottawa University, Kansas, and Mount Carroll Seminary, Illinois.
Having exceptional ability as a public speaker, she was called into the
lecture field in 1887 for the Women's Christian Temperance Union and
for five years averaged a lecture a day. For several years before her
marriage she was connected with lyceum bureaus in New York, Ohio,
and Chicago and was the only woman lecturer at that time distinctly in
the popular field.

She came to Dr. Thomas with experience and understanding and in
full sympathy with his work. Many burdens that fell heavily on his
declining strength she was able to bear for him. Aside from the cares of
the home, his large correspondence, social demands, and the like there
were many pulpit and platform engagements which fell upon her to fill.
It was an ideal union for the ten years of life that remained to
Dr. Thomas.

The People's Church gave its pastor an annual vacation of two or
three months. From his youth up he had been an expert with the shot-
gun and the rifle, and many of his vacations were spent in the northern
wildernesses or the western mountains.

In 1900 he bought a home in De Funiak Springs in northwestern
Florida, and thereafter all the winters and later all the summers were
spent there.

In 1901, as president of the Congress of Religions, accompanied by
his wife and others, Dr. Thomas toured the Pacific Coast, holding con-
gresses in the principal cities from San Diego to Seattle.

Though very frail in the last years of his life he retained the keenest
interest in all world-movements. In the words of Mrs. Thomas:

In his last sickness he said, "Women are coming into their own. I'll not be here,
but you will, and you will be a part of it when all women will have the ballot." And a
few days before, while he could still walk, he came down stairs with face radiant as
the stars, and said, "I can see it, I can see it, a world congress, a world court of justice,
a world peace."

He died after a brief illness at De Funiak Springs, Florida, August
12, 1909, in the seventy-eighth year of his age. This was seven years
after he retired from the pastorate of the People's Church. These were
not years of idleness. He continued to write and preach and lecture.
A lecture was delivered by him at an Alabama Chautauqua in 1905

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 355

which was worthy of his best days. It was on "World Problems." I
find in it many pregnant sentences, such as the following: "Henceforth
the world problem must be the democracy of mankind." "Hence-
forth industrialism will be in the foreground World courts will

arbitrate questions of dispute World peace is the first and most

urgent problem of these great years. " " One who has never worked must
have a hard time trying to be religious." "Religion is the life of God
in the soul of man."

The People's Church did not long survive the loss of the great
personality round which it had gathered and which had been its real
life. It cannot be doubted that Dr. Thomas was a unique man. An
eminent Methodist minister recently said to me, "He was of a most
attractive and winning personality. If he said to a person, 'Come to
Jesus,' that person would feel at once that this was the most important
and delightful thing in the world to do." Children loved him. Animals
instinctively recognized him as a friend. The most vicious dogs became
friendly on his approach. With him in the saddle horses that others
could not ride became gentle. Walking on the streets of Chicago
became increasingly difficult for him. Everybody knew him, and so
many wanted to shake hands with him that they obstructed the side-
walk and interrupted travel. It was said of him by one who knew him
well:

In trusting confidence in others he was childlike. Almost anyone could approach
him and apparently deceive him, but in truth he was rarely deceived. He simply
ignored the evidences by which the world judged and saw only the latent or possible
good, or perhaps consciously allowed his sympathy to take possession of his judgment.
But however gentle and peaceful he was tremendously strong and unyielding when the
time and subject demanded, where great issues were at stake. Time was nothing,
majorities were nothing, defeat nothing. There was the vision and the faith that
never faltered.

In person he* was about six feet in height, very slender, with dark
auburn hair, worn long and with a natural and beautiful wave, and a
mustache. His movements were slow, his speech deliberate, with a
pleasant drawl, and he was never disconcerted. In preaching he was
conversational, not declamatory. His voice was, like Lincoln's, a high
tenor and had the same carrying power. He was a quiet preacher but
spoke with earnestness and sometimes rose to impassioned eloquence.
He preached without notes, though in his later years he wrote his sermons
out in full. He was not rhetorical in his preaching, nor was he hortatory.
His style was eminently didactic. He considered the preacher to be a

356 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

prophet, a teacher, yet his teaching was the farthest removed from dog-
matism. The impression he made on his congregation was what it
would have been had he begun by saying, "This is an important and
interesting subject that we ought to know about. I have looked into it,
but I would like to have you study it with me. Let us together see what
we can make of it."

He made large use of the historical method. He would trace the
history of science, or of philosophy, or of theology from the remote past
down to the present. He would take up the origin and development of
life on our planet, or of man, or of religion. Or he would take a single
doctrine and follow its historical development. But all these lines of
thought led to one great conclusion, the life and love of God in the souls
of men. He himself said of his preaching:

My methods are different from some. I pursue as a rule, as you have all learned,
the inductive method. I seek to lead the minds of those with whom I am talking, and
I feel always that I am near to — with my audience — talking with them, not standing
off and talking at them, but talking with them. I try to lead them along to the
standpoints where truth seems evident to them, and where I do not have to proclaim
and cry out, believe! believe! but where they see the truth and they want to believe,
and they can't help but believe.

His sermons were not the traditional exordium, three points, con-
clusion, and exhortation. They were a growth, a development, an
unfolding, one thought leading naturally to the next, the listener finding
himself at the close in the very presence of the loving God and Father of
all. Such preaching to those who heard it habitually was a liberal educa-
tion, and it is not strange that some of the ablest thinkers in Chicago
attended the People's Church.

Dr. Thomas preached for more than fifty years. More than five
hundred of his sermons were printed in the daily papers. About one
hundred were published in four volumes. These are among the most
thoughtful, instructive, elevated in tone, and Christian in spirit that I
have ever read. They are the sermons of a man who read widely,
thought deeply and clearly, and was intent on leading men into the
Christian life. The business center of Chicago is the worst place in the
city for gathering a great audience to hear preaching. The fact that
through more than twenty years Dr. Thomas drew together there a
congregation of 1,500 or 2,000 is the best possible evidence that he was
a great preacher. It was a marvelous achievement; and it was all the
more remarkable because his preaching was the farthest removed
from the sensational. His appeal was to the intellect, the conscience,

HIRAM WASHINGTON THOMAS 357

and the heart. He informed the mind, convinced the understanding,
awakened the spiritual life, and brought the life and love of God into the
soul.

The body of Dr. Thomas had been buried in Rose Hill Cemetery,
Chicago, and on May i, 1910, a memorial service was held under the
auspices of the surviving members of the People's Church, the officers and
friends of the Congress of Religion and St. Bernard Commandery,
Knights Templar, "in honor of their Pastor, President, Frater and
Comrade." Addresses were made by Rabbi Hirsch, Dr. Frank W.
Gunsaulus, Professor G. B. Foster, Jane Addams, and Dr. R. A. White.

I cannot refrain from quoting a few lines from the noble tribute to
his memory by the Veteran Corps of the First Infantry Regiment,
Illinois National Guard, of which he was chaplain for twenty-eight years:

He was one of the great figures of the present generation, a many-sided man,

great in mind, pure in heart and noble in character He has passed into history

as one of the great souls of our day During his quarter-century of military

service he preached to many thousands of young soldiers The keynote of his

religious philosophy was love, the love of God for his children, the love of man for
his divine Father, and for his brother-man.

Since her husband's death Mrs. Thomas has established three
memorials of him. In Alfred University, New York, she has endowed
the Dr. Thomas World Peace Prize Contest, providing for first and
second prizes.

Largely through her benefactions and those of that life-long friend
of Dr. Thomas, Professor John F. Eberhart, a church has been built to
his memory in the southwestern part of Chicago, Chicago Lawn. "The
Hiram W. Thomas Memorial Congregational Church." Located in a
growing section of the city, where the people own their homes, it has a
promising future. No more fitting memorial of a great preacher could
be built than one designed to perpetuate the preaching of the gospel to
which he gave his life.

This biographical sketch is written because of the erection by Mrs.
Thomas of still another memorial. Dr. Thomas was one of the early
friends of the University of Chicago. He often served the institution
in sermons and lectures. In January, 1916, Mrs. Thomas wrote to the
trustees the following letter:

GENTLEMEN:

It gives me great pleasure to transfer to The University of Chicago the properties
represented by the accompanying deeds. The purpose of the gift is to found, when the
income thereof is sufficient, a series of annual lectures in memory of my husband, the

358 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

late Dr. H. W. Thomas, of Chicago, Illinois, the same to be known as the "Hiram W.
Thomas Lectures." I do not label these, for I would not fetter the future by the
past, but they shall be given by representatives of the larger faith and express the ever
growing thought of the world in religion and life — the universals that knit man to man
and man to his Maker.

I ask that due publicity be given to each course that those with open vision outside
as well as the student life may avail themselves of the benefits.

Sincerely yours,

VANDELIA VARNUM THOMAS

In a previous letter Mrs. Thomas had said that her husband was
the University's "first minister," and that "he gave his last message
years after in Chicago in Kent Hall."

Through these lectures we may hope, with their founder, that " the
spirit in which Dr. Thomas lived and wrought and died" will find
expression, and though dead he will continue to speak.

JOHN CRERAR

JOHN CRERAR

This sketch begins and ends with the last will and testament of
John Crerar. In more respects than one that will was unique. It
had the following very unusual beginning:

My father, John Crerar, a native of Scotland, died in New York when I was an
infant, leaving my mother, my brother Peter and myself his only heirs. My mother
remained a widow for a number of years and was then married to William Boyd.
The issue of this second marriage was one son, my half brother, George William Boyd,
who died unmarried in 1860. My stepfather died in 1864, and my mother was
again left a widow with her two sons, Peter and myself. My mother died March 28,
1873, aQd my brother Peter died in 1883, a widower, leaving no children.

My mother's maiden name was Agnes Smeallie. She was born in Scotland in
1795 and a line of relationship on her side is clearly denned.

My first cousins are children of my late uncles, James and John Smeallie, late
of Florida and West Galway, State of N.Y., brothers of my mother. Through them
I have second cousins and third cousins. These cousins, first, second and third,
can be readily traced: some I have seen, others only heard of by the hearing of the
ear.

With these explanations it remains with me to make a disposition of my estate.

I am a bachelor and was born in New York City, but have been a citizen of Chicago
since 1862.

It will be noted that in this unique preface to the will the slightest
possible mention is made of the father, and none whatever of any
relatives on his father's side, while much is told of the mother and of
first, second, and even third cousins on her side. And yet so far as the
records show the Crerars were a more ancient and numerous family
than the Smeallies. The Crerars appear in the earliest Scottish parish
registers of marriages and births. These important records seem to
have been instituted, at least in the country districts of Scotland, by
the Presbyterian church when it displaced the Catholic church in the
beginning of the seventeenth century. The register of the parish of
Kenmore records the marriage on May 14, 1637, of "John Dow Crearar"
and again in 1640 of "John Dow Crerar," evidently his second marriage.
This carelessness about the spelling of family names seems to have
been common in Scotland. The Crerars were a numerous family and
were scattered through many parishes. They belonged to the common
people and appear, for the most part, to have lived in country districts
and, probably, followed agriculture.

359

360 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

The parish register of Dull, County of Perth, from which John
Crerar's father, John, migrated to the United States when a young
man, records that a John Crerar, early in 1788, married Margaret
McFarland. They had three sons, Peter, born late in 1788, James,
born in 1789, and John, born July 2, 1792. Peter and James married
in the same parish and each had a son named Donald. One of these
Donalds will appear later in this story. The youngest brother, John,
apparently left the old home unmarried and settled in New York City.
There he met and married Agnes Smeallie, who had also migrated from
Scotland to New York in her youth. Both were Presbyterians, and
they doubtless found each other in the Scotch Presbyterian church to
which their son, John, remained greatly attached to the end of his life.
The naming of their other son Peter shows the family attachment of
the father. Had there been a third son there would have been another
apostolic succession, apparently, of Peter, James, and John.

Ancestors on the mother's side are not traced farther back than
1710. There are bewildering differences in the ways in which they
spelled their names, as Smeallie, Smellie, Smaill, Smeal, Smalle, Smale,
etc. These differences in spelling constantly occurred in the same
family. In the record of the births of the three children of Alexander
Smellie of the parish of Kirkliston the first-born was written Smeal,
the second Smellie, the youngest Smeallie. The father of Mr. Crerar's
mother, Andrew Smeall, born in 1748, was the son of John Smale. The
daugher of Andrew Smeall was Agnes Smeallie, the mother of John
Crerar. In his last will and testament he says she "was born in Scot-
land in 1795." The register of the parish of Kirkliston, however, records
that she was born April i, 1797. But this is only another evidence
that the most devoted sons do not always retain in mind the exact
year of their parents' birth. Where and when John Crerar, the father,
and Agnes Smeallie were married does not appear, nor when they mi-
grated to the United States. We are not told the father's business and
know nothing of his circumstances at the time of his death, July 23,
1827. We only know that he left a widow and two sons, Peter, the elder,
and John, an infant a few months old. As the will says the widow
and the two sons were "his only heirs," it may, perhaps, be believed
that the little family was not left destitute. This is rendered still
more probable by the fact that the mother a few years later married
William Boyd, a business man occupying the important and no doubt
lucrative position of head of the New York branch of the iron and steel
business of an English house. Whatever may have been the circum-

JOHN CRERAR 361

stances of the family before, they were no doubt much improved after this
marriage, and all the boys were given such education as the schools of
New York City afforded.

The mother must have been a woman of character, intelligence,
and attractiveness. Her sons were taken to the Scotch Presbyterian
church and certainly John early became a devout and zealous Christian.

Young Crerar was a diligent student. He did not carry his education
through a college course, but did continue it long enough to conceive a
love of books and a habit of reading which always remained with him.

The New York of Mr. Crerar's childhood was what would now be
called a small city. When he was born, in the early part of 1827, its
population was less than 175,000. While he was growing to manhood it
increased to 300,000. When he left it to make his home in Chicago
it had become a large city of 850,000 people.

Young Crerar continued in school till his eighteenth year and then
entered the service of the house of which his stepfather was the New
York manager. Here he remained for several years, advancing from one
position to another, and about 1850 was sent to the branch house of the
firm in Boston. He had become a bookkeeper, and was sent to Boston,
perhaps, to organize, or reorganize, the bookkeeping. At all events he
remained only a year or so and then returned to New York. It does not
appear that he became again associated with his stepfather. He found
a better position than that house had for him and became bookkeeper
for another large iron firm. He continued this work, always on the look-
out for something better, for perhaps three or four years, until he was
twenty-nine years old. He must have been anxious to get into business
himself. He could not but be conscious of the possession of business
ability, but he was always a modest man, and being without capital
his way into independent business activity seemed to be hedged up.

It was just at this time that a great piece of good fortune, the greatest
of his business career, came to him. He made the acquaintance of
Morris K. Jesup. Mr. Jesup was a little more than two years younger
than Mr. Crerar, but he was already in business for himself. He had
established himself in the business of dealing in railroad supplies in
1853, and during his commercial career became a man of very large
wealth. He came to be one of the leading business men of the country.
But it was his long life of philanthropy, a life devoted to the service of
mankind in religion, in education, in charity, in encouraging exploration
and scientific research, that made him one of the eminent men of our
history. He lived till 1908, but retired from business in 1884 because,

362 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

as he said, "I found that both business and charitable work were becom-
ing so absorbing that one or the other must suffer if I continued to do
both. So, after careful consideration of the whole matter, I retired
from business and have devoted my spare time to working for others
and for the public interest." Mr. Jesup was then only fifty-four years
old. He lived twenty-four years longer. He had lived during the
thirty-one years of his business life for both his business and the public.
It may be justly said that he devoted fifty-five of the seventy-eight
years of his life to his fellow-men.

Commander Peary said in 1910: "To Morris K. Jesup, more than to
any other one man, is due the fact that the North Pole is today a trophy of
this country." His biographer, William Adams Brown, gives a summary
of the official positions he held which indicates the wideness of his
sympathies and the scope of his philanthropic activities:

He was president of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New
York, a position to which he was elected in 1899 and which he held
until a few months before his death. For more than a quarter of a
century he was president of the American Museum of Natural History,
of which he had been one of the founders. He was one of the founders
of the Young Men's Christian Association, its president from 1872 to
1875, and at the time of his death, chairman of its Board of Trustees.
For twenty-two years he was president of the New York City Mission
and Tract Society. For more than thirty-five years he was president
of the Five Points House of Industry. He was president of the American
Sunday School Union, of the Peary Arctic Club, of the Sailors' Snug
Harbor, of the Audubon Society of the State of New York, of the New
England Society, and of the Board of the Syrian Protestant College at
Beirut. He was first vice-president of the New York Institution for the
Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, and vice-president of the Board of
Trustees of the Union Theological Seminary, of the American Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and of the Pilgrims. He was one
of the founders and for many years vice-president of the Society for the
Suppression of Vice. He was treasurer of the John F. Slater Fund for the
Education of Freedmen, and a member both of the Peabody and of the
General Education Boards. He was a member of the Rapid Transit Com-
mission, which built the first subway in the city of New York. He was
one of the founders and for seven years a trustee of the Presybterian
Hospital. He was a trustee of the Hospital Saturday and Sunday Associa-
tion, of the Society for the Relief of Half Orphan and Destitute Children,
and of the Brick Presbyterian church, and a member of many other

JOHN CRERAR 363

scientific, educational and philanthropic institutions, in which he held no
official position, but in the work of which he was actively interested.

This was the man with whom John Crerar became acquainted about
the beginning of 1856, with whom he became associated in business, and
whose partner he remained to the end of his life. The influence of
this association on Mr. Crerar's life was very great. The way in which
they came together was as follows: Mr. Jesup had started in business
in 1853 with a Mr. Clark who had been a bookkeeper in a bank and
had some capital. Mr. Jesup had no capital, but he knew the railway-
supplies business from the bottom up. The partnership continued
three years, during which time Mr. Clark was bookkeeper and office
man, while Mr. Jesup attended to all the outside business. The firm
prospered, but for some reason a dissolution was resolved on in 1856.
Mr. Jesup would need a competent bookkeeper and office man and turned
to his new acquaintance and friend, John Crerar. But let him tell the
story:

I became acquainted with Mr. Crerar in 1856, then bookkeeper in the large
iron house of Raymond and Fullerton in New York. I was then in business in New
York under the firm name of M. K. Jesup and Co. One day, in the year 1856, seeing
Mr. Crerar writing at his desk, I put this question to him, "John, would you like to
better your position?" His instant reply was "Yes!" I said, "Come and see me
at my office." All this resulted in my taking him into my employ as clerk, and within

a very short time making him my partner in business In the year 1859 I

established a house in Chicago under the firm name of Jesup, Kennedy and Adams,
J. McGregor Adams who was then a clerk for me in New York being sent to Chicago
to take the management of this business. In the fall of 1862 Mr. Crerar was sent to
Chicago and the firm was changed to Jesup, Kennedy & Co. Some time in the early
part of 1863, Messrs. Crerar and Adams succeeded to the business and established
the firm of Crerar, Adams & Co.

My long and intimate acquaintance with Mr. Crerar gave me the rare opportu-
nity of knowing of what stuff he was made. He was a man of sterling integrity, of
strong religious convictions, a kindly heart and a true friend. He loved all men and
all loved him. I never knew a man who had so many real friends. He was social,
though at the same time retiring, modest and humble, and in life counting his chief
pleasure the being in the society of, and intimate relations with, his friends.

Mr. Crerar was a frugal man, lived without display or ostentation, and I often
used to tell him that he was too much so, and that he ought to be more among men,
giving his money while he lived and having the enjoyment of seeing it well admin-
istered. His uniform reply was, "I am satisfied and content." .... I could say
much more about this good man; there lived none better.

It is evident that young Crerar possessed such an unusual combi-
nation of qualities for success in a business which he had been studying
for eleven years that his early entrance into the new firm of M. K. Jesup

364 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

& Company was inevitable. The other member of the new house was
John S. Kennedy. It must be remembered that the railroad-supplies
business was then in its infancy in this country. The iron age and the
railroad age had just begun. The firm of M. K. Jesup & Company
was just beginning to get on its feet and its members were poor men.
It had the advantage of starting at the outset of that period of unprece-
dented development which has covered the continent with railroads and
made the last seventy years the Railway Age. Being men of great
business ability they availed themselves to the utmost of the extraordi-
nary opportunities of the new era, and the firm entered on a career of
great and increasing prosperity.

Mr. Crerar did not long remain in New York after becoming a part-
ner in the company. While he did remain, however, he manifested
that enlightened interest in organized efforts for the good of the com-
munity which characterized his later life. He was a deeply religious
man and constantly engaged in the activities of the Scotch Presbyterian
church in which he had been brought up by his devout mother. He was
much interested in the Mercantile Library Association and became
president of that body. He was a member of the Union Club, the
Union League, and the Century Club, and continued his membership
in these organizations after leaving New York.

The first railroads from the East, the Michigan Southern and the
Michigan Central, entered Chicago in 1852. Immediately that period
of railway development began which within a little more than fifteen
years gave Illinois a greater railroad mileage than any other state in
the Union and made Chicago the great railway center of the country.
It was inevitable that the city should become the chief distributing
point of railroad supplies. Mr. Crerar and his partners were not slow
in recognizing what this meant for a business like theirs. It meant, not
merely that such a business was likely to be successful in Chicago, but
that it was imperatively demanded there. Chicago became the one
location on the continent for a business in railroad supplies. In 1859,
therefore, as quoted above from Mr. Jesup, J. McGregor Adams was
sent to Chicago to inaugurate the business, and became a partner in the
Chicago branch, which was known as Jesup, Kennedy & Adams. It
was so successful from the start that two and a half or three years later
Mr. Crerar, then a member of the parent house, found it necessary to
go to Chicago to care for the expanding business and the firm name
became Jesup, Kennedy & Co. Messrs. Crerar and Adams were the
junior partners. It will be recalled that Mr. Jesup says that "sometime

JOHN CRERAR 365

in the early part of 1863 Messrs. Crerar and Adams succeeded to the
business and established the firm of Crerar, Adams and Co." Mr.
Jesup is undoubtedly correct in this statement, but, on account of the
business value of the old title, the new firm continued to do business
under the name Jesup, Kennedy & Company for five years. The
city directory of 1868 was the first to contain the name of "Crerar,
Adams & Co., manufacturers and dealers in railroad supplies and con-
tractors' materials, n and 13 Wells St."

Twenty-one years later, in 1889, the Commercial Club, an organ-
ization of the leading business men of Chicago, paid the following tribute
to Mr. Crerar, who had just died:

The Commercial Club has met a peculiar and irreparable loss in the death of
John Crerar. The death of a man who is both strong and good must always seem
irreparable and probably always is irreparable. But Mr. Crerar was, besides, the
most devoted and faithful member of the organization .... and we who are his
fellow-members have experienced a personal affliction such as can rarely come out of
the intercourse and friendships of social life. He was not a recent friend nor one who
could make a light impression upon his neighbors. We knew him intimately for
many years; he was a part of ourselves, and he was such a man as must fill, by the
importance of his qualities, a large place in the lives of his friends. He was remark-
able for the way in which his character combined force with geniality. His strength
and incisiveness seemed to find no contrast or opposition in his exceeding geniality,
but these several qualities combined and mingled in him to the producing of a most

delightful and unique man His conspicuous personal attractiveness, his fine

and wholesome example as a gentleman, his constant, varied, most generous and
yet most discriminated charities, his conspicuous business conservatism and judg-
ment, so justified by success, and his steadfastness in his religious life, made him a
man of rare value and usefulness to all circles with whom he closely associated, and to
the larger circle of the great city.

Because we knew him so well and valued him so highly, and because we bore
him so warm an affection we wish to make some expression like this which may be at
least a slight evidence of the impression his life made upon us and the sorrow we
feel at his death. And to make this expression as permanent as we can, we, the
members of the Commercial Club, now resolve that, although any words we can use
must seem inadequate and inexpressive, these be made a part of the permanent records
of our Club.

What then was the life that John Crerar lived in Chicago for twenty-
seven years that won for him such a tribute of admiration and affection
from these hard-headed men of business who knew him so intimately?

From the first he had thrown himself into his business with great
energy. He had partners, but none of them ever questioned his domi-
inance. They were able men but they recognized his leadership.
The terms of partnership were determined by him and accepted by

366 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

them without any written contract, as just and even liberal to the
other members of the firm. In his last partnership, to which the other
parties were Mr. Adams and Mr. Shepherd, he wrote out a partnership
agreement, though the other partners never examined it till after his
death. They were then surprised to find that no figures indicated the
extent of their interest in the business. No difficulty, however, arose
on this account. The matter had been understood between them and
the estate was settled without trouble. Moreover, he had left $50,000
to each of them as a token of friendship and confidence.

The business grew with the amazing growth of the western rail-
roads. It soon became known as one of the most important business
concerns in Chicago. The business had been originally started by Mr.
Adams in a small place on Dearborn Street. In 1865 it was moved to
much larger quarters at n and 13 Wells Street at the corner of South
Water Street. The building was noted as being one of the only two
iron-front structures in Chicago, but it was entirely destroyed in the
fire of 1871. Immediately after the fire business was resumed in a
"mere shanty" that had been put up for temporary use at the corner
of Adams Street and Michigan Avenue, and in these makeshift quarters
it remained for a year. At the end of that time the Robbins Building
had been completed on the old site and the business was transferred to
it and in it continued to be conducted during Mr. Crerar's life. The
house soon came to be the largest concern of its kind in the Middle
West. Edward S. Shepherd became a partner, and after the death of
Mr. Crerar he became the sole owner of the business. In a great build-
ing at 239 E. Erie Street, on the north side of Chicago, overlooking
Lake Michigan, Mr. Shepherd still carries on the business under the old
name, Crerar, Adams & Company.

The business expanded so rapidly that a manufacturing department
was soon found to be necessary. Such a department was therefore
secured by the purchase of a business already existing, which was
reorganized as the Adams & Westlake Company, manufacturers of
railroad-car trimmings, lamps, lanterns, and sheet-metal specialties. It
came to include brass and bronze foundries of the most modern type.
Though founded earlier the company was incorporated under the laws
of Illinois in 1869. Since 1872 the main factory and offices of the com-
pany have been on the north side and now cover the entire block bounded
by Orleans, Ontario, Franklin, and Ohio streets. Before the death of
Mr. Crerar, he and Mr. Adams had, to a considerable extent, divided

JOHN CRERAR 367

their interests, Mr. Crerar and Mr. Shepherd retaining Crerar, Adams &
Company, and Mr. Adams taking over the Adams & Westlake Company.
Cook's By-gone Days in Chicago, referring to the year 1862, the year
of Mr. Crerar's coming to the city, makes the following interesting
statement :

Reference should be made to a group whose names are familiar to nearly every
Chicagoan today, but who, for the most part, were wholly unknown in 1862; or just
rising into recognition within the lines of their specialties, yet in a few years were to

dominate almost every branch of commercial activity Marshall Field and

L. Z. Leiter were merely rising junior partners. Wm. F. Coolbaugh and John Crerar
were new arrivals. Lyman J. Gage had just been promoted to the cashiership of the
Merchant's Savings Loan and Trust Company, and beginners with them were George
M. Pullman, S. W. Allerton, A. M. Billings, John W. Doane, N. K. Fairbank, John
C. Gault, H. N. Higinbotham, Marvin Hughitt, B. P. Hutchinson, General A. C.
McClurg, Franklin MacVeagh .... while Chief Justice M. W. Fuller was a rising
young lawyer.

Mr. Crerar, modest and retiring as he always was, soon came to be
recognized as one of the leading business men of the city. When the
Commercial Club of Chicago was in contemplation he was invited to
become one of the thirty-nine constituent members. Though not
particularly addicted to clubs he was a devoted member of this one
which was made up of the leaders of Chicago business. I have already
indicated the admiration and affection in which he was held by his
fellow-members. In John J. Glessner's history of the Commercial
Club he says:

The Club was especially fortunate in the rare quality of its original membership,
composed of men who easily stood out above their fellows in the community; men
who not only made themselves and their own business, but made the town they lived
in, and loved it. Pullman and Fairbank and Field and Doane and Stager and Crerar
and Leiter and Farwell and the two Keiths and Armour, and men like these, would
have made their mark anywhere and in any time.

And again he says:

Several of the most prominent of the early members never held office, though the
chief executive position was at different times urged upon them — Field and Pullman
and Crerar, among those who have gone, and others who still are here. They felt
honored in the choice, but distrustful of ability to give time and attention to the
work.

It was inevitable that, with Mr. Crerar's business ability and increas-
ing prosperity, he should extend his interests beyond his immediate
business. He did not make any considerable dealings in real estate.
Other forms of investment made a stronger appeal to him. He was

368 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

no speculator, but very conservative in his views and methods. Yet
he had a business instinct and an open and farseeing mind that led him
to consider and enter into new and large projects, that, in his judg-
ment, promised great development. When, therefore, Mr. Pullman laid
before him his revolutionary palace-car plans, he listened, weighed, and,
finally approving, engaged in the organization and financing of the
Pullman Palace Car Company. It seems incredible now, but fifty-
five years ago Mr. Pullman's projects were so new and strange and
revolutionary that few believed them practicable, least of all perhaps
railroad men. He had little capital himself and he found it very difficult
to enlist capitalists in his scheme. He was a young man, only thirty-
four years old in 1865. Mr. Crerar was also a young man of thirty-eight,
just beginning to be a man of substance. Perhaps the nature of his
business — railways supplies — enabled him to grasp the possibilities of
the new sleeping-car and he entered so fully into Mr. Pullman's plans
that when the Pullman Palace Car Company was finally organized in
1867 he became one of the incorporators and a member of the board of
directors. He was one of the men who laid the foundations of that
great industry which has had such an extraordinary development. He
continued on the board of directors from the formation of the company
to the end of his life, a period of twenty-two years and did his full share
in promoting the success of the company.

Soon after beginning business in Chicago, Mr. Crerar became a
director of the Chicago & Alton Railroad. His connection with this
company had one very interesting result quite unrelated to business.
It brought him, of course, into close business relations with the able
president of the road, T. B. Blackstone, and their relations resulted in
an intimate and delightful friendship, which was characterized by a
warm affection. So strong was his attachment to Mr. Blackstone that,
when he made his will in 1887, though his friend was a man of large
wealth he left to him a bequest of $5,000 "to purchase some memento
which will remind him of my appreciation of his uniform and life-long
kindness to me.

Mr. Crerar was long the Chicago director in the Liverpool, London
and Globe Insurance Company. He was one of the original stockholders
and a director of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank. He was a director
in the Chicago & Joliet Railroad and for a time president of the road.
He had large interests in the Joliet Steel Company. These are only
indications of the wideness of his business interests which continually
reached out in new directions as his prosperity increased.

JOHN CRERAR 369

Mr. Crerar's independent business career was not a long one. It
was restricted to less than thirty years. After becoming the head of
the house of Crerar, Adams & Company it continued only twenty-
six years, when death brought it to an end. He lived to be only sixty-
two years old. He had been very successful. He was a conservative
but astute business man, and, had his life been prolonged, his successes
would have kept pace, doubtless, with those of his most successful
associates who carried their large activities on into the new century.

In closing the introductory paragraphs of his will Mr. Crerar said,
"I am a bachelor and was born in New York City, but have been a
citizen of Chicago since 1862." Why he never married does not appear.
He would seem to have been eminently fitted to give and receive happi-
ness as the head of a family. He did not escape the raillery to which
all bachelors are subject. He received it good-naturedly, insisting that
he was not insensible to feminine charms. When rallied on the subject
his usual answer was: "I am in love with all." Being a bachelor he
lived in hotels, the last ten years of his life at the Grand Pacific.

We may be certain that one of the first things he did after reaching
Chicago was to identify himself actively with the church. He was
deeply religious. He had been so from his youth, and in Chicago
entered the Second Presbyterian Church. He was soon made an elder
and a trustee, and for more than twenty years was one of the pillars of
that church. His religious interest did not diminish as his wealth
increased. He regularly attended the church prayer meeting. He was
a constant reader of the Bible. His favorite chapter was the eighth
chapter of Romans, which he knew by heart. When the new building
of the church was erected at Michigan Avenue and Twentieth Street, he
contributed $10,000 toward the extinguishment of the debt. All his
friends knew him as a Christian man. He was outspoken in his faith and
never hesitated to defend Christianity when it was attacked in his
presence. "He has been known to exclaim in a tone of impatient
disgust, at hearing some one ask if he really believed that Jonah was
swallowed by a whale, 'Oh! bosh! What has that to do with religion' ?"
This is an illustration of what was said of him, that though he was very
much of a gentleman "he was a singularly candid man and when occasion
demanded could be abrupt." During the later years of his life the
pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church was Dr. S. J. McPherson,
between whom and Mr. Crerar a most affectionate friendship developed.
Dr. McPherson was a lovable man, and Mr. Crerar indicated his strong
attachment to him by leaving him a bequest of $20,000. His will also

370 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

revealed his love for the church and the depth of his doctrinal con-
victions. He left to the Second Presbyterian Church $100,000 "so
long as said church preserves and maintains the principles of the Pres-
byterian faith." But he also left the church without reservation
$100,000 for its mission schools. He did not forget the church in which
he had been brought up and to which all his family had belonged, the
Scotch Presbyterian Church of New York City, to which he left $25,000.
He also left the Presbyterian League of Chicago $50,000. He was a
loyal Presbyterian.

But his religious interest was not confined within denominational
lines. He was greatly interested in the Chicago Young Men's Christian
Association and was one of its devoted adherents throughout his life
in Chicago. He was vice-president of the Association and left it $50,000
in his will.

He was for many years actively interested in the work of the
American Sunday School Union.

Each year he gave cheerfully and liberally to the support of the work throughout
his long and successful career. When he was disposing of his property by bequest he
put these words in his will: "I give and bequeath to the American Sunday School
Union, established in the City of Philadelphia, hereby requesting that said sum be
employed in promoting the cause of said Sunday School Union in the Western States

and Territories, the sum of $50,000 I should prefer that the legacies or bequests

be used so that the interest would keep missionaries in the field, or would enable
good to be done as opportunities present themselves."

This suggestion as to the general policy of the Sunday School Union of
the use to be made of legacies has been followed in the use made of
Mr. Crerar's bequest with remarkable results. Every year since 1893 a
report has been published showing the work done by the missionaries
supported by the income of the fund. At the end of twenty-five years
it appeared that three missionaries had been employed each year. About
i, 600 Sunday schools had been organized in remote districts of the
North and West, with nearly 60,000 scholars. These missionaries had
aided in various ways 10,000 Sunday schools in which there were 160,000
pupils. They had distributed 12,000 Bibles or portions of Scripture.
Nearly 90 churches had been organized and about 7,000 converts had
been led into a new life. These reports are documents of real human
interest. They may truthfully be termed live stuff. They make these
dry figures live and throb with tragic interest in the incidents they
detail of the new hope and joy and life carried into many remote wilder-
ness places. John Crerar still lives and goes about our world in the
guise of these earnest missionaries doing good.

JOHN CRERAR 371

And this reminds me of what one of his partners has told me. As
he sat at his desk in his office he kept in the upper right-hand drawer,
where it was nearest his hand, a check book. When people came in
asking his help for any cause he would hear them considerately and if
they made a case that appealed to him he would reach for the book and
write them a check, entering on the stub what it was for. When his
effects were examined after his death these check books were found and
proved to be interesting reading. For example on the stub of one check
was found the following: "A woman going about doing good." It was
said of him: "His philanthropy knew no bounds or limits, but was
constantly active and progressive, without ostentation."

Religion and religious causes did not exhaust his sympathies. He
was a director of the Presbyterian Hospital and bequeathed to it $25,000.
All the philanthropies that interested him in life he remembered with
great munificence when he came to make his will.

The great relief organization for ministering to the destitute in
his day was the Chicago Relief and Aid Society. He was one of its
officers and took an active interest in its work, leaving it $50,000.

He was particularly interested in the Chicago Orphan Asylum.
When writing his will and leaving the asylum $50,000, he added, "Of
which I am now vice-president," as though that personal relation gave
him satisfaction. In his early days in Chicago he was secretary of the
board of the Hospital for Women and Children which then existed.
It was only Mr. Crerar's modesty and distaste for public position that
kept him from official connection with a score or more of the charitable
and other institutions of the city. He was a liberal contributor to
their treasuries. To some of them he belonged, as the Chicago Literary
Club and the Chicago Historical Society. He aided the latter in secur-
ing its first building after the great fire and left it $25,000 in his will,
and to the Literary Club he left $10,000.

To organizations with which he had no official connection the
munificence shown in his will was only the carrying on of the interest
he had manifested in repeated benefactions during his life. Here is
the list, excluding those already mentioned and others to be mentioned
later: the Nursery and Half Orphan Asylum, $50,000; St. Luke's Free
Hospital, $25,000; Chicago Bible Society, $25,000; St. Andrew's Society
of New York, $10,000; St. Andrew's Society of Chicago, $10,000;
Illinois Training School for Nurses, $50,000; Old People's Home of
Chicago, $50,000; Chicago Home of the Friendless, $50,000.

372 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Among the many services the Commercial Club has rendered to the
community not the least was the founding in 1882 of the Chicago Manual
Training School, now a part of the high school of the University of
Chicago. Mr. Crerar was much interested in the project. He was
one of the subscribers to the fund of $100,000 raised by the Club to
inaugurate the work of the school. He was made a member of the
committee to determine the plan of organization and was one of its
board of directors to the end of his life. His belief in the work of the
school was so great that in making his will he provided a bequest to it
of $50,000. He did not indicate in the will how this sum was to be
used. His fellow-trustees, however, doubtless followed what they
knew to be his preference when they established a John Crerar Prize
to be given to the best student of each graduating class, and distributed
the larger part of the income in free scholarships for poor boys needing
such assistance.

Soon after the University of Chicago began its work the trustees of
the Manual Training School opened negotiations with its representatives
looking to the incorporation of the school into the University system.
This was finally consummated in 1902 when the Manual Training
School became a part of the University High School, bringing to the
University funds and equipment amounting to about a quarter of a
million dollars. A part of this was the Crerar Fund of $50,000. In
the Articles of Agreement it was provided that an annual prize of $20
should be given to one member of each class in the Manual Training
Department to be known as the John Crerar Prize; that a scholarship
should be given to one member of the graduating class in the Depart-
ment which should entitle the holder to free tuition through a complete
course in any department of the University, to be known as the John
Crerar Scholarship, and that the remainder of the income should be
used in paying, either in whole, or in part, the tuition in the Manual
Training Department of poor and deserving boys who would otherwise
be unable to avail themselves of its privileges, to be known as the
Crerar Aid. It was also provided that the principal of the John Crerar
Fund should never be impaired or diminished, or the income in any way
diverted from the foregoing objects or purposes.

Thus for thirty years in the School and the University between
twenty and twenty-five boys have been helped every year to an educa-
tion in which the hand and the mind have both been trained. Already,
more than six hundred boys have been helped by Mr. Crerar to enter
into life with the advantages of this sort of training. And he will,

JOHN CRERAR 373

through this endowment, continue to do this as long as the University
endures. A little while ago we saw him as a missionary carrying light
and life to those dwelling in wilderness places. We here see him as an
educator training every year classes of boys for useful and successful
lives.

Mr. Crerar was at one time a trustee of the first University of
Chicago, but distrustful of its prospects withdrew from the board.
Three years later the institution closed its doors. He did not live to
see the present University established. The public movement for its
founding was inaugurated in Chicago only four months before his death.
He was one of the men before whom the plans for the new institution
would have been laid, and who would have given them sympathetic con-
sideration. The University may well feel honored in having the name
of such a man as John Crerar enrolled among those who have established
special funds for the benefit of those it is preparing for the business of
life. For his life and character place him in the front rank among the
foremost men of Chicago.

Mr. Crerar's life was not an eventful one, except in the rapid accumu-
lation of wealth. He became Mr. Jesup's partner when about thirty-
three years old and continued in the same line of business to the end of
his life. He was in business for himself only about twenty-nine years.
He was just beginning to make himself known in New York when he
made the new departure in his business which took him to Chicago.
His life in that city was restricted to twenty-seven years. Beginning
at the bottom of the business ladder he climbed steadily and rapidly,
but it necessarily took half of these twenty-seven years to gain a position
of any considerable prominence. He was therefore a well-known and
leading man of business for only a few years. He had no liking for
prominence or desire for position; he would not accept the presidency
of the Commercial Club. He was a strenuous Republican in politics,
but once only took any public place. In 1888 he accepted a nomination
and was elected a presidential elector in the Harrison campaign. A
bachelor with no family life he might have been expected to seek society
in the many clubs that were open to such men. But among social
clubs he joined but one — the Calumet. He was enamored of a quiet
life, but was a great favorite in society. He was not a great traveler,
going abroad but once. He preferred the city to the country, almost
never accepting invitations to visit his friends in their country homes.
He was very regular in his habits. Summer and winter he retired and
rose at the same hour. He was fond of reading, and read both books and

374 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

newspapers. In his newspaper reading he was always on the lookout for
good stories and jokes. These he cut out and preserved. He had a
keen sense of humor and would often inclose a humorous clipping in an
envelope and sent it anonymously to some friend who would enjoy it.
He enjoyed this all the more if it had some personal application his
friend would appreciate. After his death a box of these newspaper
clippings was found among his effects. He always had scholarly tastes,
which he did not permit the exacting demands of a constantly expanding
business to suppress. In his young manhood his interest in the Mer-
cantile Library Association of New York made him its president. It was
this Association that brought Thackeray to this country on his lecturing
visits and it is said that Mr. Crerar was largely instrumental in these
invitations being sent to the great novelist. It was this interest in
books and literature that made this iron merchant a member of the
Chicago Literary Club, who so appreciated its work that he made it a
bequest of $10,000, as already told.

To one who knew him we are indebted for the following personal
glimpse of Mr. Crerar :

His demeanor to his fellowmen was the very type and example of equable, digni-
fied gaiety, good humor, kindliness and charity toward all the world His

favorite attitude was standing firm and erect, the lapel of his coat thrown back and
his thumb caught in his vest. To see him in this position was a signal for gay
welcoming and recognition for friends.

And another says of him: "His dignified yet gentle bearing attracted
the eye no less than his kindliness and sympathy warmed the heart."
I am told there was an air of distinction in his appearance that attracted
attention in any company.

Mr. Crerar's mother did not live to see her son's larger successes.
She died in 1873, nine years after he established himself in Chicago.
He was always very tenderly attached to her. As he never married he
continued to regard New York, where she remained, as home, as long as
she lived. But after her death Chicago became home to him, and his
attachment to the church, his interest in the things that made for a
better city, and his friendships among the best and biggest Chicagoans
of his day were such that he became devotedly attached to the city and
often declared that he could not be happy permanently in any other
place.

Few men have had a higher compliment paid them than came to
Mr. Crerar after the great Chicago fire of 1871. He immediately
entered with his characteristic energy into the relief work of the Relief

JOHN CRERAR 375

and Aid Society, and the New York Chamber of Commerce and other
large donors sent their great contributions for the stricken city to him
for distribution. He made on men the impression of unimpeachable
integrity, of executive ability, and of sincere and wise philanthropy.

He had a peculiar genius for friendship. He formed intimate friend-
ships with some of the foremost men in Chicago. His partners were
his friends. Throughout his business career in Chicago he continued
in the partnership which was formed at the outset. J. McGregor
Adams said of him: ,

He was a high-souled generous man, liberal in all things, and one whose friend-
ship was a thing to be prized and to be proud of. He was a philanthropist of the
noblest type and did a wonderful amount of good in a quiet way. For twenty-five
years he and I have been business partners and during that long period we never had
a quarrel or dispute in any way. To his employes he was always the same, pleasant,
genial, approachable. Frank and outspoken and decided in his views he never hesi-
tated to express them, though it was always done in an affable manner. He had a
vein of quiet humor that made him a very companionable man. Full of fun and
anecdotes he dearly loved a good story.

Mr. Crerar retained his health till he had passed his sixty-second
year. It began to fail in the spring of 1889. In August of that year
Dr. Frank Billings went with him to Atlantic City, in the hope that
the sea air would do him good. But on September 9 he suffered a partial
stroke of paralysis in his right side. As soon as it seemed safe he returned
to Chicago and to the home of perhaps his dearest friend, Norman
Williams, and there died on October 19, 1889, in the sixty-third year of
his age.

He had said in his will: "I ask that I may be buried by the side of
my honored mother in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn, N.Y., in the

family lot I desire a plain headstone, similar to that which

marks my mother's grave to be raised over my head." These requests

were faithfully carried out by his friends. The " plain headstone

raised over his head" bears the following inscription: "A just man and
one that feared God."

On December 22, 1889, a great memorial meeting was held in
Central Music Hall, which was then the great auditorium of the city.
Rarely has such a tribute been paid to the memory of a private citizen.
The great hall did not begin to accommodate the multitude who sought
admission. It was found necessary to close the doors before the hour
set for opening the exercises.

In one of the addresses it was said of Mr. Crerar that the use he
made of his wealth caused him to rise from "a private citizen to the ranks

376 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

of creative men." And this brings us again to that remarkable docu-
ment with which this sketch began, his last will and testament. Two
introductory words should be said of it.

In the first place, it was not made in any immediate expectation of
death. It was not the hurried work of the sick bed, but the well-
considered, fully matured work of a man little past middle age, in the
full vigor of health, with the possibility of many years of active life still
before him. It was made in 1887, two years before Mr. Crerar's death,
and was evidently the result of long reflection and final, deliberate
purpose.

In the second place, it was not devised for the purpose of making
amends, in the final disposition of his wealth when he could no longer
hold on to it, for the shortcomings of his life. It was the final and
natural expression of his character and the life he had always lived.
His father, who died when he was an infant, he had never known and
apparently knew nothing of any relatives on his father's side. He had
been devoted to his mother, aad anyone related to her, or who had been
kind to her, was not without claims on him. The giving of money to
religious and charitable causes had been the habit of his life. He had
been a reader of books. He loved good literature. The Literary Club
where books were the themes of discussion, he had particularly delighted
in. Having no family his evenings had been devoted to books. They
had formed a large element in his life. One can imagine him in these
long evenings of reading and reflection, thinking of the many thousands
in the great city who would enjoy books as much as he did if they had
access to them, and of the unspeakable benefit great collections of books
would be to them. And one can easily conceive the glow of satisfaction
that filled his whole being when the purpose to establish a great free
library was formed in his heart.

And, indeed, the greatest and most significant act of Mr. Crerar's
life was the making of his will. He himself must have felt this to be
true. He approached the task very seriously. After the prefatory
remarks quoted at the beginning of this sketch he continues. "It
remains with me to make a disposition of my estate."

He bequeathed, to begin with, something over $500,000 to cousins
on his mother's side, to friends who had been kind to his mother, to his
partners, and to other personal friends.

Then followed bequests of nearly $900,000 to religious, educational,
and charitable causes as has been related in preceding pages.

JOHN CRERAR 377

He left "$100,000 for a colossal statue of Abraham Lincoln." Of
this bequest, Judge B. D. Magruder, speaking before the Chicago
Literary Club, said:

With a modesty that bespeaks the greatness of his soul, he orders a simple head-
stone to be placed at his own grave, but that a colossal statue be raised to the man who
abolished slavery in the United States. The millionaire is content to lie low, but he

insists that the great emancipator shall rise high This contrast between the

headstone and the statue indicates, as plainly as though it had been expressed in words,
Mr. Crerar's estimate of true heroism. Doing good to others was his conception of
greatness.

The heroic statue of Lincoln was practically the final creative work
of the genius of Augustus Saint Gaudens. It was placed in the hands
of the South Park Commission of Chicago, which proposes to place it
in Grant Park. It was loaned by the Commissioners to the Panama
Exposition and was seen and admired by the millions of visitors to
San Francisco in 1915.

Grant Park is being constructed on the downtown lake front of
Chicago which will extend from Randolph Street to Twelfth Street, or
the new Roosevelt Road. It is being built up out of the waters of
Lake Michigan. It is a part of the Chicago Plan which will transform
the entire lake front from the river to Jackson Park into a dream of
beauty, giving Chicago the most wonderful water front of any city in
the world. The great statue of Lincoln is to be located a little north
of the center of the Park, southeast of the Art Institute. In the center
of the Park there will be a garden, and the statue will be placed just
north of the garden. The funds have been provided, by the voter's
approval of a bond issue, for the completion of Grant Park, and there
can be no long delay in the placing of the statue of the great American in
its permanent resting-place.

The final provision of Mr. Crerar's will reads as follows:

Recognizing the fact that I have been a resident of Chicago since 1862, and
that the greater part of my fortune has been accumulated here .... I give, devise,
and bequeath all the rest, remainder and residue of my estate both real and personal
for the erection, creation, maintenance and endowment of a Free Public Library to be
called The John Crerar Library and to be located in the city of Chicago, Illinois, a
preference being given to the South Division of the city inasmuch as the Newberry

Library will be located in the North Division I desire the building to be

tasteful, substantial and fire-proof and that sufficient be reserved over and above the
cost of its construction to provide, maintain and support a library for all time. I desire
that the books and periodicals be selected with a view to create and sustain a healthy
moral and Christian sentiment in the community and that all nastiness and immorality

378 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

be excluded. I do not mean by this that there shall be nothing but hymn books and
sermons, but I mean that dirty French novels and all sceptical trash and works of
questionable moral tone shall never be found in this library. I want its atmosphere
that of Christian refinement, and its arm and object the building up of character, and
I rest content that the friends I have named will carry out my wishes in those par-
ticulars.

The friends referred to were Norman Williams, Huntington W.
Jackson, who were the executors of the will and trustees of the estate,
and Marshall Field, E. W. Blatchford, T. B. Blackstone, Robert T.
Lincoln, Henry W. Bishop, Albert Keep, Edson Keith, S. J. McPherson
(then his pastor), John M. Clark, and George A. Armour. These twelve
men he requested to act as the first board of directors of the library.
They formed a distinguished body of men. They were all personal
friends of Mr. Crerar and assumed the responsibilities laid upon them
as a labor of love.

It will be noted that the will makes no mention of relatives on his
father's side and bearing the Crerar name. His father had died when
he was a few months old. His mother does not appear to have had any
acquaintance with his father's family and the boy grew to manhood
without any knowledge of Crerars related to him. There were such
Crerars, however, though they remained apparently ignorant of his
existence until the press carried the news of his large bequests through-
out the world. They were then heard from and in contesting the
validity of the will their contentions confirm the view here advanced.
The attack on the will was made by Donald Crerar and others who said

that in his will, Mr. Crerar made no mention of his next of kin on his father's side
and seemed to be ignorant of the fact that there were such next of kin; that he gave
divers large bequests and legacies to his cousins on his mother's side; that he left
no kin of nearer degree than first cousins and that complainants are his first cousins
on his father's side and constitute all of his first cousins and next of kin, except the
first cousins on his mother's side, who were named in and given certain legacies by the
will; that all of the cousins to whom such legacies were given have accepted the same
and have released all claims against the estate, and that complainants are entitled,
as next of kin and heirs at law, to share in all property owned by Mr. Crerar at the
time of his death and not legally devised by him.

The paragraphs of the will particularly attacked were the bequests to
the Second Presbyterian Church, the Chicago Bible Society, the Literary
Club, the Lincoln statue, and the John Crerar Library. A great legal
battled ensued. A considerable array of able lawyers was employed
on both sides, the will being defended by Williams, Holt and Wheeler,
and Lyman and Jackson, the law firms of the two executors, assisted by

JOHN CRERAR 379

James L. High and John H. Mulkey. After failing in the lower courts
the contestants carried the case to the Supreme Court of the state.
It was not till 1893 that the contest came to an end and then the will was
sustained in every particular.

It was characteristic of the careful business man that Mr. Crerar
embodied in that part of the will leaving bequests to his cousins the
following wise directions to his executors:

I fancy that my cousins have but little acquaintance with business matters, and
I wish my executors and trustees to give them advice in regard to the legacies and
bequests. For example, if a farm is mortgaged, suggest that the mortgage be paid
off. If their farm is not mortgaged suggest that their respective legacies should be
well invested.

It was supposed that the bequest for the free public library would
amount to about two and a half million dollars. But the board of
directors was a body of business experts, with the highest skill in the
care of funds. They applied then- financial genius to the care of the
public trust committed to them. They started the library without
undue haste and instead of expending a large part of the capital fund
in a costly building, they rented commodious quarters and when they
opened the library to readers April i, 1897, began to create a building
fund from the annual income, and in 1918, at the end of twenty-four
years, had secured a valuable site and paid for it and had accumulated
a building fund of $1,300,943.39. Meantime the endowment fund had
increased under the management of these financial experts and faithful
stewards to $3,500,000. The total assets, instead of being $2,500,000
as first estimated, amounted at the end of twenty-four years, in 1918,
to $5,557,544- The books in the library now number about 500,000
and there are nearly or quite 200,000 pamphlets. In 1918 more than
14,000 volumes were added to the collection, which thus increases every
year.

Before the opening of the library in 1897 the directors decided to
make it "a free public reference library of scientific and technical
literature." The librarian, Clement W. Andrews, says:

The special field of the John Crerar Library may be defined as that of the natural,
physical, and social sciences and their applications. It is the purpose of the directors
to develop the library as symmetrically as possible within these limits, and to make it
exceptionally rich in files of scientific and technical periodicals, both American and
foreign.

The reading-rooms are daily filled with readers, the numbers increas-
ing every year, already aggregating much more than 100,000 annually.

380 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

In 1912 the directors purchased a site for the library building on
the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street, 128 by
135 feet, the longer front being on Michigan Avenue. That part of
the building now already erected covers something more than one-
third, possibly about one-half the entire site. The other sections will
be added as the growing demands of the library require.

The funds managed thus far with consummate wisdom are sufficient
to develop and sustain one of the great libraries of the world. As
Mr. Andrews says, the decision of the directors

to establish a free public reference library of scientific and technical literature, seemed
to them to accord with the particular business activities by which the greater part of
Mr. Crerar's fortune had been accumulated, to exclude naturally certain questionable
classes of books which his will distinctly prohibits and to favor the aim and object
which it expressly points out. As personal friends who had been acquainted with
his wise and generous purposes, and with his civic patriotism and gratitude, they
believed that he would surely have wished his gift to supplement, in the most effective
way, the existing and prospective library collections of Chicago, and to be of the
greatest possible value to the whole city.

That wish has been gratified, and he has established in the heart of the
city a great institution of education and enlightenment that will radiate
ever-increasing light down through the ages.

It was Franklin MacVeagh who said of Mr. Crerar at the great
memorial meeting in the Central Music Hall: "He has set us an example
of the right use of wealth, the great uses of wealth, the permanent uses
of wealth, and the final uses of wealth."

His will was the natural outcome and expression of his entire life.
He was one of those men whose life and death glorify humanity and
help us to understand something of the meaning of that word: "God
created man in his own image."

INDEX

Adams, J. McGregor, 363, 364, 365, 366,
375

Adams & Westlake Company, 366, 367

Addams, Jane, 136, 357

A. E. Kent & Company, 87

Aermotor Company, 264

Alfred University, 354, 357

Allen, Ethan, 200

Allen and McKey, 8

Allerton, S. W., 169, 367

American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, 271

American Baptist Antislavery Conven-
tion, 247

American Baptist Education Society, 74,
75

American Baptist Home Mission Society,
76, 77

American Museum of Natural History,
362

American Radiator Company, 301, 302,
303,306, 311

American Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals, 362

American Sunday School Union, 169, 362,
370

Ames Agricultural College. See Iowa
State College

Amherst College, 293

Andrews, Clement W., 379, 380

Andrews, Dr. Edmund, 109

Anti-Masonic Crusade, 247

Arlington (Mass.), 59, 65, 66, 68, 71, 75,

76, 78, 79, 80

Armour and Company, 228

Armour, George A., 101, 378

Armour, P. D., 23, 93, 171, 180, 228,

238
Arnold, Hon. Isaac N., 37, 39, 40, 41, 43,

44, 53, 54, 55
Arnot, Judge, 54

Arnot, Marianna. See Ogden, Mrs.
William Butler

Art Institute, n, 99, 270, 377; Henry
Field Memorial Room, 22

Atwood, Dr. Wallace, 270

Audubon Society of the State of New-
York, 362

Aydelotte, Dr., 250
Ayer, Ed. E., 32

Bankers' Club, 271
Baptist Social Union of Chicago, 76
Baptist Theological Union, 71, 325
Baptist Union Theological Seminary, 71,
72, 73, "3, "5, 251, 253, 313, 325, 362
Barber, Rev. Edward, 246
Barnes, Herbert, 181
Barnes, Lawrence, 252
Barnstable (Mass.), 177, 178
Bayliss, Dr., 343
Beatty, Lady, 8
Beatty, Sir David, 8
Beaubien, Mark, 152, 157, 279
Beecher, Jerome, 156
Beecher, Mrs. Jerome, 156, 166
Beloit College, 106
Beloit & Madison Railroad, 48

Bentley, Nancy. See Walker, Mrs.
Charles

Berea College, 221

Beveridge, A. J., 220

Bid well, General John, 63, 64, 65, 66

BUI, Fred A., 232

Billings, A. M., 367

Billings, Dr. Frank, 375

Bishop, Henry W., 378

Bissell, Harriet. See Williams, Mrs. Eli

Buell

Black Hawk War, 148
Blackstone, T. B., 23, 368, 378
Blair, Henry A., in
Blair, William, 1 1 1
Blaisdell, Daniel, 205
Blake, Admiral, 57
Blake, Benjamin, 59
Blake, Ellis, 79
Blake, Ellis Gray, 59

382

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Blake, Mrs. Ellis Gray (Ann Elizabeth
Wyman), 59, 60

Blake, E. Nelson, i, 57 ff., 114

Blake, E. Nelson, Jr., 79, 80

Blake, Mrs. E. Nelson (Annie E. Whit-
ten), 68, 76

Blake, Mrs. E. Nelson (Lucie A. Tucker),
80

Blake, Herdman and Company, 68

Blake, Humphrey, 57

Blake, James, 58, 59

Blake, John Bidwell, 79

Blake, Mabel E. See Kohlsaat, Mrs.

Herman H.
Blake, Nathaniel, 59
Blake and Page Company, 68, 69
Blake, Shaw and Company, 68, 76
Blake, Stephen P., 60, 63, 64, 79
Blake, Walker and Company, 68
Blake, William, 57, 58, 59
Blatchford, E. W., 112, 378
Blodgett, Judge, 221
Bloomington (111.), 48, 285

Blue Island Land and Building Company,

112, 114, 120

Board of Real Estate Managers, 69
Bond, Benjamin, 289, 290
Bond, Mrs. Benjamin (Louisa Eaton), 290
Bond Bible Class, 305, 307
Bond, David, 290, 292, 294
Bond, Edward, 289
Bond, Elfleda. See Goodspeed, Mrs.

Edgar J.

Bond, Henry, 290
Bond, John, 289
Bond, Jonas, 289
Bond, Joseph, 289 ff.
Bond, Mrs. Joseph (Mary Adelia Olney),

297, 3°!, 3°9
Bond, Louise. See Rhodes, Mrs. Joseph F.

Bond Memorial Chapel, 309
Bond, Nelson, 290, 293
Bond, Rufus, 290, 291, 293
Bond, Sylvester, 290, 293
Bond, Thomas, 289
Bond, William, 289
Booth, Judge Henry, 323, 345
Botsford, Jabez K., 155, 156
Bowen, James H., in

Boyd, William, 359, 360

Boyd, Mrs. William (Mrs. John Crerar,

Sr.), 359, 36°, 36i, 374
Boyles, Judge, 342
Bradley, Hon. Joseph, 205
Brantley, Dr., 246
Brewster, William, 173
Briggs, Governor, 247
Bronson, Arthur, 43
Bross, William, 108, 164
Brown, Daniel C., 60
Brown University, 106
Brown, William Adams, 362
Buckingham, Clarence, 169
Bucknell University, 298
Burke, R. M., 89, 90
Burley, Arthur G., 314
Bums, Captain, 225, 227
Burt, Henry, 200
Butler, Benjamin F., 37
Butler, Charles, 37
Butterfield, J., 43

Calumet Club, 93, in, 155, 156, 165, 283,

373

Carpenter, Philo, 37, 155, 314
Carter, Mrs. Sarah F. See Colver, Mrs.

Nathaniel

Carrel, Dr. Alexis, 144
Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company, 5, 8
Gary, Deacon, 3
Caton, Delia Spencer. See Field, Mrs.

Marshall

Caton, Judge John Dean, 37, 39, 151, 155
Centenary Church, 345, 347, 348
Centennial Movement, 72, 73
Century Club (New York), 364
Chesbrough, E. S., 47
C. H. and G. C. Walker Company, 109
Chapman, Ada. See Walker, Mrs.

George Clarke
Charles City (Iowa), 262
Charles Hitchcock Hall, 222
Chicago & Alton Railroad, 51, 368
Chicago Athletic Club, 271
Chicago Baptist Social Union, 72
Charles Walker and Sons, 107
Chicago Academy of Sciences, 52, 109,

117, 118, 270

INDEX

383

Chicago Bar Association, 214, 217, 220,
221, 223, 326, 327

Chicago Bible Society, 371, 378
Chicago Board of Trade, 46, 69, 70, 77,

87, 88, 90,93, 101, 112, 115
Chicago Cavalry, 157
Chicago Chamber of Commerce, 115

Chicago City Railway Company, 13, 163,
165, 214, 215

Chicago Club, 23, 32, 108, in, 214, 305
Chicago College of Law, 254
Chicago Commons Association, 285

Chicago: early days of, 5, 37, 38, 39, 40,
104, 150, 151-55, 158, 209, 280, 281,
314, 315; first board of health of, 42;
first school house, 209; first census of,
42; first mayor of, 39; incorporated as
village, 154; reorganized as city, 158,
164

Chicago: in 1833, 150, 151, 152, 155, 280;
in 1835-36, 37, 38, 39, 314, 3*5; in
1847-48, 104; in 1851-52, 4; in 1856, 5

Chicago Female College, 1 13
Chicago Fire. See Great Fire
Chicago & Fort Wayne Railway, 47, 50
Chicago, Fulton, and River Line. See

Diamond Jo Line

Chicago Gas Light and Coke Company.
See Peoples Gas Light and Coke Com-
pany

Chicago Historical Society, n, 48, 54,
214, 217, 271, 331, 371

Chicago Home for Aged Persons, 285

Chicago Home for Destitute Crippled
Children, 285

Chicago Home for the Friendless, 324, 371
Chicago Home Guard, 163
Chicago Home for Incurables, 21

Chicago, Iowa, and Nebraska Railroad,
101

Chicago & Joliet Railway, 368
Chicago Law Institute, 214, 331
Chicago Library Association, n, 43, 214
Chicago Literary Club, 214, 271, 331,

37i, 374, 376, 377, 378
Chicago Manual Training School, 18,

3i3, 331,372
Chicago Newsboys' Home, 133

Chicago & North Western Railway Com-
pany, 23, 48, 50, 51, 162

Chicago Nursery and Half-Orphan
Asylum, 273

Chicago Orphan Asylum, 166, 169, 285,
37i

Chicago Packing and Provision Com-
pany, 87, 88, 89

Chicago Peace Society, 353
Chicago, Pittsburgh & Fort Wayne Rail-
road, 50
Chicago Relief and Aid Society, n, 371

Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway
Company, 23, 113

Chicago, St. Paul & Fond du Lac Rail-
road, 48, 49

Chicago Traction Company, 88
Chicago Trades Assembly, 89

Chicago Union Stock Yards, 88, 89, 90,
180, 181, 191, 193, 196

Chicago Woman's Club, 221

Citizen's League, 1 1

Civic Federation of Chicago, 269

Civil War, 51, 52, 63, 133, 258, 292, 293,
321, 322

Clancy, Rev. J. F., 195, 196
Clark, John L., 109
Clark, John M., 378

Clark, Sally. See Colver, Mrs. Na-
thaniel

Clarke, Mary. See Walker, Mrs. Charles

Clarkson, Bishop, 54

Cleaver, Charles, 155, 160, 161

Cleveland, Grover, 200

Clissold, Henry R., 317

Clissold, Mrs. Henry R. (Emma I.

Smith), 317

Cobb Lecture Hall, 96, 168, 169
Cobb, Silas, 147
Cobb, Silas Bowman, 117, 118, 120,

147 ff., 166, 314

Cobb, Mrs. Silas Bowman (Maria
Warren), 158

Coe College, 260, 274
Coleman, Mrs. General G., 169
Colly er, Dr. Robert, 131, 142
Colver, Charles K., 246, 253, 254

Colver Institute. See Richmond Theo-
logical Seminary

Colver, Nathaniel, 243 ff., 321

Colver, Nathaniel, Lectureship and Pub-
lication Fund of the University of
Chicago, 254

Colver, Mrs. Nathaniel (Sally Clark),
244, 245

384

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Colver, Mrs. Nathaniel (Mrs. Sarah F.
Carter), 245, 252

Colver-Rosenberger Lecture Fund, 254
Colver-Rosenberger Scholarship, 254

Colver, Susan Esther. See Rosenberger,

Mrs. Jesse L.
Commercial Club, 18, in, 271, 365, 367,

372,373

Congress of Religions, 353, 354, 357
Connecticut Literary Institution, 84, 85,

94
Connery, J. F., 120

Constitutional Convention of 1869-70,
211, 212

Constitutional Convention of 1862, 212
Conway Academy, 3
Conway (Mass.), i, 2, 4, 21
Cook, General, 109
Cook, W. W., 252
Coolbaugh, Wm. F., 367
Cooley, Farwell & Company, 6, 7
Cooley, Wadsworth & Company, 5, 6
Cooper, James Fenimore, 101
Cooper, Judge, 101
Corn Exchange Bank, 88, 99
Cornell College, 260, 274
Cornell University, 354
Country Home for Convalescent Chil-
dren, 273

Craig, Chief Justice, 216

Crerar, Adams and Co., 365, 366, 369

Crerar, John, 23, 359 ff .

Crerar, John, Sr., 359, 360

Crerar, Mrs. John, Sr. See Boyd, Mrs.

William

Crerar, Peter, 359, 360
Croffut, William A., 13
Crowell, Paul, 176

Crowell, Sally Sears. See Swift, Mrs.

William
Culver, Helen, 56, 134, 137, 138, 139, 140,

143, i4S
Curtis, George Ticknor, 203

Dake Bakery, 68, 76

Dartmouth College, 203, 204, 205, 293

Daughters of the American Revolution,

324

Davis, Deacon, 4, 5
Davis, Mial, 252

Deering, William, 263

Deery, John, 228

Democratic party, 17, 36, 39, 48, 70, 282,

327

Denegre, Mrs. Walter, 169
Denison University, 250
Detroit Radiator Company, 302
Diamond Jo Line, 230, 231, 232
Dibblee, Henry, i
Dickerson, J. Spencer, vii
Dickey, Hugh T., 108
Divinity School, 73, 75, 305, 309, 325, 326
Doane, John W., 367
Dole, George W., 155, 280
Dorchester (Mass.), i, 57, 58, 59
Dorchester (Mass.) Historical Society, 58
Douglas, Stephen A., 51, 102, 319
Drummond, Judge Thomas, 101, 314
Dupee, Charles A., 206, 209, 210, 218, 219
Dupee, Judah, and Willard, 216
Dyar, John B., 302

East Boston (Mass.), 68

Eastham (Mass.), 177

Eaton, Darius, 293

Eaton, Louisa. See Bond, Mrs. Benjamin

Eaton, Robert, 49

Eberhart, John F., 337, 343, 352, 357

Eberhart, Rev. Uriah, 337

Edwards, Jonathan, 244

Eli B. Williams and Harriet B. Williams

Memorial Fund, 286
Elliott, Dr. Charles, 340, 341
Ellis, E. W., 174, 175, 176, 188
EUsworth, J. W., 32
Erie Railroad, 36
Erring Women's Refuge, 52

Fair, Robert M., 17
Fairbank, N. K., 367
Farwell, Field & Company, 7, 8
Farwell, John V., 6, 7, 16, 131
Farwell, John V., Jr., 7
Federal Trades of the United States, 88
Felton, S. M., 23
Field, Chandler A., i
Field Columbian Museum. See Field
Museum of Natural History

Field, Ethel Newcomb, 8

INDEX

385

Field, Fidelia Nash, i, 2

Field, Gwendolyn, 25

Field, Helen Eliza. See James, Helen

Field

Field, Henry, i, 5, 7, 10, 22
Field, Henry (grandson of Marshall

Field), 25, 30
Field, John, i

Field, Joseph Nash, i, 4, 5, 9, 10, 13, 16
Field, Laura Nash, i
Field, Leiter & Company, 10, 12, 13, 14,

IS, 24

Field, Lewis, 8

Field, Marshall, i ff., 367, 378
Field, Mrs. Marshall (Nannie Scott), 8,

22

Field, Mrs. Marshall (Delia Spencer

Caton), 25

Field, Marshall, Jr., 8
Field, Mrs. Marshall, Jr. (Albertine D.

Huck), 8

Field, Marshall, III, 25, 30, 31, 34
Field Museum of Natural History, 21,

30, 31, 32, 33, 34
Field, Palmer & Leiter, 8
Field, Stanley, 13, 25, 33, 34
Field, Zechariah, i
Field's Hill, 2, 3
Fire. See Great Fire
First Baptist Church: (Chicago), 105,

107, 158; (Cincinnati), 250; (Detroit),

250; (Philadelphia), 246; (Waltham),

296
First Presbyterian Church (Chicago), n,

First University of Chicago, 51, 52, 55, 56,
71, 102, 109, 113, 137, 143, 251, 253,
254, 313, 3i9, 320, 325, 373

Five Points House of Industry, 362

Fleming, William, 229

Fort Dearborn, 41, 127, 151, 152, 156,

159, 169, 280, 314
Fort Sumter, 163
Fortnightly Club, 221, 324
Forty Club, 271
Foster, Dr., 164
Foster, G. B., 357
Foster Hall, 164
Fourth Presbyterian Church (Chicago),

274
Franco-Prussian War of 1870, 54

Freeport (111.), 46
Freer, L. C. P., 14
Free-Soilers, 48

French, Mr., 87

Fresh Air Association, 112

Fuller, Melville W., 219, 367
Fulton, Dr. J. D., 247

Gage, General, 201

Gage, Lyman J., 367

Gale, Abram, 314

Gale, E. O., 156, 157

Gale, Stephen F., 157, 314

Galena & Chicago Union, 45, 46, 51, 101,

162, 211

Gallup, Benjamin E., 206
Gallup and Hitchcock, 206
Gates, F. T., 19, 20, 74, 79
Gault, John C., 367
George C. Walker and Company, 109
Giffen, Mrs. Frances A., 260
Gifford, Dr. O. P., 306, 307
Gilbert Timothy, 248, 249
Gillett, Lucinda. See Mrs. Albert Kent
Glessner, John J., 367
Goodrich, Judge Grant, 37, 281
Goodspeed, Charles T. B., viii
Goodspeed, Mrs. Edgar J. (Elfleda Bond),

299, 307, 3°9
Goodspeed, Rev. Dr. Edgar J., 70, 251,

324

Goss and Cobb, 147, 154
Goss, Oliver, 148, 149, 154, 155
Graceland Cemetery Company, no
Grand Army of the Republic, 79, 333
Grand Trunk Railway, 182
Grant, William C., 223
Great (Chicago) Fire, 11, 12, 13, 15, 22,

24, 52, 68, 115, 165, 213, 283, 317, 344,

366, 374

Great Lakes, 43, 44, 107, 161, 207
Great War, 31, 33, 98, 145, 271, 275, 277
Greek Fellowship at the University of

Chicago, 223

Green, Andrew H., 54, 55
Griggs, S. C., 106, 108
Griggs, Mrs. S. C. (Mary C. Walker),

103, 106

Gunsaulus, Dr. Frank W., 357
Gurnee, Denton, 108

386

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Haddock, Edward H., 155, 164

Haines, Elijah M., 314

Hall, Abigail L. See Hitchcock, Mrs.

Charles

Hamden (Conn.), 284
Ha mill, Ernest A., n*
Hamilton Club, 271, 326
Hamilton Theological Seminary, 245
Hanecy, Judge Elbridge, 327
Harper, Dr. William R., 55, 74, 77, 95, 99>

118, 119, 121, 143, 167, 169, 222, 330
Harris, N. W., 196
Harrison, Carter H., Sr., 70
Harrison, General, 160
Hartford (Conn.), i, 85, 283
Harvard College, 200, 204
Harvard Law School, 128, 205, 206
Harvey, Scudder and Company, 66, 67
Hathaway, James A., 179
Hathaway & Swift, 179, 180, 184
Hatheway, J. P., 151
Healy, G. P. A., 41, 54
Heckman, Wallace, 286
Helen Culver Fund, 144
Helmer, Frank A., 326
H. H. Kohlsaat and Company, 76
Higgins, Annie Maria. See Swift, Mrs.

Gustavus Franklin
Higgins, Richard, 177
Higgins, Van H., in
High, James L., 379
Higinbotham, Harlow N., 12, 15, 367
Hinton, M. G., 158
Hiram W. Thomas Lectures, 358

Hiram W. Thomas Memorial Congrega-
tional Church, 357

Hirsch, Rabbi Emil G., 357
Hitchcock, Charles, Jr., 199 ff.
Hitchcock, Mrs. Charles, Jr. (Annie

McClure), 207, 209, 210, 217, 218, 221,

222, 223

Hitchcock, Charles, Sr., 201
Hitchcock, Mrs. Charles, Sr. (Abigail L.
Hall), 201, 202

Hitchcock and Dupee, 206, 216
Hitchcock, Dupee, and Evarts, 206
Hitchcock, Dupee, and Judah, 207, 216
Hitchcock, D wight, 199
Hitchcock, Ebenezer, 200

Hitchcock, Mrs. Ebenezer (Mary Shel-

don), 200

Hitchcock, Gad, 200, 201
Hitchcock, Gad, Jr., 201
Hitchcock and Goodwin, 206, 209
Hitchcock, John, 200
Hitchcock, Luke, 199, 200
Hitchcock, Matthias, 200
Hodges, Charles H., 303
Hoffman, Charles Fenno, 152
Holden, Charles N., 73
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 200
Home of the Friendless, 169
Horace Mann School, 253, 254
Hot Springs Railroad, 234, 235, 240
Howard Taylor Ricketts Laboratory, 144
Hoyne, Thomas, 37
Hubbard, Gurdon S., 37, 155, 157, 160,

Huck, Albertine D. See Field, Mrs.

Marshall, Jr.
Huck, Louis C., 8
Hughitt, Marvin, 367
Hull, Benjamin, 123

Hull, Mrs. Benjamin (Sarah Morley), 123
Hull Biological Laboratories, 144, 145
Hull, Charles Jerold, 123 ff.
Hull, Mrs. Charles Jerold (Melicent A.

C. Loomis), 127, 137, 138
Hull, Charles Morley, 137
Hull, Fredrika Bremer, 137
Hull- House, 123, 135, 143
Hull-House Association, 143
Hull, Rev. Joseph, 123
Hull, Louis Kossouth, 137
Hull, Robert, 123, 126
Hull, Mrs. Robert (Sarah Slocum), 123,

126

Hunt, Dr. Emory W., 297
Hunter, Major General, 160
Hutchinson, B. P., 367
Hutchinson, Charles L., 5, in
Hutchinson Commons, 222, 240

Ida Noyes Hall, 266, 267, 274
Illinois College (Jacksonville), 285
Illinois Constitutional Convention. See

Constitutional Convention
Illinois Farmers' Hall of Fame, 259, 269

INDEX

387

Illinois Humane Society, no

Illinois Manufacturers' Association, 269

Illinois and Michigan Canal, 41, 43, 102,

106, 107, 118, 157, 213, 280
Illinois National Guard, 353, 357
Illinois Savings Institutions, 48
Illinois Steel Company, 88
Illinois Training School for Nurses, 324,

371

Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, 368
Illinois Wesleyan University, 285
Illinois & Wisconsin Railroad, 48
Immanuel Baptist Church, 121, 254,

3°S
International Congress of Commerce and

Industry, 269

International Harvester Company, 263
Interstate Commerce Commission, 268
Iowa State College, 260, 272
Iowa Wesleyan University, 340

Jackson, Andrew, 36
Jackson, Huntington W., 378
James, Mrs. Helen Field, i, 2, 3, 5
James, Hon. Lyman D., i
James Millikin University, 285
Jekyl Island Fishing Club, 23
Jesup, Kennedy and Adams, 363, 364
Jesup, Kennedy & Co., 363, 364, 365
Jesup, Morris K., 361, 362, 363, 364
Jessup, Jane. See Noyes, Mrs. Leonard

R.

Jewell, Harvey, 205

John Crerar Library, 377, 378, 379, 380
John Crerar Scholarship, 372
John F. Slater Fund for the Education

of Freedmen, 362
John V. Farwell & Company, 12
Johns Hopkins University, 97
Johnson, Dr. D. S., 217, 218
Johnson, Hon. Reverdy, 129
Joliet Steel Company, 368
Jones, Arthur B., 19
Joseph Reynolds Scholarships of the

University of Chicago, 240, 241
Judah, Noble B., 207
Judd, N. B., 44
Judson, Harry Pratt, vii, 119, 275, 286,

33°

Kane County, 86

Keen, Mrs. Mary M. See Walker, Mrs.

George Clarke
Keep, Albert, 169, 378
Keep, Chauncey, in
Keith brothers, 23
Keith, Edson, 378
Kennedy, John S., 364
Kennicott, Robert, 109
Kent, Albert, 84, 85, 86
Kent, Mrs. Albert (Lucinda Gillett), 84,

85

Kent, Albert E., 86, 99
Kent, Amos, 84
Kent, Chancellor, 84
Kent Chemical Laboratory, 95, 96, 116,

117

Kent, Elihu, 84
Kent, Helen L. See Massenat, Mrs.

Andre

Kent, Henry P., 84
Kent, John, 83, 84

Kent Memorial Library (Suffield), 94
Kent, Samuel, 83, 84
Kent, Sidney Albert, i, 56, 83 ff., 116,

117, 118, 199
Kent, Mrs. Sidney Albert (Stella A.

Lincoln), 91

Kent, Stella A. See Legare, Mrs. A. K.
Kent, Honorable William, 99
Killen, John, 238
Kimball Union Academy, 293
Kimball, Walter, 155
King, Philip's War, 289
King, Tuthill, 37, 101, 108, 314
Kinzie, James, 152
Kinzie, John, 39
Kinzie, John H., 39, 157
Kirby Carpenter Company, 88
Kohlsaat, Christian C., 323, 324
Kohlsaat, Herman H., 76, 82
Kohlsaat, Mrs. Herman H. (Mabel E.

Blake), 68, 76, 78, 80

Labor party, 90
Laflin, Matthew, 49
Lake Champlain, 243
Lake Forest University, 254
Lake Geneva (Wis.), 112, 120

388

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Lakeside Press, 7

La Verne Noyes Foundation of the Uni-
versity of Chicago, 275, 276, 277

Lawrence, C. B., 214, 215

League to Enforce Peace, 271

Legare, A. K., 92

Legare, Mrs. A. K. (Stella A. Kent), 92

Legare, Sidney Kent, 92

Leiter, Levi Z., 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 22,
27, 367

Leon Mandel Assembly Hall, 222, 240

Lewis Institute, 261, 270

Lima Academy, 126, 127

Lincoln, Abraham, 45, 50

Lincoln, Robert T., 23, 25, 214, 378

Lincoln Statue, 378

Lincoln, Stella A. See Kent, Mrs. Sidney

Albert

Lincoln, W. S., 91
Liverpool, London, and Globe Insurance

Company, 368
Loomis, Melicent A. See Hull, Mrs.

Charles Jerold, 127
Lorimer, Dr. George C., 121
Lyman, F. O., 220
Lyman and Jackson, 378

MacLeish, Andrew, 5, 73
MacVeagh, Franklin, 26, 367, 380
McAllister, Judge W. R., 212, 213
McClure, Annie. See Hitchcock, Mrs.

Charles

McClure, James, 207, 208
McClure, Mrs. James, 208
McClurg, General A. C., 367
McCormick, Cyrus H., 23, 47, 269
McCormick Theological Seminary, 52
McDonald, Margaret. See Thomas,

Mrs. John
McKesson, Dr., 337
McPherson, Dr. S. J., 369, 378
McWilliams, John G., 16
McWilliams, Lafayette, 17
Magruder, Judge B. D., 377
Mandel Brothers, 6, 8
Mandel, Emmanuel, 8
Mandel, Leon, 8
Mandel, Simon, 8
Manierre, Edward, 314
Manierre, Judge George, 37

Marshall, Chief Justice John, 218, 220
Marshall Field & Company, 9, 16, 17, 28,

29

Marshall, Leon Carroll, 286
Massachusetts Baptist State Missionary

Society, 79
Massenat, Andre, 92
Massenat, Mrs. Andre (Helen L. Kent),

92

Massey, Gerald, 345
Mather, Cotton, 57
Mather, Increase, 57, 59
Mather, Rev. Richard, 57, 58
Matteson, Joseph, 162
Medill, Joseph, 211, 212, 213
Meeker, Arthur B., 107
Meeker, Mrs. Arthur B., 107
Menotomy Trust Company, 78, 81
Mercantile Library Association, 364, 374
Merchants Loan and Trust Company, 23 ,

48, 214, 285, 287, 367
Merchant's Loan, Trust and Savings

Bank, 88
Merrick, Emeline C. See Thomas, Mrs.

Hiram Washington
Merrick, George B., 225, 227, 229, 230,

232, 235, 237, 239
Mexican War, 63
Michigan Central Railroad, 4, 46, 127,

364

Michigan Radiator and Iron Manu-
facturing Company, 302

Michigan Southern Railroad, 4, 46. 208,

364

Millard, S. P., 326

Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad, 229
Minnesota Packet Company, 229
Mississippi River, 225, 230, 231, 232, 233
Mitchell Tower, 222, 240
M. K. Jesup & Company, 364
Monmouth College, 285
Monson Academy, 293
Morey, Frances B. See Smith, Mrs.

Frederick A.

Morey, Rev. Reuben B., 324
Morey, William Carey, 324
Morgan, J. Pierpont, 4, 27
Morgan Park Academy for Boys, 73, 113,

114
Morgan Park Military Academy. See

Morgan Park Academy for Boys

INDEX

389

Morley, Sarah. See Hull, Mrs. Benjamin

Morton, Mary E. See Reynolds, Mrs.

Joseph

Morton, Mr., of Rockland, N.Y., 227
Moulton, Frank I., 326
Moulton, Harold G., 14
Mount Carroll Seminary, 354
Mulkey, John H., 379
Myers, Dr. Johnston, 121, 307

Nathanael Greene School, 254

National Bank of Illinois, 163

National Biscuit Company, 76

National Business League of America, 268

National Convention of 1912, 268

National Metal Trades Association, 270

National Pacific Railway Convention, 47

National Reciprocity League, 269

Neilson, Mrs. Helen Swift, 171

Nelson, Murry, 93

Nelson, Rev. Ebenezer, 60

Nesbit, W. D., 271

New England Society, 362

New York City Mission and Tract

Society, 362

New York Cotton Exchange, 116
New York Institution for the Instruction

of the Deaf and Dumb, 362
New York Stock Exchange, 116
Newberry Library, 43, 377
Nicolaus, Mr., 63
Nobel prize, 144

North Baptist Church (Chicago), 251
North Chicago City Railway, 50
Northern Trust Company, 88
Northwestern Educational Society, 45
Northwestern Packet Company, 229

Northwestern University, 194; Annie
May Swift Hall, 194

Noyes, La Verne, 257 ff.

Noyes, Mrs. La Verne (Ida E. Smith),
262, 266, 267, 269, 270, 273

Noyes, Leonard R., 257

Noyes, Mrs. Leonard R. (Jane Jessup),

257
Nursery and Half Orphan Asylum, 371

Ogden Fund, 56

Ogden Graduate School of Science, 35, 36

Ogden, Mahlon D., 43, 53

Ogden, Sheldon & Company, 38

Ogden, William Butler, vii, i, 35, 101,
104, 162, 165, 213, 314

Ogden, Mrs. William Butler (Marianna

Arnot), 54
Oglesby, R. J., 90
Old Peoples' Home, 169, 285, 371
Old University of Chicago. See First

University of Chicago
Olney, Charles, 297
Olney, Lewis, 297
Olney, Mary Adelia. See Bond, Mrs.

Joseph

Olney, Thomas, 297
Omaha National Bank, 5
Onwentsia Club, 305
Osbourne, William, 161
Ottawa University, 354

Page, Kilby, 68

Palmer, John M., 207

Palmer, Milton J., 8, u, 14

Palmer, Potter, 5, 6, 8

Palmer, Mrs. Potter, Jr., 80

Panama Canal, 269

Panic of 1837, 42, 44, 159

Panic of 1857, 48, 136, 165

Panic of 1867, 10, 27

Panic of 1873, 24> 27

Park Ridge School for Girls, 273

Patterson, Dr. R. W., 209, 210

Peabody Fund, 173

Pearsons, Dr. D. K., 169

Peary Arctic Club, 362

Peck, Ebenezer, 44

Peck, P. F. W., 108, 155, 280, 314

Pelee Fishing Club, 23, 32

Pennoyer, James, 316

Pennoyer, John, 316

Pennoyer, Stephen, 316, 317

Pennoyer, Susan. See Smith, Mrs.

Israel G.

Pennsylvania Lines, 35
Pennsylvania Railroad System, 50
People's Church, 343, 351, 352, 353, 354,

355, 356, 357
Peoples Gas Light and Coke Company,

88, 163, 282

Perkins, Dwight H., 222
Peshtigo, Wis., 48, 53

390

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Phillips-Andover Academy, 203
Philosophical Society, 344, 346

Pierce, John B., 294, 295, 297, 298, 299
300, 301, 302, 303

Pierce Steam Heating Company, 300,

302, 306
Pioneer Hook and Ladder Company, 156

Pittsburgh Conference of the Evangelical
Association, 336

Pittsfield (Mass.), 4, 5, 6
Plainfield (111.), 154
Plainfield (N.Y.), 101, 103

Pratt, Elizabeth Fiske. See Williams,
Mrs. Eli Buell

Presbyterian League, 370
Presbyterian Hospital, 371
Press Building, 222
Press Club, 271
Price, Henry W., 326
Prindeville, Redmond, 37, 38
Progressive party, 268
Prohibition party, 63
Pullman Company, 23
Pullman, George M., 5, 23, 25, 367
Pullman Palace Car Company, 368
Pynchon, Colonel John, 200

Quint, Wilder D., 204

Rapid Transit Commission, 362

Raymond, Benjamin W., 162

Ream, N. B., 23

Reichelt, John A., 73

Remsen, Professor, 97

Republican party, 17, 49, 51, 70, 141, 268,

3°5, 324, 327, 373
Republican State Convention, 48
Reynolds, Blake, 233, 234, 235
Reynolds Clubhouse, 222, 240, 241
Reynolds, Diamond Jo. See Reynolds,

Joseph

Reynolds, Isaac, 226
Reynolds, Joseph, 225 ff.

Reynolds, Mrs. Joseph (Mary E. Mor-
ton), 227, 233, 234, 236, 239, 240

Reynolds & Son, 234
Rhodes, David Eaton, 309
Rhodes, Foster Bond, 309
Rhodes, Mrs. Joseph F. (Louise Pierce
Bond), 299, 307, 309

Rhodes, Kenneth Olney, 309

Rhodes, Robert Edgar, 309

Richardson and Bond, 296

Richmond Theological Seminary, 252

Ridgemoor Country Club, 332

River and Harbor Convention, 45, 161,

282

Robbins, Nathan, 59
Robertson, David A., vii
Rock Island Railway, 47
Rock River Conference, 345
Rock River Valley Railroad, 48
Rockefeller, John D., viii, 19, 21, 73, 74,

113, 114, 222

Rockford College for Women, 285
Rockland (N.Y.), 226, 227, 228
Roosevelt, Theodore, 268
Root, James P., 214
Rosenberger, Jesse L., 254
Rosenberger, Mrs. Jesse L. (Susan Esther

Colver), 253, 254
Rosenberger Prize of the University of

Chicago, 255
Rosen wald Hall, 120
Rosenwald, Julius, 56, 119
Rucker, H. L., 281
Rumsey, Julian S., 101, 314
Rush Medical College, 44, 55, 56, 105,

128,313,331

Russell, Charles E., 183, 184
Russell, Samuel, 49
Ryerson, Martin A., 56, 97, in
Ryerson Physical Laboratory, 96, 97

Sailors' Snug Harbor, 362

St. Andrew's Society of New York, 371

Saint Gaudens, Augustus, 377

St. James's Episcopal Church, 39, 281

St. James' Methodist Church, 196

St. Louis (Mo.), 105, 106

St. Luke's Free Hospital, 285, 371

San Jose Mission, 64

Sandwich, Cape Cod, 171

Santa Fe, Prescott, and Phoenix Railway

Company, 239

Santa Fe Railroad Company, 88
Savage, Case & Company, 86
Scammon, J. Young, 37, 41, 42, 45, 46,

101, 104, 109, 162, 314
Schilling, George A., 88, 89, 90, 91

INDEX

391

School of Domestic Arts and Sciences, 324
Scotch Presbyterian Church (New York),

370

Scott, Nannie. Sec Field, Mrs. Marshall
Scott, Robert, 8
Sears, Barnas, 173
Second Baptist Church (Chicago), 70,

251,313,323,324
Second Presbyterian Church (Chicago),

158, 209, 369, 370, 378

Self ridge, Harry G., 27
Sewerage Commission, 47
Shaw, W. W., 76

Shedd, John G., 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 27, 30
Sheldon, E. H., 40
Sheldon, Gilbert, 200
Sheldon, Mary. See Hitchcock, Mrs.
Ebenezer

Shepard, Mrs. Roger, 80
Shepherd, Edward S., 366, 367
Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, 21
Shorey, Daniel L., 19, 203, 204, 205, 218,

222

Shorey, Paul, 222

Simonds, O. C., 260, 274

Simpson, James, 25, 26, 30

Singer Company, 14

Skinner, Judge Mark, 37

Slocum, Sarah. See Hull, Mrs. Robert

Smeallie, Agnes. See Boyd, Mrs. William

Smith, Rev. C. Billings, 317

Smith, Edwin D., 317

Smith, Emma I. See Clissold, Mrs.
Henry R.

Smith, Frederick A., 313 ff.
Smith, Mrs. Frederick A. (Frances B.
Morey), 324, 331

Smith, Gustavus V., 315

Smith, Henry, 317

Smith, Ida E. See Noyes, Mrs. LaVerne

Smith, Israel G., 315, 316, 317, 319, 331

Smith, Mrs. Israel G. (Susan Pennoyer),
316,317,318,331

Smith, Dr. Justin A., 245, 247, 251
Smith and Kohlsaat, 323
Smith, Marcellus, 315
Smith, Sol. A., 164

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals. See Illinois Humane Society

Society for the Suppression of Vice, 362

South Park Board, 214, 377
South Park System, 274
South Side Railway, 13, 164
Southfield. See Suffield
Spaulding, Dr. W. J., 340, 341
Springfield (Mass.), 83, 85, 199, 200,

211

Springville (Iowa), 257, 258
Standish, Captain Miles, 172
Steele, Ashbel, 157
Stieglitz, Julius, 98
Stiles, Ezra, 200
Strong, General Henry, 53
Sturges, Charles M., 214
Suffield (Conn.), 83, 85, 92, 199

Suffield School. See Connecticut Liter-
ary Institution

Sumner, Edward A., 303

Susan Colver Rosenberger Prize Fund,

255

Sutter, Captain J. A., 63
Swift, Annie May, 178
Swift Brothers, 185
Swift, Charles Henry, 171, 178
Swift, Edward Foster, 178, 196
Swift, Edwin C., 184, 185, 186

Swift, G. F., & Co., 177, 185, 186, 188,
226; branches: Fort Worth, 188;
Kansas City, 188; Omaha, 188; St.
Joseph (Mo.), 1 88; St. Louis, 188;
St. Paul, 188

Swift, G. F., Memorial Church (Saga-
more), 196

Swift, George Hastings, 194
Swift, Gustavus F., Jr., 194, 196
Swift, Gustavus Franklin, 171 ff., 226

Swift, Mrs. Gustavus Franklin (Annie
Maria Higgins), 171, 177, 195, 196

Swift, Harold Higgins, 171, 194

Swift, Helen Louise, 178

Swift, Helen. See Neilson, Mrs. Helen

Swift

Swift, Herbert L., 194
Swift, Jane, 173
Swift, Lincoln, 178
Swift, Louis F., 177, 184, 195
Swift, Nathaniel, 177, 178
Swift, Noble, 175, 177
Swift, Ruth May, 194
Swift, William, 172, 173

392

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES

Swift, Mrs. William (Sally Sears), 173
Swing, David, 142, 335, 349
"Swyft," William and Elizabeth, 171
Syrian Protestant College, 362

Tabernacle Baptist Church, 250, 251,
3i7, 3*9, 323

Talcott, Mancel, 316

Taylor, Benjamin F., 104

Taylor, Colonel E. D., 49

Temple's Academy, 105

Templeton, Thomas, 17

Ten Broeck Academy, 354

Theological Lecture Hall, 309

Thomas, Dr. Hiram Washington, 142,
335 ff.

Thomas, Mrs. Hiram Washington (Eme-
line C. Merrick), 338, 339, 340, 341,
346, 352, 353

Thomas, Mrs. Hiram Washington (Van-
delia Varnum), 354, 357, 358

Thomas, Dr. Homer M., 342

Thomas, Joseph, 335, 338

Thomas, Mrs. Joseph (Margaret Mc-
Donald), 335

Thomas (Dr.) World Peace Prize Con-
test, 357

Thompson, John H., 221

Thomson, Judge Charles M., 330

Tilden, Samuel J., 49

Tremont Temple, 249

Trumbull, Lyman, 50

Tucker, Lucie A. See Blake, Mrs. E.
Nelson

Turner, John B., 162, 314
Tyrrell, J. A., 169

Union Avenue Methodist Church, 195

Union Band Bible Class, 324

Union Iron Company, 88

Union League Club: Chicago, 23, 93, 271,

331; New York, 23, 305, 364
Union Manufacturing Company, 296
Union Pacific Railway, 47, 52

Union Village Church (Greenwich, N.Y.),
246, 248

United Charities of Chicago, u, 273
United States Sanitary Commission, 138
United States Steel Corporation, 189
University of Chicago, vii, viii, 18, 19, 20,
21, 35, 44, 55, 56, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 83,

94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 109, 114, H7,
119, 120, 121, 122, 143, 145, 166-68,

171, 194, 197, 221, 222, 239-41, 253,
254, 255, 266, 267, 274, 275, 276, 285,
287, 305, 3°9, 313, 325, 326, 330,331,

332, 333, 357, 372

University of Chicago Articles of Incor-
poration, 20

University of Chicago Decennial Celebra-
tion, 240

University of Chicago, Old, 1856 to 1886.
See First University of Chicago.

"University of Chicago Scrap Book," 114

University High School, 372

University Record, vii

University of Rochester, 254, 324

Van Osdel, J. M., 40

Varnum, Vandelia. See Thomas, Mrs.
Hiram Washington

Virginia Union University, 252

Wadhams, Seth, 314

Walker, A. H., 102

Walker, Charles, 101, 102, 104, 106, 108,

109

Walker, Mrs. Charles (Mary Clarke), 103
Walker, Mrs. Charles (Nancy Bentley),

103
Walker, Charles H., 103, 106, 107, 109,

in, 116

Walker, Cornelia, 103
Walker, George Clarke, 56, 101 ff.
Walker, Mrs. George Clarke (Ada Chap-
man), 108, 112
Walker, Mrs. George Clarke (Mrs. Mary

M. Keen), 115

Walker Library (Morgan Park), 116
Walker, Mary C. See Griggs, Mrs. S. C.
Walker, William B., 103, in, 117, 169
Walker, Mrs. William B., 166, 169
Walker, Colonel W. W., 101, 103
Walker Museum, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121,

122

Waltham Watch Company, 297
War of 1812, 244
War for Independence, 1 73
Ware (Mass.), 290, 293, 294
Warren, Colonel Daniel, 156
Warren, Maria. See Cobb, Mrs. Silas

Bowman
Washburne, Hon. Elihu B., 54

INDEX

393

Washington, D.C., 92, 205

Washingtonian Home, 132

Watkins, E. T., 169

Webster, Daniel, 174, 203

Weed, Thurlow, 45

Welch, A. S., 260

Weld, William F., 45

Wentworth, John, 37, 157, 158, 283

West Chicago Street Railway, 88, 163

West Stockbridge (Mass.), 244

Western Cracker Bakers' Association, 70,

77
Western Educational Convention, 45

Wethersfield (Conn.), 199, 200

Whig party, 39, 160

White, Dr. R. A., 357

Whitten, Annie E. See Blake, Mrs. E.

Nelson

Whittier, John G., 252
Wilcox, J. B., 229
Wilkinson, Ira O., 214
Willard, Monroe L., 216
Williams, Mrs. Annie C., 284
Williams, Eli Buell, 39, 155, 279 ff., 314
Williams, Mrs. Eli Buell (Elizabeth Fiske

Pratt), 283
Williams, Mrs. Eli Buell (Harriet Bis-

sell), 279, 282, 283, 286
Williams, Elisha Buell, 283
Williams, Erastus L., 206, 207, 216, 219
Williams, Erastus S., in
Williams, Hobart W., 279 ff.
Williams, Holt and Wheeler, 378
Williams, Norman, 375, 3 78

Williams, Roger, 297
Williams and Woodbridgc, 205
Williamsburgh (Mass.), i
Willing, Henry J., 9, 16, 27
Willis, George, 200
Winans, Charles, 181

Wisconsin & Superior Land Grant Rail-
way, 48

Women's Christian Temperance Union,

354

Wood, Cyrus, 66
Wood, William E., 78
Wood, William T., 78
Woodbridge, John, 206, 220
Wbodhouse, L. G., 9
Woolley, Clarence M., 302, 303, 311, 312
World's Antislavery Convention, 248
World's Columbian Exposition, 31, 119
Wright, John S., 151
\Vright, Silas, 200
Wryman, Abner P., 59, 60
Wyman, Ann Elizabeth. See Blake,

Mrs. Ellis Gray
Wyman, John P., 59, 60
Wyman, Samuel F., 59

Yale University, 74

Yerkes, Charles T., 56

Yerkes Observatory, 1 20

Yoe, P. L., 108

Young Men's Association. See Chicago

Library Association
Young Men's Christian Association, n

169, 285, 362, 370

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