From the little village of Waldorf, near Heidelberg, Germany, came the head of the Astor family to America when he was twenty years old. Born July 17, 1763, the fourth son of a butcher, he helped his father until he was sixteen, and then determined to join an elder brother in London, who worked in the piano and flute factory of their uncle.
Having no money, he set out on foot for the Rhine; and resting under a tree, he made this resolution, whichhe always kept, "to be honest, industrious, and never gamble." Finding employment on a raft of timber, he earned enough money to procure a steerage passage from Holland to London, where he remained till 1783, helping his brother, and learning the English language. Having saved about seventy-five dollars at the end of three or four years, John Jacob invested about twenty-five in seven flutes, purchased a steerage ticket across the water for a like amount, and put about twenty-five in his pocket.
On the journey over he met a furrier, who told him that money could be made in buying furs from the Indians and men on the frontier, and selling them to large dealers. As soon as he reached New York, he entered the employ of a Quaker furrier, and learned all he could about the business, meantime selling his flutes, and using the money to buy furs from the Indians and hunters. He opened a little shop in New York for the sale of furs and musical instruments, walked nearly all over New York State in collecting his furs, and finally went back to London to sell his goods.
He married, probably in 1786, Sarah Todd, who brought as her marriage portion $300, and what was better still, economy, energy, and a willingness to share her husband's constant labors. As fast as a little money was saved he invested it in land, having great faith in the future of New York City. He lived most simply in the same house where he carried on his business, and after fifteen years found himself the owner of $250,000.
John Jacob Astor
John Jacob Astor
In 1809 he organized the American Fur Company, and established trade in furs with France, England, Germany, and Russia, and engaged in trade with China.He used to say in his old age, "The first hundred thousand dollars—that was hard to get; but afterward it was easy to make more."
He died March 29, 1848, leaving a fortune estimated at $20,000,000, much of it the result of increased values of land, on which he had built houses for rent. By will Mr. Astor conveyed the large sum, at that time, of $400,000 to found a public library; his friends, Washington Irving, Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell, and Fitz-Greene Halleck, the poet, who was his secretary for seventeen years, having advised the gift of a library when he expressed a desire to do something helpful for the city of New York. He also left $50,000 for the benefit of the poor in his native town of Waldorf.
John Jacob Astor's eldest son, and third of his seven children, William B. Astor, left and gave during his lifetime $550,000 to Astor Library. His estate of $45,000,000 was divided between his two sons, John Jacob and William. The son of John Jacob, William Waldorf Astor, a graduate of Columbia College, ex-minister to Italy, is a scholarly man, and the author of several books. The son of William Astor, John Jacob Astor, a graduate of Harvard, lives on Fifth Avenue, New York. He has also written one or more books.
In 1879 John Jacob, the grandson of the first Astor in this country, a graduate of Columbia College, a student of the University of Göttingen, and a graduate of the Harvard Law School, erected a third structure for the library similar to those built by his father and grandfather, and gave in all $850,000 to Astor Library. The entire building now has a frontage of two hundredfeet, with a depth of one hundred feet. It is of brown-stone and brick, and is Byzantine in style of architecture. In 1893 its total number of volumes was 245,349.
Astor Library possesses some very rare and valuable books. "Here is one of the very few extant copies of Wyckliffe's translation of the New Testament in manuscript," writes Frederick K. Saunders, the librarian, in theNew England Magazinefor April, 1890, "so closely resembling black-letter type as almost to deceive even a practised eye. It is enriched with illuminated capitals, and its supposed date is 1390. It is said to have been once the property of Duke Humphrey. There is an Ethiopic manuscript on vellum, the service book of an Abyssinian convent at Jerusalem. There are two richly illuminated Persian manuscripts on vellum which once belonged to the library of the Mogul Emperors of Delhi; also two exquisitely illuminated missals or books of Hours, the gift of the late Mr. J. J. Astor. One of the glories of the collection is the splendid Salisbury Missal, written with wonderful skill, and profusely emblazoned with burnished gold. Here also may be found the second printed Bible, on vellum, folio, 1462, which cost $9,000."
Mrs. Astor gave a valuable collection of autographs of eminent persons; and the family also gave "a magnificent manuscript written with liquid gold, on purple vellum, entitled 'Evangelistarium,' of almost unrivalled beauty, but no less remarkable for its great age, the date beingA.D.870. This is probably the oldest book in America." Ptolemy's Geography is represented by fifteen editions, the earliest printed in 1478.
John Jacob Astor, the grandson of the first JohnJacob, died in New York, Feb. 22, 1890. He presented to Trinity Church the reredos and altar, costing $80,000, as a memorial of his father, William B. Astor. Through his wife, who was a Miss Gibbs of South Carolina, he virtually built the New York Cancer Hospital, and gave largely to the Woman's Hospital. He gave $100,000 to St. Luke's Hospital, $50,000 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with his wife's superb collection of laces after her death in 1887. The paintings of John Jacob Astor costing $75,000 were presented to Astor Library by his son, William Waldorf Astor, after his father's death.
"On the 2d of December, 1814, there was born, in the narrow clearing that skirted the ford of the Genesee River, the first child of white parents to see the light upon that 'Hundred-Acre Tract' which was the primitive site of the present city of Rochester. Mortimer Fabricius Reynolds was the name given, for family reasons, to the first-born of this backwoods settlement." Thus states the "Semi-Centennial History of the City of Rochester, N.Y.," published in 1888.
This boy, grown to manhood and engaged in commerce, was the sole survivor of the six children of his father, Abelard Reynolds. He was proud of the family name; but "his childlessness, and the consciousness that with him the name was to be extinct, had come to weigh with a painful gravity." Abelard Reynolds had made a fortune from the increase in land values, and both he and his son William had interested themselves deeply inthe intellectual and moral advance of the community in which they lived.
Mortimer F. Reynolds desired to leave a memorial of his father, of his brother, William Abelard Reynolds, and of himself. He wisely chose to found a library, that the name might be forever remembered. He died June 13, 1892, leaving nearly one million to found and endow the Reynolds Library of Rochester, N.Y., Alfred S. Collins, librarian.
It is stated in the press that President Seth Low of Columbia College has given over a million dollars for the new library in connection with that college.
In "Public Libraries of America," page 144, a most useful book by William I. Fletcher, librarian of Amherst College, may be found a suggestive list of the principal gifts to libraries in the United States. Among the larger bequests are Dr. James Rush, Philadelphia, $1,500,000; Henry Hall, St. Paul, Minn., $500,000; Charles E. Forbes, Northampton, Mass., $220,000; Mr. and Mrs. Converse, Malden, Mass., $125,000; Hiram Kelley, Chicago, to public library, $200,000; Silas Bronson, Waterbury, Conn., $200,000; Dr. Kirby Spencer, Minneapolis, Minn., $200,000; Mrs. Maria C. Robbins of Brooklyn, N.Y., to her former home, Arlington, Mass., for public library building and furnishing, $150,000.
Mr. Rindge, born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1857, but at present residing in California, has given his native city a public library, a city hall, a manual training-school, and a valuable site for a high school.
The handsome library, Romanesque in style, of gray stone with brown stone trimmings, was opened to the public in 1889. One room of especial interest on the first floor contains war relics, manuscripts, autographs and pictures of distinguished persons, and literary and historical matter connected with the history of Cambridge. The European note-book of Margaret Fuller is seen here, the lock, key, and hinges of the old Holmes mansion, removed to make way for the Law School, etc.
The library has six local stations where books may be ordered by filling out a slip; and these orders are gathered up three times a day, and books are sent to these stations the same day.
The City Hall, a large building also of gray stone with brown stone trimmings, is similar to the old town halls of Brussels, Bruges, and others of mediæval times. Its high tower can be seen at a great distance.
The other important gift to Cambridge from Mr. Rindge is a manual training-school for boys. Groundwas broken for this school in the middle of July, 1888, and pupils were received in September. The boys work in wood, iron, blacksmithing, drawing, etc. The system is similar to that adopted by Professor Woodward at St. Louis. The boys, to protect their clothes, wear outer suits of dark brown and black duck, and round paper caps.
The fire-drill is especially interesting to strangers. Hose-carriages and ladders are kept in the building, and the boys can put streams of water to the top in a very brief time. Mr. Rindge supports the school.The instruction is free, and is a part of the public-school work. The pupils may take in the English High School a course of pure head-work, or part head-work and part hand-work. If they elect the latter, they drop one study, and in its place take three hours a day in manual training. The course covers three years.
Mr. Rindge inherited his wealth largely from his father. He made these gifts when he was twenty-nine years of age. Being an earnest Christian, he made it a condition of his gifts that verses of Scripture and maxims of conduct should be inscribed upon the walls of the various buildings. These are found on the library building; and the inscription on the City Hall reads as follows: "God has given commandments unto men. From these commandments men have framed laws by which to be governed. It is honorable and praiseworthy to faithfully serve the people by helping to administer these laws. If the laws are not enforced, the people are not well governed."
The Drexel family, like a majority of the successful and useful families in this country, began poor. Anthony J. Drexel's father, Francis Martin Drexel, was born at Dornbirn, in the Austrian Tyrol, April 7, 1792. When he was eleven years old, his father, a merchant, sent him to a school near Milan. Later, when there was a war with France, he was obliged to go to Switzerland to avoid conscription.
He earned a scanty living at whatever he could find to do, but his chief work and pleasure was in portrait painting. When he was twenty-five, in 1817, he determined to try his fortune in the New World, and reached the United States after a voyage of seventy-two days.
He settled in Philadelphia as an artist, with probably little expectation of any future wealth. After nine years of work he went to Peru, Chili, and Mexico, and seems to have had good success in painting the portraits of noted people, General Simon Bolivar among them.
Returning to Philadelphia, he surprised his acquaintances by starting a bank in 1837. There were fears of failure from what seemed an inadequate capital and lack of knowledge of business; but Mr. Drexel waseconomical, strictly honest, energetic, and devoted to his work.
He opened a little office in Third Street, and placed his son Anthony, born Sept. 13, 1826, in the small bank. "While waiting on customers," saysHarper's Weekly, "the boy was in the habit of eating his cold dinner from a basket under the counter." He was but a lad of thirteen, yet he soon showed a special fitness for the place by his quickness and good sense.
The bank grew in patrons, in reputation, and in wealth; and when Francis Drexel died, June 5, 1863, he had long been a millionnaire, had retired from business, and left the bank to the management of his sons.
Besides the bank in Philadelphia, branch houses were formed in New York, Paris, and London. "As a man of affairs," wrote his very intimate friend, George W. Childs, "no one has ever spoken ill of Anthony J. Drexel; and he spoke ill of no one. He did not drive sharp bargains; he did not profit by the hard necessities of others; he did not exact from those in his employ excessive tasks and give them inadequate pay. He was a lenient, patient, liberal creditor, a generous employer, considerate of and sympathetic with every one who worked for him....
ANTHONY J. DREXEL
ANTHONY J. DREXEL.
"He was a devoted husband, a loving parent, a true friend, a generous host, and in all his domestic relations considerate, just, and kind. His manners were finely courteous, manly, gentle, and refined. His mind was as pure as a child's; and during all the years of our close companionship I never knew him to speak a word that he might not have freely spoken in the presence of his own children. His religion was as deep as his nature,and rested upon the enduring foundations of faith, hope, and charity.
"He observed always a strict simplicity of living; he walked daily to and from his place of business, which was nearly three miles distant from his home. I was his companion for the greater part of the way every morning in these long walks; and as he passed up and down Chestnut Street, he was wont to salute in his cordial, pleasant, friendly manner, large numbers of all sorts and conditions of people. His smile was especially bright and attractive, and his voice low and sweet."
Mr. Drexel inherited his father's artistic tastes, and in his home at West Philadelphia, and at his country place, "Runnymede," near Lansdowne, he had many beautiful works of art, statuary, books, paintings, bronzes, and the like. He was also especially fond of music.
He was a great friend of General Grant, and Dec. 19, 1879, gave him and Mrs. Grant a notable reception with about seven hundred prominent guests. He was one of the pall-bearers at Grant's funeral in 1885.
Mr. Drexel was always a generous giver. He was a large contributor to the University of Pennsylvania, to hospitals, to churches of all denominations, and to asylums. With Mr. Childs and others he built an Episcopal church at Elberon, Long Branch, where he usually went in the summer.
His largest and best gift, for which he will be remembered, is that of about three million dollars to found and endow Drexel Institute, erected in his lifetime. He wished to fit young men and women to earn their living; and after making a careful examination of CooperInstitute, New York, and Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, and sending abroad to learn the best methods and plan of buildings for such industrial education, he began his own admirable Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry in West Philadelphia. He erected the handsome building of light buff brick with terra-cotta trimmings, at the corner of Thirty-second and Chestnut Streets, at a cost of $550,000, and then gave an endowment of $1,000,000. At various times he gave to the library, museum, etc., over $600,000.
The Institute was dedicated on the afternoon of Dec. 17, 1891, Chauncey M. Depew making the dedication address, and was opened to students Jan. 4, 1892. James MacAlister, LL.D., superintendent of the public schools of Philadelphia, a man of fine scholarship, great energy, and enthusiastic love for the work of education, was chosen as the president.
From the first the school has been filled with eager students in the various departments. The art department gives instruction in painting, modelling, architecture, design and decoration, wood-carving, etc.; the department of science and technology, courses in mathematics, chemistry, physics, machine construction, and electrical engineering; the department of mechanic arts, shopwork in wood and iron with essential English branches; the business department, commercial law, stenography, and typewriting, etc.; the department of domestic science and arts gives courses in cooking, dressmaking, and millinery. There are also courses in physical training, in music, library work, and evening classes open five nights in the week from October to April.
The Institute was attended by more than 2,700 students in 1893-1894; and 35,000 persons attended the free public lectures in art, science, technology, etc., and free concerts, chiefly organ recitals, weekly, during the winter months.
The Institute has been fortunate in its gifts from friends. Mr. George W. Childs gave to it his rare and valuable collection of manuscripts and autographs, fine engravings, ivories, books on art, etc.; Mrs. John R. Fell, a daughter of Mr. Drexel, a collection of ancient jewellery and rare old clocks; Mrs. James W. Paul, another daughter of Mr. Drexel, $10,000 as a memorial of her mother, to be used in the purchase of articles for the museum; while other members of the family have given bronzes, metal-work, and unique and useful gifts.
Mr. Drexel lived to see his Institute doing its noble work. So interested was he that he stopped daily as he went to the bank to see the young people at their duties. He was greatly interested in the evening classes. "This part of the work," says Dr. MacAlister, "he watched with great eagerness, and he was specially desirous that young people who were compelled to work through the day should have opportunities in the evening equal to those who took the regular daily work of the Institution."
Mr. Drexel died suddenly, June 30, 1893, about two years after the building of the Institute, from apoplexy, at Carlsbad, Germany. He had gone to Europe for his health, as was his custom yearly, and seemed about as well as usual until the stroke came. Two weeks before he had had a mild attack of pleurisy, butwould not permit his family to be told of it, thinking that he would fully recover.
Mr. Drexel left behind him the memory of a modest, unassuming man; so able a financier that he was asked to accept the position of Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, but declined; so generous a giver, that he built his monument before his death in his elegant and helpful Institute, an honor to his native city, Philadelphia, and an honor to his family.
Philip D. Armour was born in Stockbridge, Madison County, N.Y., and spent his early life on a farm. In 1852, when he was twenty years of age, he went to California, and finally settled in Chicago, where he has become very wealthy by dealing in packed meat, which is sent to almost every corner of the earth.
"He pays six or seven millions of dollars yearly in wages," writes Arthur Warren in an interesting article inMcClure's Magazine, February, 1894, "owns four thousand railway cars, which are used in transporting his goods, and has seven or eight hundred horses to haul his wagons. Fifty or sixty thousand persons receive direct support from the wages paid in his meatpacking business alone, if we estimate families on the census basis. He is a larger owner of grain-elevators than any other individual in either hemisphere; he is the proprietor of a glue factory, which turns out a product of seven millions of tons a year; and he is actively interested in an important railway enterprise."
He manages his business with great system, and knows from his heads of departments, some of whom he pays a salary of $25,000 yearly, what takes place from day to day in his various works. He is a quiet,self-centred man, a good listener, has excellent judgment, and possesses untiring energy.
"All my life," he says, "I have been up with the sun. The habit is as easy at sixty-one as it was at sixteen; perhaps easier, because I am hardened to it. I have my breakfast at half-past five or six; I walk down town to my office, and am there by seven, and I know what is going on in the world without having to wait for others to come and tell me. At noon I have a simple luncheon of bread and milk, and after that, usually, a short nap, which freshens me again for the afternoon's work. I am in bed again at nine o'clock every night."
Mr. Armour thinks there are as great and as many opportunities for men to succeed in life as there ever have been. He said to Mr. Warren: "There was never a better time than the present, and the future will bring even greater opportunities than the past. Wealth, capital, can do nothing without brains to direct it. It will be as true in the future as it is in the present that brains make capital—capital does not make brains. The world does not stand still. Changes come quicker now than they ever did, and they will come quicker and quicker. New ideas, new inventions, new methods of manufacture, of transportation, new ways to do almost everything, will be found as the world grows older; and the men who anticipate them, and who are ready for them, will find advantages as great as any their fathers or grandfathers have had."
PHILIP D. ARMOUR
PHILIP D. ARMOUR.
Mr. Frank G. Carpenter, the well-known journalist, relates this incident of Mr. Armour:—
"He is a good judge of men, and he usually puts theright man in the right place. I am told that he never discharges a man if he can help it. If the man is not efficient he gives instructions to have him put in some other department, but to keep him if possible. There are certain things, however, which he will not tolerate; and among these are laziness, intemperance, and getting into debt. As to the last, he says he believes in good wages, and that he pays the best. He tells his men that if they are not able to live on the wages he pays them he does not want them to work for him. Not long ago he met a policeman in his office.
"'What are you doing here, sir?' he asked.
"'I am here to serve a paper,' was the reply.
"'What kind of a paper?' asked Mr. Armour.
"'I want to garnishee one of your men's wages for debt,' said the policeman.
"'Indeed,' replied Mr. Armour; 'and who is the man?' He thereupon asked the policeman into his private office, and ordered the debtor to come in. He then asked the clerk how long he had been in debt. The man replied that for twenty years he had been behind, and that he could not catch up.
"'But you get a good salary,' said Mr. Armour, 'don't you?'
"'Yes,' said the clerk; 'but I can't get out of debt. My life is such that somehow or other I can't get out.'
"'But you must get out,' said Mr. Armour, 'or you must leave here. How much do you owe?'
"The clerk then gave the amount. It was less than $1,000. Mr. Armour took his check-book, and wrote out an order for the amount. 'There,' he said, as he handed the clerk the check, 'there is enough to payall your debts. Now I want you to keep out of debt, and if I hear of your getting into debt again you will have to leave.'
"The man took the check. He did pay his debts, and remodelled his life on a cash basis. About a year after the above incident happened he came to Mr. Armour, and told him that he had had a place offered him at a higher salary, and that he was going to leave. He thanked Mr. Armour, and told him that his last year had been the happiest of his life, and that getting out of debt had made a new man of him."
When Mr. Armour was asked by Mr. Carpenter to what he attributed his great success, he replied:—
"I think that thrift and economy have had much to do with it. I owe much to my mother's training, and to a good line of Scotch ancestors, who have always been thrifty and economical."
Mr. Armour has not been content to spend his life in amassing wealth only. After the late Joseph Armour bequeathed a fund to establish Armour Mission, Philip D. Armour doubled the fund, or more than doubled it; and now the Mission has nearly two thousand children in its Sunday-school, with free kindergarten and free dispensary. Mr. Armour goes to the Mission every Sunday afternoon, and finds great happiness among the children.
To yield a revenue yearly for the Mission, Mr. Armour built "Armour Flats," a great building adjoining the Mission, with a large grass-plot in the centre, where in two hundred and thirteen flats, having each from six to seven rooms, families can find clean and attractive homes, with a rental of from seventeen to thirty-five dollars a month.
"There is an endowed work," says Mr. Armour, "that cannot be altered by death, or by misunderstandings among trustees, or by bickerings of any kind. Besides, a man can do something to carry out his ideas while he lives, but he can't do so after he is in the grave. Build pleasant homes for people of small incomes, and they will leave their ugly surroundings, and lead brighter lives."
Mr. Armour, aside from many private charities, has given over a million and a half dollars to the Armour Institute of Technology. The five-story fire-proof building of red brick trimmed with brown stone was finished Dec. 6, 1892, on the corner of Thirty-third Street and Armour Avenue; and the keys were put in the hands of the able and eloquent preacher, Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus, "to formulate," says the ChicagoTribune, Oct. 15, 1893, "more exactly than Mr. Armour had done the lines on which this work was to go forward. Dr. Gunsaulus had long ago reached the conclusion that the best way to prepare men for a home in heaven is to make it decently comfortable for them here."
Dr. Gunsaulus put his heart and energy into this noble work. The academic department prepares students to enter any college in the country; the technical department gives courses in mechanical engineering, electricity, and electrical engineering, mining engineering, and metallurgy. The department of domestic arts offers instruction in cooking, dressmaking, millinery, etc.; the department of commerce fits persons for a business life, wisely combining with its course in shorthand and typewriting such a knowledge of the English language, history, and some modern languages, as willmake the students do intelligent work for authors, lawyers, and educated people in general.
Special attention has been given to the gymnasium, that health may be fully attended to. Mr. Armour has spared neither pains nor expense to provide the best machinery, especially for electrical work. "In a few years," he says, "we shall be doing everything by electricity. Before long our steam-engines will be as old-fashioned as the windmills are now."
Dr. Gunsaulus has taken great pleasure in gathering books, prints, etc., for the library, which already has a choice collection of works on the early history of printing.
The Institute was opened in September, 1893, with six hundred pupils, and has been most useful and successful from the first.
Technological schools are springing up so rapidly all over our country that it would be impossible to name them all. The Stevens Institute of Technology at Hoboken, N.J., was organized in 1871, with a gift of $650,000; the Towne Scientific School, Philadelphia, 1872, $1,000,000; the Miller School, Batesville, Va., 1878, $1,000,000; the Rose Polytechnic, Terre Haute, Ind., 1883, over $500,000; the Case School of Applied Science of Cleveland, Ohio, 1881, over $2,000,000.
Leonard Case, the giver of the Case School and the Case Library, born June 27, 1820, was a quiet, scholarly man, who gave wisely the wealth amassed by his father. The family on the paternal side came from Holland; on the maternal side from Germany. Mr. James D. Cleveland, in a recent sketch of the founder of Case School, gives an interesting account of the ancestors of Mr. Case.
The great-grandfather of Leonard Case, Leonard Eckstein, when a youth, had a quarrel with the Catholic clergy in Nuremberg, near which city he was born, and was in consequence thrown into prison, where he nearly starved. One day his sister brought him a cake which contained a slender silk cord baked in it. This cord was let down from his cell window to a friend, whofastened it to a rope which, when drawn up, enabled the young man to slide down a wall eighty feet above the ground.
After his escape, the youth of nineteen came to America, and landed in Philadelphia without a cent of money. Later he married and moved to Western Pennsylvania; and his daughter Magdalene married Meshach Case, the grandfather of Leonard Case.
Meshach was an invalid from asthma. In 1799 he and his wife came on horseback to explore Ohio, and perhaps make a home. They bought two hundred acres of the wilderness in the township of Warren, built a log cabin, and cleared an acre of timber around it. The following year others came to settle, and all celebrated the Fourth of July with instruments made on the grounds. Their drum was a piece of hollow pepperidge-tree with a fawn's skin stretched over it, and a fife was made from an elder stem.
The eldest son, Leonard, who was a hard worker from a child, at seven cutting wood for the fires, at ten thrashing grain, at fourteen ploughing and harvesting, took cold when heated, and became ill for two years and a cripple for the rest of his life, using crutches as he walked. Early in life, when it was the fashion to use intoxicating liquors, Leonard made a pledge never to use them, and was a total abstainer as long as he lived, thus setting a noble example to the growing community.
Determined to have an education, he invented some instruments for drafting, bottomed all the chairs in the neighborhood, made sieves for the farmers, and thus earned a little money for books. As his handwriting was good, he was made clerk of the little court atWarren, and later of the Supreme Court for Trumbull County, where he had an opportunity to study, and copy the records of the Connecticut Land Company.
A friend advised him to study law, and furnished him with books, which advice he followed. Later, in 1816, he moved to Cleveland, and was made cashier of a bank just organized. He was a man of public spirit, suggested the planting of trees which have made Cleveland known as the Forest City, was sent to the Legislature, and finally became president of a bank, as well as land agent of the Connecticut Land Company. He was universally respected and esteemed.
The hard-working invalid had become rich through increase in value of the large amount of land which he had purchased. He died Dec. 7, 1864, seven years after his wife's death, and two years after the death of his very promising son William, of consumption. The latter was deeply interested in natural history, and in 1859 had begun to erect a building for the Young Men's Library Association and the Kirtland Society of Natural History. This project his surviving brother, Leonard, carried out.
After the death of father, mother, and brother, Leonard Case was left to inherit the property. He had graduated at Yale College in 1842, and was admitted to the bar in 1844. He, however, devoted himself to literary pursuits, and travelled extensively over this country and abroad.
Ill health in later years increased his natural reticence and dislike of publicity. He gave generously where he became interested. To the Library Association he first gave $20,000. In 1876 he gave Case Building and grounds, then valued at $225,000, to the LibraryAssociation. It is now worth over half a million dollars, and furnishes a good income for its library of over 40,000 volumes. Under the excellent management of Mr. Charles Orr, the librarian, the building has been remodelled, and the library much enlarged. The membership fee is one dollar annually.
The same year, 1876, Mr. Case determined to carry out his plan of a School of Applied Science. He corresponded with various eminent men; and on Feb. 24, 1877, after gifts to his father's relatives, he conveyed his property to trustees for a school where should be taught mathematics, physics, mechanical and civil engineering, chemistry, mining and metallurgy, natural history, modern languages, etc., to fit young men for practical work in life.
"How well this foresight was inspired," says Mr. Cleveland, "is shown in the great demand by the city and country at large for the men who have received training at the Case School. Hundreds are called for by iron, steel, and chemical works, here and elsewhere, to act in laboratories or in direction of important engineering, in mines, railroads, construction of docks, waterworks, electrical projects, and architecture. Nearly forty new professions have been opened to the youth of Cleveland, which were unavailable before this school was founded."
Cady Staley, Ph.D. LL.D., is the president of Case School, which has an able corps of professors. There are nearly 250 students in the institution.
Leonard Case died Jan. 6, 1880; but his school and his library perpetuate his name, and make his memory honored.
In the midst of twenty acres stands Lehigh University, at South Bethlehem, Penn., founded by Asa Packer,—a great school of technology, with courses in civil, mechanical, mining, and electrical engineering, chemistry, and architecture. The school of general literature of the University has a classical course, a Latin-scientific course, and a course in science and letters.
To this institution Judge Packer gave three and one-quarter millions during his life; and by will, eventually, the University will become one of the richest in the country.
He did not give to Lehigh University alone. "St. Luke's Hospital, so well known throughout eastern Pennsylvania for its noble and practical charity," says Mr. Davis Brodhead in theMagazine of American History, June, 1885, "is also sustained by the endowments of Asa Packer. Indeed, when we consider the scope of his generosity, of which Washington and Lee University of Virginia, Muhlenburg College at Allentown, Penn., Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, and many churches throughout his native State, of different denominations, can bear witness, we can the better appreciate how truly catholic were his gifts. His benefactionsdid not pause upon State lines, nor recognize sectional divisions.
"In speaking of his generosity, Senator T. F. Bayard once said, 'The confines of a continent were too narrow for his sense of human brotherhood, which recognized its ties everywhere upon this footstool of the Almighty, and decreed that all were to be united to share in the fruits of his life-long labor.'"
Asa Packer was born in Groton, Conn., Dec. 29, 1805. As his father had been unsuccessful in business he could not educate his boy, who found employment in a tannery in North Stonington. His employer soon died, and the youth was obliged to go to work on a farm.
He was ambitious, and determined to seek his fortune farther west; so with real courage walked from Connecticut to Susquehanna County, Penn., and in the new county took up the trade of carpenter and joiner.
For ten years he worked hard at his trade. He purchased a few acres in the native forest, cleared off the trees, and built a log house, to which he took his bride. When children were born into the home she made all the clothing, and in every way helped the poor, industrious carpenter to make a living.
In 1833, when he was twenty-eight years old, Mr. Packer moved his family to Mauch Chunk in the Lehigh Valley, hoping that he could earn a little more money by his trade.
When he had leisure, his busy mind was thinking how the vast supplies of coal and iron in the Lehigh Valley could be transported East. In the fall of 1833 the carpenter chartered a canal boat, and doing most of themanual labor himself, he started with a load of coal to Philadelphia through the Lehigh Canal.
Making a little money out of this venture, he secured another boat, and in 1835 took his brother into partnership, and they together commenced dealing in general merchandise. This firm was the first to carry anthracite coal through to New York, it having been carried previously to Philadelphia, and from there re-shipped to New York.
With Asa Packer's energy, honesty, and broad thinking, the business grew to good-sized proportions. Then he realized that they must have steam for quicker transportation. He urged the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company to build a railroad along the banks of their canal; but they refused, thinking that coal and lumber could only pay water freights. In September, 1847, a charter was granted to the Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill, and Susquehanna Railroad Company; but the people were indifferent, and the time of the charter was within seventeen days of expiring, when Asa Packer became one of the board of managers, and by his efforts graded one mile of the road, thus saving the charter. Two years later the name of the company was changed to the Lehigh Valley Railroad Company, and Mr. Packer had a controlling portion of the stock.
So much faith had he in the project that no one else, apparently, had faith in, that he offered to build the road from Mauch Chunk to Easton, a distance of forty-six miles, and take his pay in the stocks and bonds of the company.
The offer was accepted; and the road was finished in1855, four years after it was begun, but not without many discouragements and great financial strain. Mr. Packer was made president of the railroad company, which position he held as long as he lived.
Already wealth and honors had come to the energetic carpenter. In 1842 and 1843 he was elected to the State Legislature, and became one of the two associate judges for the new county of Carbon.
In 1852, and again in 1854, he was elected to Congress as a Democrat, and made a useful record for himself. So universally respected was he in Pennsylvania for his Christian life, as well as for his successful business career, that he was prominently mentioned as a presidential candidate, Pennsylvania voting solidly for him through fourteen ballots; and when his name was withdrawn the delegates voted for Horatio Seymour.
In 1869, Judge Packer was nominated for governor; but the State was strongly Republican, having given General Grant the previous year 25,000 majority. Judge Packer was defeated by only 4,500 votes, showing his popularity in his own State.
Two years before this, in the autumn of 1867, his great gift, Lehigh University, had been opened to pupils. It has now considerably over four hundred students, from thirty-five various States and countries. It was named by Judge Packer, who would not allow his own name to be used. After his death the largest of the buildings was called Packer Hall, but by the wording of the charter the name of the University can never be changed. The Packer Memorial Church, a handsome structure, is the gift of Mrs. Packer Cummings, the daughter of the founder. Tothe east of Packer Hall is the University Library with 97,000 volumes, the building costing $100,000, erected by Judge Packer in memory of his daughter Mrs. Lucy Packer Linderman. At his death he endowed the library with a fund of $500,000.
Judge Packer died May 17, 1879, and is buried in the little cemetery at Mauch Chunk in the picturesque Lehigh Valley. He lived simply, giving away during the last few years of his life over $4,000,000.
Said the president of the University, Rev. Dr. John M. Leavitt, in a memorial sermon delivered in University Chapel, June 15, 1879, "Not only his magnificent bequests are our treasures; we have something more precious,—hischaracteris the noblest legacy of Asa Packer to the Lehigh University....
"He was both gentle and inflexible, persuasive and commanding, in his sensibilities refined and delicate as a woman, and in his intellect and resolve clear and strong as a successful military leader.... Genial kindness flowed out from him as beams from the sun. Never at any period of his life is it possible to conceive in him a churlish or niggardly spirit.... During nearly fifty years he was connected with our church, usually as an officer, and for much of the long period was a constant and exemplary communicant.... Like the silent light giving bloom to the world, his faith had a vitalizing power. He grasped the truth of Christianity and the position of the church, and showed his creed by his life."
Cornelius Vanderbilt, born May 27, 1794, descended from a Dutch farmer, Jan Aertsen Van der Bilt, who settled in Brooklyn, N.Y., about 1650, began his career in assisting his father to convey his produce to market in a sail-boat. The boy did not care for education, but was active in pursuit of business. At sixteen he purchased for one hundred dollars a boat, in which he ferried passengers and goods between New York City and Staten Island, where his father lived. He saved carefully until he had paid for it. At eighteen he was the owner of two boats, and captain of a third.
At nineteen he married a cousin, Sophia Johnson, who by her saving and her energy helped him to accumulate his fortune. At twenty-three he was worth $9,000, and was the captain of a steamboat at a salary of $1,000 a year. The boat made trips between New York City and New Brunswick, N.J., where his wife managed a small hotel.