Famous Givers and Their Gifts

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 at Warren, 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 Library Association. 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.

ASA PACKER

AND LEHIGH UNIVERSITY

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 the Magazine 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 benefactions did 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 the manual 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 in 1855, 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. To the 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, – his character is 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

AND VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

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.

In 1829, when he was thirty-five, he began to build steamboats, and operated them on the Hudson River, on Long Island Sound, and on the route to Boston. When he was forty his property was estimated at $500,000. When the gold-seekers rushed to California, in 1848-1849, Mr. Vanderbilt established a line by way of Lake Nicaragua, and made large profits. He also established a line between New York and Havre.

During the Civil War Mr. Vanderbilt gave the Vanderbilt, his finest steamship, costing $800,000, to the government, and sent her to the James River to assist when the Merrimac attacked the national vessels at Hampton Roads. Congress voted him a gold medal for his timely gift.

In 1863 he began to invest in railroads, purchasing a large part of the stock of the New York and Harlem Railroad. His property was at this time estimated at $40,000,000. He soon gained controlling interest in other roads. His chief maxim was, "Do your business well, and don't tell anybody what you are going to do until you have done it."

In February, 1873, Bishop McTyeire of Nashville, Tenn., was visiting with the family of Mr. Vanderbilt in New York City. The first wife was dead, and Mr. Vanderbilt had married a second time. Both men had married cousins in the city of Mobile, who were very intimate in their girlhood, and this brought the bishop and Mr. Vanderbilt into friendly relations. One evening when they were conversing about the effects of the Civil War upon the Southern States, Commodore Vanderbilt, as he was usually called, expressed a desire to do something for the South, and asked the bishop what he would suggest.

The Methodist Church at the South had organized Central University at Nashville, but found it impossible to raise the funds needed to carry on the work. The bishop stated the great need for such an institution, and Mr. Vanderbilt at once gave $500,000. In his letter to the Board of Trust, Mr. Vanderbilt said, "If it shall through its influence contribute even in the smallest degree to strengthening the ties which should exist between all geographical sections of our common country, I shall feel that it has accomplished one of the objects that has led me to take an interest in it."

Later, in his last illness, he gave enough to make his gift a million. The name of the institution was changed to Vanderbilt University. Mr. Vanderbilt died in New York, Jan. 4, 1877, leaving the larger part of his millions to his son, William Henry Vanderbilt. He gave $50,000 to the Rev. Charles F. Deems to purchase the Church of the Strangers.

Founder's Day at Vanderbilt University is celebrated yearly on the late Commodore's birthday, May 27, the day being ushered in by the playing of music and the ringing of the University bell.

Bishop McTyeire, who, Mr. Vanderbilt insisted, should accept the presidency of the University, used to say, "My wife was a silent but golden link in the chain of Providence that led to Vanderbilt University."

When an attractive site of seventy-five acres of land was chosen for the buildings, an agent who was recommending an out-of-the-way place protested, and said, "Bishop, the boys will be looking out of the windows there."

"We want them to look out," said the practical bishop, "and to know what is going on outside."

The secretary of the faculty tells a characteristic incident of this noble man. "He once cordially thanked me for conducting through the University building a company of plain country people, among whom was a woman with a baby in her arms. 'Who knows what may come of that visit?' said he. 'It may bring that baby here as a student. He may yet be one of our illustrious men. Who knows? Who knows? Such people are not to be neglected. Great men come of them.'"

Vanderbilt University now has over seven hundred students, and is sending out many capable scholars into fields of usefulness.

Mr. William H. Vanderbilt, the son of Cornelius, gave over $450,000 to the University. His first gift of $100,000 was for the gymnasium, Science Hall, and Wesley Hall, the Home of the Biblical Department. Another $100,000 was for the engineering department. At his death, Dec. 8, 1885, he left the University by will $200,000.