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Henry H. Rogers

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Historical figures

           Henry H. Rogers
   Born January 29, 1840
        Mattapoisett, Massachusetts
   Died May 19, 1909
        New York City

   Henry Huttleston Rogers ( January 29, 1840 – May 19, 1909) was a United
   States capitalist, businessman, industrialist, financier, and
   philanthropist.

   During the Gilded Age, in the spirit of Horatio Alger, "Hen" Rogers, a
   child of working-class parents, amassed a fortune such that he was
   listed in a 1996 study as one of the 25 all-time most wealthy
   individuals in United States history. He was one of the key men in John
   D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust, and made many investments of his
   own in copper, steel, natural gas, coal, and railroad industries.

   His final business achievement, working with partner William Nelson
   Page, was the building of the Virginian Railway (VGN) from the coal
   fields of southern West Virginia to port near Norfolk at Sewell's
   Point, Virginia, in the harbour of Hampton Roads. For many years, it
   was labeled both an engineering marvel and the "richest little railroad
   in the world," forming part of today's rail network for Norfolk
   Southern.

   While considered ruthless in business matters, Henry Rogers also had a
   much kinder and generous side. His hometown of Fairhaven, Massachusetts
   continues to enjoy his many infrastructure gifts. Rogers' late life
   friendships included such diverse persons as Mark Twain, Ida Tarbell,
   Helen Keller, and Booker T. Washington.

   Rogers was a low-profile philanthropist with a widely hated public
   image as a robber baron. It was only after his death in 1909 that Dr.
   Washington felt he could publicly reveal that, over a period of more
   than 15 years, Henry Rogers had been funding over 65 small country
   schools and several larger institutions in the South for the betterment
   and education of African Americans. Dr. Washington not only credited
   Rogers with substantial aid and encouragement, but with instituting the
   then-innovative procedure of matching funds. Rogers felt that as well
   as extending the financial reach, their participation contributed to
   the beneficiaries' self-esteem and steps to self-sufficiency.

Youth and education

   Henry Huttleston Rogers was born into a working-class family in
   Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, on January 29, 1840. He was the son of
   Rowland Rogers, a former ship captain, bookkeeper, and grocer, and Mary
   Eldredge Huttleston Rogers. Both parents had roots back to the
   pilgrims, who arrived in the 17th century aboard the Mayflower. His
   mother's family earlier had used the spelling "Huddleston" rather than
   "Huttleston," and Henry Rogers' name is often misspelled using this
   earlier version.

   The family moved to nearby Fairhaven, Massachusetts, a fishing village
   just over the bridge from the great whaling port, New Bedford.
   Fairhaven is a small seaside town on the south coast of Massachusetts.
   It borders the Acushnet River to the west and Buzzards Bay to the
   south. Fairhaven was incorporated in 1812 and was already steeped in
   history when "Hen" Rogers was just a boy. Fort Phoenix is in Fairhaven.
   There, during the American Revolution, British troops once stormed the
   area. Also within sight of the fort, the first naval battle of the
   American Revolution took place on May 14, 1775.

   In the mid 1850s, whaling was already an industry in decline in New
   England. Competition from Scandinavian water men and the emergence of
   petroleum and later natural gas as a replacement fuel for lighting in
   the second half of the 19th century caused a much further decline.

   Henry Rogers' father was one of the many men of New England who changed
   from a life on the sea to other work to provide for their families. As
   a teenager, Hen Rogers carried newspapers and he worked in his father's
   grocery store, making deliveries by wagon. He was only an average
   student, and was in the first graduating class of the local high school
   in 1857. Continuing to live with his parents, he hired on with the Old
   Colony Railroad, as an expressman and brakeman, working for 3-4 years
   while carefully saving his earnings.

Seeking his fortune

   In 1861, 21-year-old Henry pooled his savings of approximately $600
   with a friend, Charles Ellis. They set out to western Pennsylvania and
   its newly discovered oil fields. Borrowing another $600, the young
   partners began a small refinery at McClintocksville near Oil City. They
   named their new enterprise Wamsutta Oil Refinery.

   The old Native American name " Wamsutta" was apparently selected in
   honour of their hometown area of New England, where Wamsutta Company in
   nearby New Bedford had opened in 1846, and was a major employer. The
   Wamsutta Company was the first of many textile mills that gradually
   came to supplant whaling as the principal employer in New Bedford.

   Rogers and Ellis and their tiny refinery made $30,000 their first year.
   This amount was more than three entire whaling ship trips from back
   home could hope to earn during an average voyage of more than a years'
   duration. Of course, he was regarded as very successful when Rogers
   returned home to Fairhaven for a short vacation the next year.

Abbie, Henry and Anne in Pennsylvania

   While in Fairhaven in 1862, he married his childhood sweetheart, Abbie
   Palmer Gifford, who was also of Mayflower lineage. She returned with
   him to the oil fields where they lived in a one-room shack along Oil
   Creek where her young husband and Ellis worked the Wamsutta Oil
   Refinery. While they lived in Pennsylvania, their first daughter, Anne,
   was born in 1865.

   In Pennsylvania, Rogers was introduced to Charles Pratt (1830–91). Born
   in Watertown, Massachusetts, Pratt had been one of eleven children. His
   father, Asa Pratt, was a carpenter. Of modest means, he spent three
   winters as a student at Wesleyan Academy, and is said to have lived on
   a dollar a week at times. In nearby Boston, Massachusetts, Pratt joined
   a company specializing in paints and whale oil products. In 1850 or
   1851, he came to New York City, where he worked for a similar company
   handling paint and oil.

   Pratt was also a pioneer of the natural oil industry, and established
   his kerosene refinery Astral Oil Works in the Greenpoint section of
   Brooklyn, New York. Pratt's product later gave rise to the slogan, "The
   holy lamps of Tibet are primed with Astral Oil". He also later founded
   the Pratt Institute.

   When Pratt met Rogers at McClintocksville on a business trip, he
   already knew Charles Ellis, having earlier bought whale oil from him
   back east in Fairhaven. Although Ellis and Rogers had no wells and were
   dependent upon purchasing crude oil to refine and sell to Pratt, the
   two young men agreed to sell the entire output of their small Wamsutta
   refinery to Pratt's company at a fixed price. This worked well at
   first. Then, a few months later, crude oil prices suddenly increased
   due to manipulation by speculators. The young entrepreneurs struggled
   to try to live up to their contract with Pratt, but soon their surplus
   was wiped out. Before long, they were heavily in debt to Pratt.

   Charles Ellis gave up, but in 1866, Henry Rogers went to Pratt in New
   York and told him he would take personal responsibility for the entire
   debt. This so impressed Pratt that he immediately hired him for his own
   organization.

Moving to New York, oil refining

   Pratt made Rogers foreman of his Brooklyn refinery, with a promise of a
   partnership if sales ran over fifty thousand dollars a year. Henry,
   Abbie, and young Anne moved to Brooklyn. The Rogers family continued to
   live frugally and he worked very hard. Abbie brought his meals to the
   "works," and often he would sleep but three hours a night rolled up in
   a blanket by the side of a still. Rogers moved steadily from foreman to
   manager, and then superintendent of Pratt's Astral Oil Refinery.

   In the next few years, Rogers became, in the words of Elbert Hubbard,
   Pratt's "hands and feet and eyes and ears" (Little Journeys to the
   Homes, 1909). Pratt finally gave Rogers an interest in the business. In
   1867, with Henry Rogers as a partner, he established the firm of
   Charles Pratt and Company. After Henry Rogers became partner with
   Charles Pratt and Company, Abbie, Henry, and their growing family
   continued to live in New York City, but vacationed frequently at
   Fairhaven as their family grew.

Naptha patent

   While working with Pratt, Rogers invented an improved way of separating
   naptha, a light oil similar to kerosene, from crude oil. He was granted
   U.S. Patent # 120,539 on October 31, 1871, which was Halloween Day.

Fighting, joining Rockefeller

   In the early 1870s, Pratt and Company and other refiners became
   involved in a conflict with John D. Rockefeller, Samuel Andrews, and
   Henry M. Flagler (of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler) and the infamous
   South Improvement Company. South Improvement was basically a scheme to
   obtain secret favorable net rates from Tom Scott of the Pennsylvania
   Railroad (PRR) and other railroads through secret rebates. The
   unfairness of the scheme outraged many independent oil producers and
   owners of refineries alike.

   The opposition among the New York refiners was led by Rogers. The New
   York interests formed an association, and about the middle of March
   1872 sent a committee of three, with Rogers of Charles Pratt and
   Company as head, to Oil City to consult with the Oil Producers' Union.
   Their arrival in the oil regions was a matter of great satisfaction to
   the local oil workers. Working with the Pennsylvania independents,
   Rogers and the New York delegation managed to forge an agreement with
   the railroads, whose leaders eventually agreed to open their rates to
   all and promised to end their shady dealings with South Improvement.
   The independent oil men were most exultant, but their joy was to be
   short-lived, as Rockefeller and his associates were busy trying another
   approach, which frequently included buying-up opposing interests.

   In 1874, Rockefeller approached Pratt with his plans of cooperation and
   consolidation. Pratt talked it over with Rogers, and they decided that
   the combination would benefit them. Rogers formulated terms, which
   guaranteed financial security and jobs for Pratt and himself. John D.
   Rockefeller quietly accepted the offer on Rogers' exact terms. Charles
   Pratt and Company (including Astral Oil) was one of the important
   independent refiners to become part of the Standard Oil Trust. Pratt's
   son, Charles Millard Pratt (1858 to 1913), became Corporate Secretary
   of Standard Oil.

Standard Oil Trust: Rogers in contradictory roles

   Around 1874, the Pratt & Company oil interests, including Rogers who
   helped negotiate the deal, had joined John D. Rockefeller's Standard
   Oil organization. By 1890, Rogers had become one of the key men, a vice
   president and chairman of its operating committee. His later interviews
   with investigative journalist Ida M Tarbell beginning in 1902 would
   later help bring what was by then also known as the Standard Oil Trust
   under additional regulatory control.

   Typical of his seemingly dualist nature, Rogers both helped build and
   operate Standard Oil, and through his interviews with Tarbell, he
   (perhaps unintentionally) helped bring it under better control in the
   public interest.

Building Standard Oil with John D. Rockefeller

   Standard Oil was an oil refining conglomerate whose predecessor
   companies were founded by marketeer John D. Rockefeller, chemist Samuel
   Andrews, and other partners beginning in 1863. Borrowing heavily to
   expand his business, he drew five big refineries including the business
   concern of Henry Morrison Flagler into one firm, Rockefeller, Andrews &
   Flagler. By 1868, what was to become Standard Oil was the world's
   largest oil refinery.

   In 1870, Rockefeller formed Standard Oil Company of Ohio and started
   his strategy of buying up the competition and consolidating all oil
   refining under one company. By 1878 Standard Oil held about 90% of the
   refining capacity in the United States.

   In 1881 the company was reorganized as the Standard Oil Trust. The
   three main men of Standard Oil Trust were Henry H. Rogers, William
   Rockefeller and, the most important, John D. Rockefeller.

Oil and Gas Pipelines

   Petroleum pipelines were first developed in Pennsylvania in the 1860s
   to replace transport in wooden barrels loaded on wagons drawn by mules
   and driven by teamsters. This mule-drawn transportation was expensive
   and fraught with difficulties: leaking barrels, muddy trails, wagon
   breakdowns and mule/driver problems.

   The first successful metal pipeline was completed in 1865, when Samuel
   Van Syckel built a four-mile pipeline from Pithole, Pennsylvania, to
   the nearest railroad. This initial success led to the construction of
   pipelines to connect crude oil production, increasingly moving west as
   new fields were discovered and Pennsylvania fields declined, to
   refineries located near major demand centers in the Northeast.

   When Rockefeller observed this, he began to acquire many of the new
   pipelines. Soon, his Standard Oil companies owned a majority of the
   lines, which provided cheap, efficient transportation for oil.
   Cleveland, Ohio, became a centre of the refining industry principally
   because of its transportation systems.

   Rogers conceived the idea of long pipe lines for transporting oil and
   natural gas. In 1881, the National Transit Company was formed by
   Standard Oil to own and operate Standard's pipelines. The National
   Transit Company remained one of Rogers' favorite projects throughout
   the rest of his life.

   East Ohio Gas Company (EOG) was incorporated on September 8, 1898, as a
   marketing company for the National Transit Company, the natural gas arm
   of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. The
   company launched its business by selling to consumers in northeast Ohio
   gas produced by another National Transit subsidiary, Hope Natural Gas
   Company.

   Rubber-manufacturing city Akron, Ohio, was the first to take advantage
   of the lower prices for natural gas. It granted the East Ohio Gas
   Company a franchise in September 1898, the same month that the company
   was founded. During the winter of 1898–99, the National Transit Company
   built a 10-inch wrought iron pipeline that stretched from the Pipe
   Creek on the Ohio River to Akron, with branches to Canton, Massillon,
   Dover, New Philadelphia, Uhrichsville, and Dennison. The first gas from
   the pipeline burned in Akron on May 10, 1899.

Controlling copper and natural gas

   Rogers' oversaw Standard Oil's organization of Amalgamated Copper
   (1889) and Consolidated Gas (1884), holding companies aimed at
   controlling copper and natural gas production and distribution.

Regulating Standard Oil: Ida M. Tarbell

   In 1890 the U.S. Congress passed Sherman Antitrust Act. This act is the
   source of all American anti-monopoly laws. The law forbids every
   contract, scheme, deal, conspiracy to restrain trade. It also forbids
   inspirations to secure monopoly of a given industry. Standard Oil Trust
   attracted attention from antitrust authorities and the Ohio Attorney
   General filed and won an antitrust suit in 1892.

   Unwanted attention was also drawn to the Standard Oil Trust by Ida M.
   Tarbell, an American author and journalist, known as one of the leading
   muckrakers.

   Tarbell had been born in Erie County, Pennsylvania. As a child, she
   lived in what became Rouseville, Pennsylvania. This was only a short
   distance from Henry Rogers' Wamsutta Oil Refinery at McClintocksville,
   which was also in Cornplanter Township in Venango County. However, they
   were apparently not destined to meet for another 37 years.

   Ida Tarbell's father had been forced out of business around 1872 by the
   South Improvement Company scheme, perpetrated by those who built
   Standard Oil. In 1894, she was hired by McClure's magazine. She soon
   turned to investigative journalism, and was the first to really use
   investigative reporting, as we know it today, redefining this in-depth
   technique of writing. Ida's method was to use various documents
   concerning Standard Oil, accompanied by interviews of employees,
   competitors, lawyers and experts on the topic. Tarbell and her fellow
   staff members Ray Stannard Baker and Lincoln Steffens became a
   celebrated muckraking trio.

   Tarbell became acquainted with Rogers, who by then was the most senior
   and powerful director of Standard Oil, through his friend, Mark Twain,
   who arranged a meeting. Meetings between Tarbell and Rogers began in
   January of 1902 and continued regularly over the next two years.
   Tarbell would bring up various case histories and Rogers would provide
   for her an explanation, documents and figures concerning the case.
   Rogers was surprisingly open with Tarbell, as he apparently realized
   that she would write the series with or without his help, and he wanted
   to make sure her information was correct, and for the company's case to
   be "made right".

   Following extensive interviews with Rogers, Tarbell's investigations of
   Standard Oil for McClure's, ran in 19 parts from November 1902 to
   October 1904. They were collected and published as The History of the
   Standard Oil Company in 1904. The book placed fifth in a 1999 list of
   the top 100 works of journalism in the 20th century.

   Although public opposition to Rockefeller and Standard Oil existed
   prior to Tarbell's investigation, it fueled public attacks on Standard
   Oil and in trusts in general. Her book is widely credited with
   hastening the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil. They had never played fair,
   and that ruined their greatness for me, Tarbell wrote about the
   company.

   The Standard Oil Trust was broken up after the United States Supreme
   Court declared the company to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the
   Sherman Antitrust Act on May 15, 1911. However, the owners remained in
   charge of the smaller companies which made up four of the Seven
   Sisters.

   Standard Oil was often not appreciated by the public. It developed a
   reputation among many for dubious business practices, including
   subduing competitors and engaging in illegal transportation deals with
   the railroad companies to ensure it could undercut its competitors'
   prices. Standard Oil, formed well before the discovery of Spindletop in
   Texas and a demand for oil other than for heat and light, was well
   placed to control the growth of the oil business. It was perceived that
   it did this by ensuring it owned and controlled all aspects of the
   trade.

Natural Gas

   In 1884, with associates, Rogers formed the Consolidated Gas Company,
   and thereafter for several years he was instrumental in gaining control
   of great city plants, fighting terrific battles with rivals for some of
   them, as in the case of Boston. Almost the whole story of his natural
   gas interests was one of business warfare.

Copper

   During the 1890s, Rogers became interested in Anaconda and other copper
   properties in the western United States. In 1899, with William
   Rockefeller, he formed the first $75,000,000 section of the gigantic
   trust, Amalgamated Copper, which was the subject of much acrid
   criticism then and for years afterward. In the building of this great
   trust, some of the most ruthless strokes in modern business history
   were dealt: the $38,000,000 "watering" of the stock of the first
   corporation, its subsequent manipulation, the seizure of the copper
   property of the Butte & Boston Consolidated Mining Company, the using
   of the latter as a weapon against the Boston & Montana Consolidated
   Copper and Silver Mining Company, the guerrilla warfare against certain
   private interests, and the wrecking of the Globe Bank of Boston.

Transit: Staten Island, NY

   On July 1, 1892, Staten Island, New York's first trolley line opened,
   running between Port Richmond and Meiers Corners. Trolleys, which cost
   only a nickel a ride through most of their existence, help facilitate
   mass transit across the Island by reaching communities not serviced by
   trains. Henry H. Rogers was long-known as the Staten Island transit
   magnate, and was also involved with the Staten Island-Manhattan Ferry
   Service and the Richmond Power and Light Company.

Railroads

   Rogers was also close associate of E. H. Harriman in the latter's
   extensive railroad operations. He was a director of the Sante Fe, St.
   Paul, Erie, Lackawanna, Union Pacific, and several other large
   railroads. However, he also involved himself in at least three West
   Virginia short-line railroad projects, one of which would grow much
   larger than he probably anticipated.

Ohio River Railroad

   In mid-1890s, Rogers became president of the Ohio River Railroad,
   founded by Johnson Newlon Camden, a United States Senator from West
   Virginia who was also secretly involved with Standard Oil. Charles M.
   Pratt and Rogers were two of the largest owners and the Ohio River
   Railroad's General Manager was C.M. Burt. Its General Solicitor was
   former West Virginia governor William A. MacCorkle. The owners wished
   to sell the railroad, which was losing money.

   Under Rogers' leadership, they formed a subsidiary, West Virginia Short
   Line Railroad, to build a new line between New Martinsville and
   Clarksburg to reach new coal mining areas, into territory already
   planned for expansion by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O). The
   expansion plans had the desired effect of essentially forcing B&O to
   purchase the Ohio River Railroad to block the competition in the new
   coal areas. The Ohio River Railroad was sold to B&O in 1898.

Kanawha and Pocahontas Railroad Company

   The Kanawha and Pocahontas Railroad Company was incorporated in West
   Virginia in 1898 by either a son of Charles Pratt or the estate of
   Charles Pratt. Its line ran 15 miles from the Kanawha River up a
   tributary called Paint Creek. Once again, new coal mining territory was
   involved. Rogers, acting on behalf of Charles Pratt and Company
   negotiated its lease to the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) in 1901
   and its sale to a newly formed C&O subsidiary, Kanawha and Paint Creek
   Railway Company, in 1902.

Virginian Railway

   See article Building the Virginian Railway

   His final achievement, working with partner William N. Page, was the
   building of the Virginian Railway (VGN), which eventually extended 600
   miles from the coal fields of southern West Virginia to port near
   Norfolk at Sewell's Point, Virginia in the harbour of Hampton Roads.

   Initially, Rogers' involvement in the project began in 1902 with Page's
   Deepwater Railway, planned as an 80-mile short line to reach untapped
   coal reserves in a very rugged portion of southern West Virginia, and
   interchange its traffic with the C&O and/or the N&W. The Deepwater
   Railway was probably intended for resale in the manner of the earlier
   two West Virginia short lines. However, if so, the ploy was foiled by
   collusion of the bigger railroads, who agreed with each other to
   neither purchase it or grant favorable interchange rates.

   Page was the "front man" for the Deepwater project, and it is likely
   the leaders of the big railroads were unaware that their foe was backed
   by the wealthy Rogers, who did not give up a good fight easily. Instead
   of abandoning the project, Page and Rogers secretly developed a plan to
   extend their new railroad all the way across West Virginia and Virginia
   to port at Hampton Roads. The battle for the Virginian displayed Rogers
   at his most crafty and ingenious. He was able to persuade the leading
   citizens of Roanoke and Norfolk, both strongholds of the rival Norfolk
   and Western, that his new railroad would be a boon to both communities,
   secretly securing crucial rights-of-way in the process.

   Financed almost entirely from Rogers' own resources, instead of
   interchanging, it competed with the much larger Chesapeake and Ohio
   Railway and Norfolk and Western Railway for coal traffic. Built
   following his policy of investing in the best route and equipment on
   initial selection and purchase to save operating expenses, the VGN
   enjoyed a more modern pathway built to the highest standards, and
   provided major competition to its larger neighboring railroads, each of
   whom tried several times unsuccessfully to acquire it after they
   realized it could not be blocked from completion.

   When completed, The Virginian Railway was called by the newspapers "the
   biggest little railway in the world" and proved both viable and
   profitable. However, the time and enormous effort Rogers expended on
   the project continued to undermine his already declining health, not
   only because of his Herculean work but also because of the uncertain
   economy of the period. And he was forced to pour many of his own assets
   into the railroad.

   In 1907, he suffered a debilitating stroke. He recovered sufficiently
   to see his railroad to completion in 1909, but died suddenly soon
   thereafter, apparently of another stroke. Many historians consider the
   Virginian Railway to be one of his greatest legacies.

   The 600-mile Virginian Railway (VGN) followed the Rogers philosophy
   throughout its profitable history. It operated some of the largest and
   most powerful steam, electric, and diesel locomotives throughout its
   50-year history. Chronicled by rail historian and rail photographer H.
   Reid in The Virginian Railway (Kalmbach, 1961), the VGN gained a
   following of railway enthusiasts which continues to the present day.

   The VGN was merged into the Norfolk & Western in 1959. However, almost
   all of the former VGN mainline trackage in West Virginia and about 50%
   of that in Virginia is still in use in 2006 as the preferred route for
   eastbound coal trains for Norfolk Southern Corporation.

Business summary: "Hell Hound"

   Rogers was an energetic man, and exhibited ruthlessness, and iron
   determination. In the financial and business world, world he could be
   grasping, greedy, operating under a flexible code that often stretched
   the rules of both honesty and fair play. On Wall Street in New York
   City, he became known as "Hell Hound Rogers" and "The Brains of the
   Standard Oil Trust." He was considered one of the last and great "
   robber barons" of his day, as times were changing. Nevertheless, Rogers
   amassed a great fortune, estimated at over $100 million. He invested
   heavily in various industries, including copper, steel, mining, and
   railways.

   Much of what we know about Rogers and his style in business dealings
   were recorded by others. His behaviour in public Court Proceedings
   provide some of the better examples and some insight. Rogers' business
   style extended to his testimony in many court settings. Before the
   Hepburn Commission of 1878, investigating the railroads of New York, he
   fine-tuned his circumlocutory, ambiguous, and haughty responses. His
   most intractable performance was later in a 1906 lawsuit by the state
   of Missouri, which claimed that two companies in that state registered
   as independents were actually subsidiaries of Standard Oil, a secret
   ownership Rogers finally acknowledged.

   In Marquis Who's Who for 1908, Rogers listed more than twenty
   corporations of which he was either president and director or vice
   president and director.

   Henry H. Rogers is in the top 25 wealthiest men in America of all time.
   According to The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates - A
   Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present published by two
   business professors in 1996, Rogers is #22, ranking ahead of J.P.
   Morgan, #23, Bill Gates #31, William Rockefeller #35, Warren Buffett
   #39, J. Paul Getty #67, and Frank W. Woolworth #82 .

A kinder side

   There were two very distinct aspects which characterized Rogers'
   seemingly dualist personality. Biographers have noted that, while
   pitiless in business deals, in his personal affairs, there was a much
   kinder side. In those matters, he was both warm and generous.

   Some of the other most self-made robber baron types of the late 19th
   century became well-known for becoming philanthropists at the end of
   their careers. Most notable perhaps of these was Rogers' friend from
   business interests Andrew Carnegie. However, unlike Carnegie and
   others, the kinder side of Rogers seems to have also been there
   throughout his life.

   A modest man, some of his other kindness and generosity became know for
   the most part only after his death. Examples are found in looking over
   the lives and writings of Helen Keller, Mark Twain, and Booker T.
   Washington. However, nowhere was the kinder side more apparent when he
   was alive than in his hometown of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. Beginning
   in 1885, seaside Fairhaven received a number of architectural gifts
   from the Rogers family.

   These included a grammar school, Rogers School, built in 1885. The
   Millicent Library was completed in 1893 and was a gift to the Town by
   the Rogers children in memory of their sister Millicent, who had died
   in 1890 at the age of 17.

   Abbie Palmer (née Gifford) Rogers presented the new Town Hall in 1894.
   The George H. Taber Masonic Lodge building, named for Henry's boyhood
   mentor and former Sunday-school teacher, was completed in 1901. The
   beautiful gothic Unitarian Memorial Church was dedicated in 1904 to the
   memory of Henry Rogers' mother, Mary Huttleston (née Eldredge) Rogers.
   The Tabitha Inn was built in 1905, and a new Fairhaven High School,
   affectionately called "Castle on the Hill," was completed in 1906.

   Henry Rogers drained the mill pond to create a park, installed the
   town's public water and sewer systems, and served as superintendent of
   streets for his hometown.

   Many years later, Henry H. Rogers' daughter, Cara Rogers Broughton,
   purchased the site of Fort Phoenix, and donated it to the Town of
   Fairhaven in her father's memory.

Family and Children

   Abbie and Henry Rogers had five children, four girls and a boy. Another
   little son had died at birth. Their oldest daughter, Anne Engle Rogers,
   was born in 1865 in Pennsylvania.

   The family moved to New York in 1866. Daughter Cara Leland Rogers was
   born in Fairhaven in 1867, Millicent was born in 1873, followed by Mary
   (who became known as Mai) in 1875.

   Their son, Henry Huttleston Rogers Jr., was born in 1879, and came to
   be known as Harry.

   The children of Henry Huttleston Rogers and Abbie Gifford Rogers were
   far more than vacation habitués of Fairhaven. Their roots were deep in
   the soil of the town, and the traditions of the area were native lore
   to all of them.

1894: A new Town Hall and family tragedy

   The following text about Mrs. Rogers is from the Millicent Library,
   Fairhaven Massachusetts.

   "Mother of six children, Mrs. Rogers is represented as having been of a
   quiet and retiring disposition, completely devoid of the ostentation
   often associated with great wealth. Contemporary photographs attest to
   a shy and gentle charm of feature, and she is known to have cherished a
   deep affection for Fairhaven and a nostalgia for the simple ways of her
   childhood.

   "She was, therefore, delighted to become the donor of Fairhaven's
   beautiful new 'Town House', and on February 22nd and 23rd, 1894, she
   attended dedication exercises and received graciously at the splendid
   Dedication Ball, in the first gala functions marking the opening of the
   new building.

   "It was not given those attending these happy festivities to know that
   - but three months later - in May, 1894, this gentle woman was to die
   in New York City after an operation performed to save her life."

   Abbie Palmer Gifford Rogers died unexpectedly on May 21, 1894. Her
   childhood home, a two-story, gable-end frame house built in the Greek
   Revival style has been preserved. It is made available for tours of
   Fairhaven, where she and her husband grew up and left many other
   legacies to the town and its inhabitants.

Second wife: Emelie Augusta Randel Hart

   Henry H. Rogers eventually remarried Emelie Augusta Randel Hart, a New
   York socialite, but had no children with his second wife. When he died
   in May 1909, he was interred beside first wife Abbie in Fairhaven's
   Riverside Cemetery.

Late life friendships

   After Abbie's death, Rogers developed close friendships with two other
   famous Americans: Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington, and was
   instrumental in the education and rise to fame of Helen Keller. Urged
   on by Twain, Rogers and his second wife helped make possible a college
   education for the remarkable Ms. Keller.

Mark Twain

   humorist Mark Twain
   Enlarge
   humorist Mark Twain
   Mark Twain and Henry Huttleston Rogers in 1908
   Enlarge
   Mark Twain and Henry Huttleston Rogers in 1908

   In 1893, a mutual friend introduced Rogers to humorist Mark Twain.
   Rogers reorganized Twain's tangled finances, and the two became close
   friends for the rest of Rogers' life.

   Samuel Langhorne Clemens ( November 30, 1835– April 21, 1910), was
   better known by his pen name Mark Twain. He was a famous and popular
   American humorist, writer and lecturer. Mark Twain was also a steamboat
   pilot, gold prospector, and journalist. At his peak, he was probably
   the most popular American celebrity of his time. His name was derived
   from the shout used to mark how deep the water was in steamships - Mark
   Twain! (in other words, mark two fathoms).

   Twain was a master at rendering colloquial speech, and helped to create
   and popularize a distinctive American literature, built on American
   themes and language. By the 1890s, Twain's fortunes began to decline;
   in his later life, Twain was a very depressed man, but still capable.
   Twain was able to respond "The report of my death is an exaggeration"
   in the New York Journal, June 2, 1897. He lost 3 out of 4 of his
   children, and his beloved wife, Olivia Langdon, before his death in
   1910.

   Twain also had some very bad times with his businesses. His publishing
   company ended up going bankrupt, and he lost thousands of dollars on
   one typesetting machine that was never finished. He also lost a great
   deal of revenue on royalties from his books being plagiarized before he
   even had a chance to publish them himself. Things looked pretty grim
   financially until he met Henry Rogers in 1893.

   Rogers and Twain enjoyed a mutually beneficial friendship which was to
   last for more than 16 years. Rogers' family became Twain's surrogate
   family and he was a frequent guest at the Rogers townhouse in New York
   City. They were drinking and poker buddies.

   While Twain openly credited Rogers with saving him from financial ruin;
   there is also substantial evidence in their published correspondence
   that the close friendship in their later years was mutually beneficial.
   Their letters back and forth are so interesting and insightful that
   they were published in a book, Mark Twain's Correspondence with Henry
   Huttleston Rogers, 1893-1909.

   In the written exchanges between the two men, there are pleasant
   examples of Rogers' sense of fun as well as Twain's well-known sense of
   humor.

   There was a standing joke between them that Twain was inclined to
   pilfer items from the Rogers household whenever he spent the night
   there as a guest. Two of the many letters provide an illustration:

   In a letter sent to Mrs. Rogers by Twain, he notes that while packing
   his things after a visit, he found that he had put in some articles
   that was laying around .......two books, Mr. Rogers' brown slippers,
   and a ham. I thought it was one of ourn. It looked like one we used to
   have, but it shan't occur again, and don't you worry. He will temper
   the wind to the shorn lamb, and I will send some of the things back if
   there is some that won't keep. Yores in Jesus, S.L.C.

   The reply to Twain was a letter written by Henry Rogers on October 31,
   1906. It reads as follows: Before I forget it, let me remind you that I
   shall want the trunk and the things you took away from my house as soon
   as possible. I learn that instead of taking old things, you took my
   best . Mrs. Rogers is at the White Mountains. I am going to Fairhaven
   this afternoon. I hope you will not be there. By the way, I have been
   using a pair of your gloves in the Mountains, and they don't seem to be
   much of an attraction.

   In 1907, they traveled together in Rogers' yacht Kanawha to the
   Jamestown Exposition held at Sewell's Point near Norfolk, Virginia in
   celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Jamestown
   Colony.

   Although by this late date, both men were in marginal health, Twain
   returned to Norfolk with Rogers in April 1909, and was the guest
   speaker at the dedication dinner held for the newly completed Virginian
   Railway, a "Mountains to Sea" engineering marvel of the day. The
   construction of the new railroad had been solely financed by
   industrialist Rogers.

   When Rogers died suddenly in New York City on May 20, 1909, the
   humorist had been on his way by train from Connecticut to visit Rogers.
   When Twain was met with the news at Grand Central Station the same
   morning by his daughter, his grief-stricken reaction was widely
   reported. Although he served as one of the honored pallbearers at the
   Rogers funeral in New York later that week, he declined to ride the
   funeral train from New York on to Fairhaven for the internment. Albert
   Bigelow Paine, in his book Mark Twain: A Biography wrote that Twain
   could not undertake to travel that distance among those whom he knew so
   well, and with whom he must of necessity join in conversation.

   Twain himself died less than one year later. He wrote in 1909, "I came
   in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I
   expect to go out with it." And so he did.

Helen Keller's Education

   Helen Keller was a remarkable woman who, although deaf, dumb, and
   blind, made a name for herself as writer and humanitarian. She became
   another of Rogers' closest friends. In May 1896, at the home in New
   York City of editor-essayist Laurence Hutton, Rogers and Mark Twain
   first saw Ms. Keller, who was then fourteen years old. She had profited
   under the tutelage of her gifted teacher-companion, Anne Sullivan, and
   when she was sixteen, passed with distinction the entrance examination
   to Radcliffe College.

   In a letter to Mrs. Emile Rogers, Twain praised "this marvelous child"
   and hoped that Helen would not be forced to retire from her studies
   because of poverty. He urged Mrs. Rogers to speak to Rogers himself, to
   remind him of their first sight of Ms. Keller at Hutton's home and to
   speak also "to the other Standard Oil chiefs" to see what could be done
   for the meritorious Ms. Keller.

   Rogers was generously responsive. He and his wife helped make possible
   a college education for Helen Keller at Radcliffe. They even provided
   her, for many years after, with a monthly stipend.

   That she was grateful is obvious in the dedication of her book, The
   World I Live In, which reads, "To Henry H. Rogers, my Dear Friend of
   Many Years." On the fly leaf of Rogers' own copy of the book, she
   wrote, To Mr. Rogers - the best of the world I live in is the kindness
   of friends like you and Mrs. Rogers.

Booker T. Washington

   Another friend was Booker T. Washington. Around 1894, Rogers attended
   one of the famous educator's speeches at Madison Square Garden in New
   York City. The next day, Rogers contacted Washington, and invited him
   to come to 26 Broadway to meet with him. Washington later wrote that
   Rogers said that he had been surprised that no one had "passed the hat"
   after the speech the previous night. With the common ground of their
   relatively humble beginnings and early life, the seeds of a friendship
   between the two famous men had been sown.

   Washington became a frequent visitor to Rogers' office, to Rogers'
   85-room mansion in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, and was an honored guest
   aboard Rogers' yacht, the Kanawha. Their friendship extended over a
   period of 15 years.
   Handbill from 1909 Tour of southern Virginia and West Virginia
   Enlarge
   Handbill from 1909 Tour of southern Virginia and West Virginia

   Although Rogers had died suddenly a few weeks earlier, in June 1909,
   Dr. Washington went on a previously arranged speaking tour along the
   newly completed Virginian Railway. He rode in Rogers' personal rail
   car, "Dixie", making speeches at many locations over a 7-day period.

   Dr. Washington told his audiences that his recently departed friend had
   urged him to make the trip and see what could be done to improve
   relations between the races and economic conditions for African
   Americans along the route of the new railway, which touched many
   previously isolated communities in the southern portions of Virginia
   and West Virginia, including passing close by the community where
   Washington had been born over 50 years earlier.

   Some of the places where Dr. Washington spoke on the tour were (in
   order of the tour stops), Newport News, Norfolk, Suffolk,
   Lawrenceville, Kenbridge, Victoria, Charlotte Courthouse, Roanoke,
   Salem, and Christiansburg in Virginia, and Princeton, Mullens, Page and
   Deepwater in West Virginia. One of his trip companions recorded that
   they had received a strong and favorable welcome from both white and
   African American citizens all along the tour route of the new railroad.

   It was only after Rogers' death that Dr. Washington felt compelled to
   revealing publicly some of the extent of Rogers' contributions. These,
   he said, were at that very time "funding the operation of at least 65
   small country schools for the education and betterment of African
   Americans in Virginia and other portions of the South, all unknown to
   the recipients." Also, known only to a few trustees at Dr. Washington's
   insistence, Rogers had also generously provided support to institutions
   of higher education, including Tuskegee Institute and Hampton
   Institute.

   Dr. Washington later wrote that Rogers had encouraged projects with at
   least partial matching funds, as that way, two ends were accomplished:

          1. The gifts would help fund even greater work.

          2. Recipients would have a stake in knowing that they were
          helping themselves through their own hard work and sacrifice.

   Rogers' example of both concern for Negro education and the concept of
   matching funds may well have influenced Julius Rosenwald, another
   self-made man from a modest background who also befriended Booker T.
   Washington, and beginning in 1911, contributed many millions to build
   thousands of Rosenwald Schools in many states, in a sense, continuing
   the work Rogers and Washington began long after both were dead.

Heritage

   In Fairhaven, the Rogers family gifts are located throughout the town.
   These include Rogers School, Town Hall, Millicent Library, Unitarian
   Memorial Church and Fairhaven High School. A granite shaft on the High
   School lawn is dedicated to Rogers. In Riverside Cemetery, the Henry
   Huttleston Rogers Mausoleum is patterned after the Temple of Minerva in
   Athens, Greece. Henry, his first wife Abbie, and several family members
   are interred there.
   In 2004, initials of VGN founders Henry Huttleston Rogers and William
   Nelson Page were engraved by volunteers in newly laid rail at Victoria,
   Virginia, where former VGN caboose #342 is now displayed. Virginian
   Railway Cabooses photo by Tom Salmon, courtesy of Virginian Railway
   Enthusiasts on Yahoo
   In 2004, initials of VGN founders Henry Huttleston Rogers and William
   Nelson Page were engraved by volunteers in newly laid rail at Victoria,
   Virginia, where former VGN caboose #342 is now displayed. Virginian
   Railway Cabooses photo by Tom Salmon, courtesy of Virginian Railway
   Enthusiasts on Yahoo

   In 1916, Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company launched the SS
   H.H. Rogers, a Pratt-class tanker of 8,807 tons with a capacity of
   119,390 barrels of oil. It was operated by Panama Transport Co., a
   subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey. During World War II, on
   February 21, 1943, it was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in the
   North Atlantic Ocean 600 miles off the coast of Ireland while en route
   from Liverpool, England to the United States. All 73 persons aboard
   were saved.

   In Virginia and West Virginia, former employees, area residents, and
   enthusiasts of the Virginian Railway consider the entire railroad to
   have been a memorial to him. Almost 50 years after it was merged into a
   competitor, Mr. Rogers' railroad still has a remarkable following and
   retirees meet weekly and answer questions via the Internet, one of the
   most active Yahoo! groups with over 750 members. One passenger station
   has been restored in Suffolk, Virginia, a replica built and museum
   established in Princeton, and work is underway on a larger former VGN
   station in Roanoke. Rogers' initials were recently engraved on new rail
   laid under a restored caboose in Victoria, Virginia.

Commentaries

   Earl J. Dias has written one of the better commentaries published about
   Henry Huttleston Rogers:

                "What is the final verdict on Rogers?

                "First of all, he was a child of his times - an era that
                historian Howard Mumford Jones has dubbed 'the Age of
                Energy'. It was a time during which Americans of vast
                wealth, the Rockefellers, the Goulds, the Pratts, the
                Harrimans, the Archbolds, exploited and experimented with
                ideas, styles, fads, and each other. And, surprisingly,
                they also made invaluable contributions to libraries,
                schools, universities, charities, and the like. In fact,
                these rip roaring capitalists were striking examples of
                the gleeful swashbuckling, the innocence and guilt of what
                Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner called 'The Gilded
                Age.'

                "Perhaps the central truth about Rogers was that he was a
                role player, a born actor. From his experiences on the
                Phoenix Hall stage in Fairhaven in his youth, he learned
                the art of being theatrical in the dramatic situations
                that cropped up in his life.

                "In the business world he was the 'man of steel': hard,
                shrewd, ruthless, giving no quarter.

                "In his social life, he was amicable, popular,
                charismatic, a boon companion, a genial host."

   Although he had a hand in developing many natural resources, in the
   final analysis, perhaps the greatest American resource Henry Rogers
   valued and sought to develop to its potential was the human one.

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