Nationality American | Name Louis Severance | |
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Organization Union army volunteer, in the defense of Washington D.C. Known for Leading sponsor of Ohio education, the YMCA, and Presbyterian missions; church elder Net worth $305 million in 2006 dollars. Died June 25, 1913, Cleveland, Ohio, United States Similar People Henry Appenzeller, Homer Hulbert, Ernest Bethell | ||
Louis Henry Severance (August 1, 1838 – June 25, 1913), oilman and philanthropist was a founding member of the Standard Oil Trust, the first treasurer of Standard Oil, and a sulfur magnate.
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Biography
Severance was born in Cleveland on August 1, 1838; his father, Solomon, having died that July. He and his brother Solon were raised by the widow Mary Severance, in the Cleveland home of her father, David Long (Cleveland's first physician). Louis picked up his mother's commitment to the Presbyterian mission and the anti-slavery cause.
He attended public school, and at 18 (in 1856) joined the Commercial National Bank. The following year a friend from his church introduced Severance to the Norwalk belle Fanny Benedict; they married in 1862, producing John Severance in May 1863. That year Severance became a 100-day Union army volunteer, in the defense of Washington D.C.
His bank lent to John D. Rockefeller's oil business, and in 1864 Severance started an oil exploration, and refinery business himself, in the oil boom town of Titusville, Pennsylvania. The family prospered; Elizabeth was born in 1865, and Anne Belle in 1868, but by 1881 Severance's youngest daughter was registered both as "Anne Belle" and "Annie Belle" in the Oberlin College calendar (p. 78), and appears as "Annie B. Severance" in the 1880 Cleveland census. Her life is recorded in the book In memoriam: Annie Belle Severance (1896). Her death on the Isle of Wight, aged 28, is recorded as "Severance, Annie Belle". In 1872 their last child was stillborn, and Fanny died in 1874. After this, he returned to Cleveland, where the children's uncle, Solon, raised them with his own three children. (Louis Severance later supported his nephew, Allen; funding his lifelong study of theology.)
By 1876 Rockefeller's Standard Oil had a near industry monopoly and Severance joined as the Ohio company's treasurer. While at Standard, he founded another company, mining sulfur, and because it held the patent on the Frasch process it too monopolized a profitable industry.
He retired in 1894, a very wealthy man, and married the equally rich Florence Severance (only daughter of the Standard Oil millionaires Stephen and Anna Harkness). Florence Severance died within a year of the marriage. Her estate increased his fortune further, and in retirement he was a leading sponsor of Ohio education, the YMCA, and overseas Presbyterian missions. He was a church elder and in 1904 the vice moderator of its General Assembly; he paid for chapels in Cleveland, as well as missions, colleges, and hospitals in Asia, and donated $50,000-$100,000 annually directly to the church. His son-in-law wrote "While his philanthropies were very broad and he responded to appeals of every sort, he seems to have been dominated by one fundamental idea,—the building up of the Christian church."
Dying suddenly, and intestate, his estate was divided between his two surviving children (Annie Belle having died in 1896). His heirs were: John L. Severance (a businessman, who became an important patron of the arts in Ohio) and Elizabeth S. Allen (a philanthropist, who became Elisabeth Severance Prentiss, and established the public health charitable foundation of that name).
Established
In addition Severance Hall is named for him and his wife Elisabeth