Marcellus Hartley Dodge Sr.

Biography

He was born on February 28, 1881 to Emma Hartley who died from complication of childbirth on March 3, 1881; and Norman White Dodge. His paternal grandfather was William E. Dodge Sr., an abolitionist, that supported the institution of slavery with his leadership in Phelps-Dodge, a company that exported cotton from the deep south to Liverpool, England. His maternal grandfather was Marcellus Hartley, a merchantwho died in 1902 and left his grandson as heir to $60 million (approximately $1,660,846,000 today) at the age of twenty-one, while he was attending Columbia University and living with his grandmother, Frances Chester Hartley, at 282 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.

Education and early adulthood

In 1903, Dodge graduated from Columbia University, where he was president of his class, manager of the track team, and coxswain of his class crew (sometimes referred to as college rowing).

Upon his graduation, he and his maternal aunt, Helen Hartley (Mrs. George W.) Jenkins, presented the Hartley Hall dormitory to Columbia. The building became Columbia's largest dormitory and created more of a college atmosphere for the new campus in Morningside Heights.

Well known in society and an avid yachtsman, on July 11, 1906 Dodge took a party of his friends on the Wakiva I, his large pleasure and cruising yacht, on a month-long tour to the upper waters of the Amazon River, the Orinoco in Venezuela and Colombia, the Guianas: British Guiana, Surinam, and French Guiana. They visited many locations in the Caribbean, including Cuba where they toured the battle fields of recent armed rebellion before returning to Tampa. His guests included Nicholas Crosby, international law authority John Bassett Moore, historian H. A. Cushing, Everitt Dominick, Eugene Delano Jr., cartographer and historian William Robert Shepherd, J. R. Thompson, and Dr. James R. Cannon. Photographs and some remembrances of the trip by Eugene Delano were published in the Yale Courant, Volume 43 May 1907, pages 686-693, under the title, Les Iles du Salut.

Marriage

In 1907, Dodge became engaged and married to (Ethel) Geraldine Rockefeller of 689 Fifth Avenue. She was a child of William and Almira Geraldine Goodsell Rockefeller, and was estimated to have her own fortune of more than 100 million dollars. They were said to be the wealthiest newlyweds in the country when they married. Initially, when they resided in New Jersey, they lived together at Hartley Farms, a country estate in New Vernon purchased by Marcellus and his aunt, Helen Hartley Jenkins, in 1904.

Soon, they bought all of the land between two estates held by his family in Morris County, New Jersey that lay between Spring Valley Road in the community of New Vernon and Madison Avenue in Madison. Most of the area is part of the Harding Township area which extends from Chatham to Morristown. The last portion purchased, that had belonged to Charles W. Harkness, the third largest stockholder of Standard Oil shares, named Giralda Farms, was purchased by Geraldine in 1923. She maintained it as a grand country estate among the rolling hills.

Eventually, they resided separately on the adjoining estates. He preferred the New Jersey setting and maintained his residence in New Vernon throughout his life, but his wife regularly stayed in her Manhattan residence for two or three days each week.

Dodge expanded the house at "Hartley Farms", which initially had been used as a country retreat associated with his family's charitable organization, "Hartley House" in Manhattan. After it became his residence, he added two wings and some interior enhancements to the house as well as secondary living quarters, barns, stables, and a polo field. The property has been preserved with a conservation easement and his residence has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. At one time Hartley Farms extended for a thousand acres (4 km²).

They had one child, Marcellus Hartley Dodge Jr., who died in an automobile crash in Mogesca, France in 1930. His mother built an extensive memorial to him as a civic center in Madison along with the train station she built opposite the center. They also donated a structure on the campus of Princeton University, from which their son had been graduated shortly before his death.

At the time of his marriage, Dodge was the president and a director of the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, president of the Bridgeport Gun Implement Company, director of the Equitable Trust Company, director of International Banking Company, director of M. Hartley Company, a member of the Lawyers Club of New York City, the Essex County Country Club, and the City of New York Club.

An accomplished equestrian, Dodge also founded the Spring Valley Hounds, a hunt club that not only conducted hunts for their members among the many estates nearby, but also held a major annual horse show in New Jersey. Competitions included those for hunters and open jumpers, as well as for saddle horses of three and five gates. Many of the competitors followed the international horse show circuit that closed its season with the November exhibition at Madison Square Garden on Fiftieth Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan each year. Nearby, the United States Equestrian Team formed for the Olympics from these ranks in 1950, it was founded just off of Spring Valley Road, on van Beuren Road at the Coates estate.

Remington Arms Company

Eventually, Dodge became the chairman of Remington Arms Company, taking the place of his maternal grandfather. The Remington Arms and Union Metallic Cartridge factories at Bridgeport, Connecticut were described as the greatest small arms and ammunition plant in the world by the editor of the New York Times in 1916. Cash control of the company was acquired by E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company of Wilmington, Delaware in 1933, but Dodge remained at the head of the business.

Following the business tradition established by his grandfather at the time of the American Civil War, his company was the supplier of sixty-nine percent of the arms, ammunition, and munitions being used by the federal government during the Second World War. Secret meetings about this were held on his country estate, Hartley Farms, at his polo fields which, except for the war years, were also used from 1927 as the site of the exhibition of the Morris and Essex Dog Show held by his wife, Geraldine. During these meetings General Dwight D. Eisenhower and he became close friends.

He was a member of the board of trustees of Columbia University and was the founder of the Marcellus Hartley Dodge Cup that is awarded in crew. The Marcellus Hartley Dodge Award is bestowed in his honor.

Champion of the Great Swamp

When the remnants of Glacial Lake Passaic, the Great Swamp that abutted Dodge's estate, was targeted for development as an airport by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, nearby citizens formed the Jersey Jetport Site Association in 1959 to protect it by purchasing properties to assemble for donation to the government as a federal park. Dodge, being close to the area and fiscally capable, joined their efforts. [1]

Dodge was one of the first trustees of the North American Wildlife Foundation that completed the acquisition of enough of the Great Swamp to protect the massive natural resource. Legislation also championed by later Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, while he was a congressman from Arizona was passed on November 3, 1960 protecting the important natural resource. In 1964 the park was dedicated, after he had become Secretary Udall. [2]

The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge was dedicated in 1968 and named the M. Hartley Dodge Wildlife Refuge. [3]

Death

Dodge died on Christmas Day, December 25, 1963, at Giralda Farms in Madison, New Jersey. He is buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, at Sleepy Hollow, in Westchester County, New York, USA in the Rockefeller Family plot alongside of his son and where, ten years later, his wife also would be buried.

Legacy

In The New York Times, Dodge was described as an outstanding citizen, remembered above all for the warmth and generosity of his personality. He was a well-known philanthropist. Beginning with a donation of fountains on the plaza before Low Memorial Library and a residence building for students in 1903, Hartley Hall, that he and his aunt, Helen Hartley Jenkins, donated, he provided many gifts to Columbia University [4], and numerous other institutions and organizations. After his death his family and estate underwrote the construction of Dodge Physical Fitness Center at Columbia, and the university renamed another of its buildings Dodge Hall in his honor.