Louis Severance

Louis Henry Severance (August 1, 1838 – June 25, 1913) was an American oilman and philanthropist who was a founding member of the Standard Oil Trust, the first treasurer of Standard Oil,[2] and a sulfur magnate.

Louis Henry Severance
Born	August 1, 1838 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Died	June 25, 1913 (aged 74) Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Occupation	Treasurer of Standard Oil Company; investor; philanthropist
Employer	Standard Oil Company, Commercial National Bank
Net worth	$305 million in 2006 dollars.[1]
Movement	Anti-Slavery
Spouse(s)	Fannie Buckingham Benedict ​ ​ (m. 1862; died 1874)​ Florence Severance ​ ​ (m. 1894; died 1895)​
Children	John, Elisabeth, Anne Belle, Fanny
Parent(s)	Solomon Severance Mary Long Severance
Signature

Early life

Severance was born in Cleveland on August 1, 1838.[3] He was the second son of Mary Helen (née Long) Severance (1816–1902) and Solomon Lewis Severance (1812–1838), who died in July of 1838, a month before his birth.[4] He and his older brother Solon were raised by his widowed mother,[5] in the Cleveland home of their maternal grandparents,[6] Juliana (née Walworth) Long and Dr. David Long, who was Cleveland's first physician.[7]

Louis picked up his mother's commitment to the Presbyterian mission and the anti-slavery cause. His father had been one of Cleveland's dry goods merchants who went into partnership as Cutter & Severance. Solomon was also the secretary of the Cleveland Anti-Slavery Society, and treasurer of the Cuyahoga County Anti-Slavery society.[8]

He attended public schools in Cleveland before entering the workforce at age eighteen.[6]

Career

In 1856, Severance joined the Commercial National Bank.[4] In 1863, Severance became a 100-day Union army volunteer,[9] in the defense of Washington D.C. during the U.S. Civil War.[6]

His bank lent to John D. Rockefeller's oil business, and, in 1864, Severance started an oil exploration,[2][6] and refinery business himself, in the oil boom town of Titusville, Pennsylvania.[10] In 1872, after the stillborn birth of his fourth child, he returned to Cleveland,[11] where the children's uncle, Solon, raised them with his own three children.[2] Severance later supported his nephew, Allen; funding his lifelong study of theology.[12]

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.[10]

Later life

In 1894,[13] by then a very wealthy man, Severance retired from active management of business.[10] In his 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.[14]

Severance Hospital in Seoul is named in his honor. He donated $50,000 to $100,000 annually directly to the church.[15] 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."[16]

Personal life

The year after he joined the Commercial National Bank, a friend from his church introduced Severance to the Norwalk belle Fannie Buckingham Benedict (1839–1874).[17][18] They married in 1862 and together, Fannie and Louis were the parents of:[6]

• John Long Severance (1863–1936), who became a businessman,[14] and an important patron of the arts in Ohio.[19] He married Elisabeth Huntington DeWitt (1865–1929) in 1891.
• Elisabeth Severance (1865–1944),[20] a philanthropist who established the public health charitable foundation in her name.[21]
• Anne Belle Severance (1868–1896),[22][lower-alpha 1] who died on the Isle of Wight, aged 28.[24]
• Fanny Severance (1872–1872), who was stillborn.

His wife Fannie died in 1874.[6] In 1894, he married the equally rich Florence Severance (1857–1895), the only surviving daughter of Standard Oil millionaires Stephen and his second wife, Anna Harkness.[25] Florence died within a year of the marriage and her considerable estate increased his fortune further.[2]

On June 25, 1913, Severance died suddenly,[4] in his daughter Elisabeth's home, in the care of his son in law, Dr Dudley P. Allen, after being taken suddenly ill.[26] As he died intestate,[27] his estate was divided between his two surviving children.[22]

Legacy

• L.H. Severance Scholarship: annual undergraduate academic scholarship at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania
• L.H. Severance Gymnasium (1912): at the College of Wooster.[28] —He largely funded the rebuilding of the entire university after it burned down in 1901,[14] including a new Severance Library.[4] He had sufficient influence to have Wooster fraternities and sororities banned in 1912[29] (on the grounds that they were un-Christian).[10]
• Severance Hospital, Seoul (opened in 1904 as the first Western-style hospital building in Korea[30] after a large 1900 donation from Severance to support the missionary care there).
• The Severance Chemical Laboratory (1901),[31] at Oberlin College.[20][32]

• Severance Hall is named for John L. Severance and his wife Elisabeth.[33]

References

Notes

1. The children's birth names are recorded in A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut, 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).[23]

Sources

1. With 1,923% price inflation his final estate (reported by the NY Times) had a purchasing power equivalent to $305 million in 2006.
2. "The Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Foundation - History". 2010. Retrieved May 28, 2010. (Charitable foundation established by Louis Severance's daughter.)
3. Frazier, Ian (2002). Family. Picador. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-312-42059-8.
4. White, S. (1913). Missionary review of the world. 36. p. 896.
5. "Solon Severance". www.genealogybug.net. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
6. Barton, Dave. "Fanny B Benedict". www.genealowiki.com. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
7. "Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: MEDICINE". ech.cwru.edu. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
8. Avery, E. M. "A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut (Volume 2)". www.ebooksread.com. p. 323. Retrieved May 31, 2010. The home of Mrs. Severance was a center for some of the agitation and work done in Cleveland in the anti-slavery cause.
9. "Encyclopedia of Cleveland History: SEVERANCE, LOUIS HENRY". Case Western Reserve University. May 22, 1997. Retrieved May 30, 2010. Severance Family Papers, WRHS [source]
10. Frazier, Ian (2002). Family. Picador. pp. 160–163. ISBN 978-0-312-42059-8. He added millions from sulphur to the $8 million he already had from oil.
11. "II Biography". Chicago, New York: The Lewis Publishing Company. 1918. OCLC 455335602.
12. "Origins and Early Development ". Case Western Reserve University - Department of History. Archived from the original on June 11, 2011. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
13. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History gives 1894 as the year Severance retired both from Standard Oil and the Union Sulphur company. These are based on the Severance Family Papers and give the year he stopped working. Other sources — like White, S. (1913) & Avery, E. M. (1918) — give the official retirement year: 1895
14. Avery, E. M. (1918). A history of Cleveland and its environs: Biography. II. The Lewis Publishing Company. pp. 324, 325, 326. Cleveland Linseed Oil Company [treasurer...] president of the Colonial Salt Company [...] treasurer of the Linde Air Products Company [...] Cleveland Steel Company vice president
15. "Presbyterians Vote Against Domination of Executive Affairs by Few Men. CREATE NEW COMMISSION From Which Paid Agents of Church Boards and Permanent Officers of the Assembly Are Excluded" (PDF). The New York Times. May 29, 1908.
16. Allen, Dr. D. P. (October 1913). Oberlin Alumni Magazine. Missing or empty |title= (help)
17. Barton, D. W. "Ch. 15: Life in Norwalk in the 1850s, A New Generation". Archived from the original on June 11, 2010. Retrieved June 1, 2010. [Fanny's brother, Dave Benedict] took Louis to Norwalk to visit his family, and introduced him to his sister Fanny. Fanny was seventeen at the time, and liked the looks of this young bank employee from Cleveland. The feeling was mutual, and Louis started to court her.
18. Wickham, Captain William S. (December 25, 1918) [1901]. "Norwalk, Its Men and Women, and Some of the Girls I Have Met". The Firelands pioneer. XX. Norwalk, Ohio: The Firelands Historical Society. p. 2085. OCLC 2446934. The most beautiful of all the pretty girls—and there have been many first and last—who ever left Norwalk as a bride was Fanny Benedict. She was the undisputed belle of the town. She married Mr L. H. Severance
19. "Art: Final Severance". Time. June 6, 1942. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
20. "History of the Hospital, the Allen Family, & Elisabeth Severance". The Allen Community Hospital Foundation. Archived from the original on February 26, 2006. Retrieved June 19, 2010.
21. "History of Philanthropy in Cleveland, Ohio". WRHS. Archived from the original on July 25, 2011. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
22. Avery, E. M. (1918). Book. p. 326.
23. In memoriam: Annie Belle Severance, April 24th, 1868, September 25th, 1896. 1896. OCLC 46919160.
24. "Index entry". Freebmd.org.uk. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
25. "Florence Harkness Memorial Chapel". Case Western Reserve University. Retrieved May 30, 2010.
26. See: White (1913).
27. "SEVERANCE ESTATE WORTH $14,508,984" (PDF). The New York Times. November 27, 1913. Retrieved June 1, 2010.
28. Dunn, W. H. (May 30, 1912). "The New Gymnasium at Wooster". New York Observer: 691. born in Cleveland in 1838
29. "The College of Wooster GLO Situation, February 13, 1913". Archived from the original on March 21, 2015. Retrieved March 19, 2015.
30. Chung, S. S. (2009). "History of Stereotactic Surgery in Korea". Textbook of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. p. 171. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-69960-6. ISBN 978-3-540-69959-0.
31. "Severance Chemical Laboratory (1901- )". Oberlin College. November 16, 2009. Archived from the original on October 2, 2012. Retrieved June 19, 2010.
32. "Severance Chemical Laboratory, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio". Retrieved June 19, 2010. [A postcard] of the Severance Chemical Laboratory, a gift of Mr. Louis H. Severance
33. http://www.clevelandorchestra.com/plan-your-visit/severance-hall/

External links

• Louis Severance at Find a Grave