Henry Morrison Flagler

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Henry Flagler (1830-1913) was a self-made millionaire and industrialist who co-founded the Standard Oil Company. He masterminded the plan that transformedStandard Oil into the most successful monopoly of the nineteenth century. During the second half of his life, he developed land and built railroads in Florida, establishing agriculture and tourism as the state's leading industries.

Henry Morrison Flagler was born January 2, 1830 in Hopewell, New York, to Isaac and Elizabeth Flagler. Both parents had been married twice before and Henry had three half sisters and one half brother. Isaac was an itinerant Presbyterian minister who settled in Toledo, Ohio, in 1836. There, he became involved in the temperance movement and advocated racial equality. In 1838, Flagler's parents separated and Elizabeth, Henry and a younger sister moved to Rock Hill, New York.

At the age of 14, Flagler left school and moved to Bellevue, Ohio, near Cleveland, to live with a half-brother, Dan Harkness. The two boys worked at a general store owned by Harkness's uncle. Flagler earned $5 a month, plus room and board. He proved to be a good salesman and his responsibilities and salary increased.

When he was 23, Flagler married Mary Harkness, a frail, 20-year-old cousin of Dan Harkness. Within six years, Henry was earning enough money to purchase a showy Victorian house in Bellevue. The couple had two daughters, Jennie Louise, born in 1855, and Carrie, born in 1858. Carrie died at the age of 3. Several years later, in 1870, their only son, Henry Harkness Flagler, was born.

Flagler and Dan Harkness remained friends and business associates and, in 1852, they opened a distillery. Flagler also worked as a grain merchant. During the Civil War, he earned large profits selling food and other commodities to the Union army. The business also profited from the sale of seeds and farm implements. Flagler's wheat and wine weres sold in Cleveland through a commission agent named John D. Rockefeller, who became a friend.

Flagler became restless with his distillery and grain business and, in 1863, he moved to Saginaw, Michigan, where he invested in the salt industry. However, the salt market collapsed after the Civil War and Flagler lost approximately $100,000.

Partners with Rockefeller

The experience in Saginaw was humiliating for Flagler. He returned to Bellevue and worked as a grain merchant to pay off his debt. In the meantime, his friend Rockefeller had gotten into the oil business. He and his partner, Samuel Andrews operated the largest oil refinery in Cleveland. They needed capital to expand. Flagler's cousin, Stephen Harkness, invested in the company with the understanding that Flagler be made a partner.

The new company, Rockefeller, Andrews and Flagler, refined crude oil into kerosene, which was used as an illuminant. Flagler and Rockefeller worked well together and they became very close friends. They lived near each other and shared an office. They walked to and from work together, discussing business along the way. Flagler and Rockefeller developed some innovative business tactics. They packaged their kerosene in leak proof, five-gallon tin cans, which they made themselves. Customers often reused the barrels and they were very popular.

Flagler and Rockefeller's oil company was one of several in Cleveland and among many scattered throughout the country. They conceived a plan to compete against other refineries. They asked the Lake Shore and Michigan Central Railroad for a rate reduction to ship crude oil to their Cleveland refineries. In exchange, the railroad would get large shipments of oil. The railroad consented and agreed to keep the discount a secret. By 1869, Cleveland was the second largest refinery city, behind New York City.

The company's advantage on railroad rates forced other Cleveland refineries out of business. Rockefeller, Andews and Flagler bought many of their failing competitors. As the company grew, the owners decided to organize it as a stock corporation, a relatively new business structure. They named the company the Standard Oil Company, because they were attempting to stabilize and apply standards to the oil business.

Standard Oil extended its railroad agreements to more railroads and different regions of the country. Flagler was a ruthless negotiator. He played one railroad against another in order to increase concessions. By 1872, Standard was the only refinery in Cleveland. In 1878, it controlled most of the refineries in the country. Standard went on to build and buy oil pipelines and, by 1884, it controlled not only refining, but transportation of crude oil.

Standard was doing more and more business in New York, and Flagler traveled between Cleveland and New York frequently. His wife's health was deteriorating and, by 1876, she was essentially an invalid. Flagler was devoted to her and read to her every night when he returned home from work. New York doctors advised him to take his wife to the Florida panhandle, which, because of its climate, served as a respite for the infirm.

The couple traveled to Jacksonville and St. Augustine. The accommodations were poor, there was no entertainment, and the cities were populated with sick people. With the exception of a few coastal towns, the rest of Florida was essentially an uninhabited wilderness. The Flaglers returned to New York, where his wife's condition deteriorated. She died in 1881.

Personal Changes

At midlife, Flagler's personal and professional life were changing. Having achieved his goal of transforming Standard Oil into a monopoly, he retained his seat on the board of directors and turned over his day-to-day responsibilities to younger workers. His personal life was changing as well. Two years after being widowed, Flagler married Ida Alice Shourd, his late wife's nurse. Shourd hosted gala parties at the couple's New York estate, Satan's Toe. But she suffered from mental illness and, in 1897, was committed to an asylum, where she remained for the rest of her life.

Flagler suffered additional family tragedies when his oldest daughter died from complications of childbirth in 1899. Flagler's son dropped out of school and failed to follow his father into business, causing a lifelong rift between the two men.

After his first wife's death, Flagler developed a new business interest. He and Shourd had spent time in St. Augustine, Florida. The city had changed since Flagler first visited it. Rather than being filled with sick people, it had become a haven for the wealthy. The state was encouraging development by selling swampland for as little as 50 cents an acre.

Flagler purchased land in St. Augustine from a friend and built the grandest hotel in the world, the Ponce de Leon. The Spanish-influenced hotel made of concrete and native coquina shells was designed with the finest materials. It opened in 1888. Flagler then built a second, less-opulent hotel across the street. Both properties were immediately successful.

Railroads and Resorts

Flagler spent the rest of his life developing land in Florida. He discovered that the state's poor transportation was deterring development. The railroads running along the state's East Coast were not compatible. Flagler bought and combined the railroads to form the Florida East Coast Railway. He opened up service to Jacksonville, then Daytona. Over the years, he continued to convert old tracks and build new ones, extending service south.

Along the way, Flagler built additional hotels, establishing Florida's east coast cities as tourist destinations. He encouraged people to farm Florida's land by giving them a break on rail rates to transport their produce. Orange, grapefruit and lemon groves were soon dotting the state. He also established many of the state's newspapers.

In 1893, Flagler bought land on a little known barrier island called Palm Beach. He built the Royal Poinciana, which was the largest resort hotel in the world. It had six floors and 540 rooms. It and a smaller hotel nearby called The Breakers, became gathering places for wealth and fashion during "the season," from December to April 1. After Flagler built a railroad bridge onto the island, wealthy people traveled down in private railcars for parties, golf, tennis, boating, bathing and fishing.

To accommodate the workers who built the hotels, Flagler established a community of tents and shacks called "the Styx" on the island. He generally treated the workers, many of them African-Americans, well, but he didn't want them living near him. So he laid out a city across the lake and built homes, churches and government buildings, creating the city of West Palm Beach.

Flagler continued building his railroad south, laying out the cities of Fort Lauderdale and Miami along the way. He dredged the canal from the ocean into Biscayne Bay, making Miami a deep-sea port. Residents of the new city wanted to name it after Flagler, but he insisted that they call it Miami, an Indian name.

Flagler was generous with his wealth, donating money to build schools, hospitals and churches and to provide relief to farmers after freezes destroyed produce. Most of his donations were made anonymously.

Third Marriage

In 1901, Flagler married for a third time. However, before doing so he had to obtain a divorce from his second wife, who was still living in a New York asylum. Flagler had no grounds for divorce, so he changed his residency to Florida and influenced the Florida legislature to pass a law naming insanity as grounds for divorce. After completing the divorce proceedings, Flagler married Mary Lily Kenan, a socially prominent North Carolinian, who was 37 years his junior. Flagler built his new wife a large Southern-style marble home called Whitehall in Palm Beach. It was the first of the island's mansions, costing $3 million.

Mary Lily hosted elaborate parties at Whitehall. Flagler, who married Mary at the age of 71, was losing his hearing and his sight and suffered from a liver ailment. He often slipped away from the affairs through secret doorways installed in the house. As Flagler aged, he became more reclusive, leaving the entertaining to Mary Lily.

In 1903, Flagler began work on his most challenging engineering feat - a railroad from Miami to Key West. The project spanned 50 miles through the Everglades and 106 miles over and between islands. Workers encountered mosquitoes, quicksand lakes and hurricanes during construction. Turnover was high. In order to attract workers, Flagler offered them free rail transportation to Florida. Many left the train in mid-state to work on farms and in groves. Flagler lived to see the Key West railroad open in 1912. He died on May 20, 1913 in Palm Beach, Florida, following a fall at Whitehall.

Flagler's widow died in 1917 and Whitehall passed to her niece, who sold it. For a while, it served as a hotel. In 1959, Flagler's granddaughter bought the mansion, restored it and opened it as a museum. In 1935, the Key West railroad was destroyed in a hurricane. But Highway 1, which connects the Florida Keys to the mainland utilizes many of the railroad's viaducts, bridges and roadbed. It opened in 1938.

The Rockefellers went on to become one of the most prominent families in the United States. In later years, John Rockefeller acknowledged that Flagler was the "brains" behind Standard Oil. The monopoly Flagler helped create at Standard was broken up by the Supreme Court in 1911. Although Flagler was well known in his lifetime, he was forgotten by history. Even in Florida, Flagler is largely known only as the founder of Palm Beach, which remains a resort community catering to the wealthy. Whitehall is now a museum honoring Flagler's life and Florida history.

Books

Chandler, David Leon, Henry Flagler: the Astonishing Life and Times of the Visionary Robber Baron Who Founded Florida, Macmillan, 1986.

Martin, Sidney Walter, Florida's Flagler University of Georgia Press, 1949.

Owen, Jack, Palm Beach Scandals: An Intimate Guide, Rainbow Books, 1992.

Online

"Henry Morrison Flagler," Dictionary of American Biography Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center . The Gale Group, 2000, http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC(December 20, 2000).

"Henry Morrison Flagler," Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, Palm Beach, Florida,http://www.flagler.org/bio.html(December 20, 2000).

Henry Morrison Flagler
Born	January 2, 1830(1830-01-02) Hopewell, New York, USA
Died	May 20, 1913 (aged 83) Palm Beach, Florida, USA

Henry Morrison Flagler (January 2, 1830 – May 20, 1913) was an American tycoon, real estate promoter, railroad developer and Rockefeller partner in Standard Oil. He was a key figure in the development of the eastern coast of Florida along the Atlantic Ocean and was founder of what became the Florida East Coast Railway. He is known as the father of Miami, Florida and also founded Palm Beach, Florida.^[1]

Contents 1 Upbringing and education 2 Business and Standard Oil 3 Florida: resort hotels and railroads 4 Death and heritage 5 References 6 See also 7 Further reading 8 External links

Upbringing and education

Henry Flagler was born in Hopewell, New York and was the son of Elizabeth Caldwell Morrison Harkness and the Rev. Isaac Flagler, a poor Presbyterian minister. His mother was the widow of Dr. Daniel Harkness of Milan, Ohio who had been a widower when they married. Daniel Harkness and his first wife were the parents of Stephen V. Harkness whose business success enabled him to invest substantially with Henry Flagler in the Standard Oil company.

Henry Flagler received an eighth grade education before leaving home at 14 to work in his cousin's store, Lamon G. Harkness and Company, in Bellevue, Ohio at a salary of US$5 per month plus room and board. By 1849, Flagler was promoted to sales staff of the company at a salary of $400 per month. He eventually left Bellevue and founded the Flagler and York Salt Company, a salt mining and production business in Saginaw, Michigan in 1862 with his brother-in-law Barney York. By 1865, the end of the American Civil War caused a drop in the demand for salt and the Flagler and York Salt Company collapsed. Heavily in debt, Flagler returned to Bellevue. He had lost his initial $50,000 investment and an additional $50,000 he borrowed from his father-in-law and Dan Harkness. Flagler felt he had learned a valuable lesson: Only invest in a business after thorough investigation.^[2]

Business and Standard Oil

After the failure of his salt business in Saginaw, Flagler returned to Bellevue and reentered the grain business as a commission merchant with The Harkness Grain Company. Through this business, Flagler became acquainted with John D. Rockefeller, who worked as a commission agent with Hewitt and Tuttle for the Harkness Grain Company. By the mid-1860s, Cleveland had become the center of the oil refining industry in America and Rockefeller left the grain business to start his own oil refinery. Rockefeller worked in association with chemist and inventor Samuel Andrews. In 1867, Rockefeller, needing capital for his new venture, approached Flagler. Flagler obtained $100,000 from family member Stephen V. Harkness on the condition that Flagler be made a partner. The Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler partnership was formed with Flagler in control of Harkness' interest. ^[3] The partnership eventually grew into the Standard Oil Corporation. It was Flagler's idea to use the rebate system to strengthen the firm's position against competitors and the transporting enterprises alike. Though the refunds issued amounted to no more than fifteen cents on the dollar, they put Standard Oil in position to outcompete other oil refineries.^[4] By 1872, it led the American oil refining industry, producing 10,000 barrels per day (1,600 m³/d). In 1877, Standard Oil moved its headquarters to New York City, and Flagler and his family moved there as well.

Florida: resort hotels and railroads

Florida East Coast Railway, Key West Extension, express train at sea, crossing Long Key Viaduct, Florida. photo from Florida Photographic Collection

In 1876 on the advice of his physician, Flagler traveled to Jacksonville for the winter with his first wife, Mary (née Harkness) Flagler, who was quite ill. Two years after she died in 1881, he married again. Ida Alice (née Shourds) Flagler had been a caregiver for Mary Flagler. After their wedding, the couple traveled to Saint Augustine. Flagler found the city charming, but the hotel facilities and transportation systems inadequate. He recognized Florida's potential to attract out-of-state visitors.

Although Flagler remained on the Board of Directors of Standard Oil, he gave up his day-to-day involvement in the corporation in order to pursue his interests in Florida. He returned to St. Augustine in 1885 and began construction on the 540-room Ponce de León Hotel. Realizing the need for a sound transportation system to support his hotel ventures, Flagler purchased short line railroads in what would later become known as the Florida East Coast Railway.

The Hotel Ponce de León, now part of Flagler College, opened on January 10, 1888 and was an instant success. This project sparked Flagler's interest in creating a new "American Riviera." Two years later, Flagler expanded his Florida holdings. He built a railroad bridge across the St. Johns River to gain access to the southern half of the state and purchased the Hotel Ormond, just north of Daytona. His personal dedication to the state of Florida was demonstrated when he began construction on his private residence, Kirkside, in St. Augustine.

Flagler completed the 1,100-room Royal Poinciana Hotel on the shores of Lake Worth in Palm Beach and extended his railroad to its service town, West Palm Beach, by 1894, founding Palm Beach and West Palm Beach.^[1] The Royal Poinciana Hotel was at the time the largest wooden structure in the world. Two years later, Flagler built the Palm Beach Inn (renamed Breakers Hotel Complex in 1901) overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Palm Beach.

Flagler originally intended West Palm Beach to be the terminus of his railroad system, but during 1894 and 1895, severe freezes hit the area, causing Flagler to rethink his original decision. Sixty miles south, the town today known as Miami was reportedly unharmed by the freeze. To further convince Flagler to continue the railroad to Miami, he was offered land in exchange for laying rail tracks from private landowners, including Julia Tuttle, who ran a trading post on the Miami River, the Florida East Coast Canal and Transportation Company, and the Boston and Florida Atlantic Coast Land Company.

This led to the development of Miami, which was an unincorporated area at the time. Flagler encouraged fruit farming and settlement along his railway line and made many gifts to build hospitals, churches and schools in Florida.

Flagler's railroad, the Florida East Coast Railway, reached Biscayne Bay by 1896. Flagler dredged a channel, built streets, instituted the first water and power systems, and financed the city's first newspaper, The Metropolis. When the city was incorporated in 1896, its citizens wanted to honor the man responsible for its growth by naming it "Flagler". He declined the honor, persuading them to use an old Indian name, "Mayaimi". In 1897, Flagler opened the exclusive Royal Palm Hotel there. He became known as the Father of Miami, Florida.

Flagler's second wife, the former Ida Alice Shourds, had been institutionalized for mental illness since 1895. In 1901, the Florida Legislature passed a bill that made incurable insanity grounds for divorce, opening the way for Flagler to remarry. Judge Minor S. Jones of Florida's 7th Judicial Circuit presided over the divorce. On August 24 of that year, Flagler married his third wife, Mary Lily Kenan, and the couple soon moved into their new Palm Beach estate, Whitehall, a 55-room Beaux Arts home designed by the New York-based firm of Carrère and Hastings, who had designed the New York Public Library and the Pan American Exposition, which were built in the same year as Whitehall.^[5] Built in 1902 as a wedding present to Mary Lily and Florida's first museum, Whitehall was the 60,000 square foot (5,600 m²), winter retreat that established the Palm Beach "Season" for the wealthy of America's Gilded Age.

By 1905, Flagler decided that his Florida East Coast Railway should be extended from Biscayne Bay to Key West, a point 128 miles (206 km) past the end of the Florida peninsula. At the time, Key West was Florida's most populous city and it was also the United States' closest deep water port to the canal that the U.S. government proposed to build in Panama. Flagler wanted to take advantage of additional trade with Cuba and Latin America as well as the increased trade with the west that the Panama Canal would bring. In 1912, the Florida Overseas Railroad was completed to Key West. Over thirty years, Flagler had invested roughly fifty million dollars between railroad, home, and hotel construction, not to mention the aid he gave suffering farmers after the 1894 freeze. When asked about his philanthropic efforts by the President of Rollins College in Winter Park, Flagler is reported to have replied, "I believe this state is the easiest place for many men to gain a living. I do not believe any one else would develop it if I do not ... but I do hope to live long enough to prove I am a good business man by getting a dividend on my investment."^[6]

Death and heritage

Statue of Henry Flagler that stands in front of Flagler College in Saint Augustine, Florida. photo by Mike Horn

In 1913, Flagler fell down a flight of stairs at Whitehall. He never recovered from the fall and died in Palm Beach of his injuries on May 20 at 83 years of age. He was entombed in the Flagler family mausoleum at Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Augustine alongside his first wife, Mary Harkness; daughter, Jenny Louise; and granddaughter, Marjorie. Only his son Harry survived of the three children by his first marriage in 1853 to Mary Harkness. A large portion of his estate was designated for a "niece" who was said to actually be a child born out of wedlock.

When looking back at Flagler's life after his death on May 20, 1913, George W. Perkins, of J.P. Morgan & Co., reflected, "But that any man could have the genius to see of what this wilderness of waterless sand and underbrush was capable and then have the nerve to build a railroad here, is more marvelous than similar development anywhere else in the world." ^[7]

There is a monument to him on Flagler Monument Island in Biscayne Bay, and Flagler College is named after him in St. Augustine. Flagler County, Florida and Flagler Beach, Florida are also named for him. Whitehall, Palm Beach, is open to the public as the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum; his private railcar No. 91 is preserved inside a Beaux Arts pavilion built to look like a 19th Century railway palace.

On February 24, 2006, a statue of Henry Flagler was unveiled in Key West near where the Over-Sea Railroad once terminated. Also, on July 28, 2006, a statue of Henry Flagler was unveiled on the southeast steps of Miami's Dade County Courthouse, appropriately located on Miami's Flagler Street, the thoroughfare that divides South and North Miami.

The Overseas Railroad, also known as the Key West Extension of the Florida East Coast Railway, was heavily damaged and partially destroyed in the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. The Florida East Coast Railway was financially unable to rebuild the destroyed sections, so the roadbed and remaining bridges were sold to the State of Florida, who built the Overseas Highway to Key West, using much of the remaining railway infrastructure.

Flagler's third wife, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler, was born in North Carolina; the top-ranked Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is named for Flagler and his wife, who was an early benefactor of UNC along with her family and descendants.^[8] After Flagler's death she married an old friend, Robert Worth Bingham, who used an inheritance from her to buy the Louisville Courier-Journal newspaper. The Bingham-Flagler marriage (and questions about her death or possible murder) figured prominently in several books that appeared in the 1980s when the Bingham family sold the newspaper in the midst of great acrimony. Control of the Flagler fortune largely passed into the hands of Mary Lily Kenan's family of sisters and brother, who survived into the 1960s.

References

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} "Madoff scandal stuns Palm Beach Jewish community". Reuters. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4BI0YR20081219?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0. Retrieved 2008-12-20. 
2. ^ Martin. 29.
3. ^ Martin. p. 45.
4. ^ Martin. p. 64.
5. ^ Chandler p. 193.
6. ^ Chandler
7. ^ Moffet, Samuel. Henry Morrison Flagler The Cosmopolitan; a Monthly Illustrated Magazine (1902) APS Online
8. ^ "History". Kenan-Flagler Business School. http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/About/History/index.cfm. Retrieved 2008-11-29. 

Bibliography

• Chandler, David. Henry Flagler: The Astonishing Life and Times of the Visionary Robber Baron who Founded Florida(New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1986)
• Standiford, Les (2002). Last Train to Paradise. Crown Publishers, New York, NY. ISBN 0-609-60748-0. 
• Martin, Sidney Walter (1998). Henry Flagler Visionary of the Gilded Age. Tailored Tours Publications, Buena Vista, FL. ISBN 0-9631241-1-0. 
• Martin, Sydney Walter (1949). Florida's Flagler. University of Georgia Press, USA. 

See also

• Flagler Museum
• Mary Flagler Cary
• Casa Monica Hotel

Further reading

• Bramson, Seth H. (2002). Speedway to Sunshine: The Story of the Florida East Coast Railway. Boston Mills Press, Erin, ONT, Canada. ISBN 1-55046-358-6.  Noted by the author as the official history of the Florida East Coast Railway.
• Akin, Edward N. (1991). Flagler: Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron. University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-81301-108-6. 
• Nolan, David. Fifty Feet in Paradise: The Booming of Florida. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Henry Morrison Flagler

• Henry Flagler biography
• History of The Breakers Hotel
• Flagler College
• Indiana Transportation Museum exhibit of Henry Flagler's private railroad car (Florida East Coast No.90)
• Photo of Flagler and his wife
• Ohio Historical Marker 5-39 located in Bellevue, Ohio

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