Samuel Waters Allerton | |
---|---|
Born | |
Died | February 22, 1914 85) | (aged
Burial place | Graceland Cemetery |
Occupation | Businessman |
Political party | Republican |
Spouses | Pamilla Wigdon Thompson (m. 1860;died 1880)Agnes C. Thompson (m. 1882) |
Children | 2 (including Robert) |
Signature | |
Samuel Waters Allerton (1828-1914) was a businessman who amassed a substantial fortune, primarily through ventures in stockyards and livestock.
Allerton was the Republican Party's nominee for Chicago mayor in 1893, losing to Democratic nominee Carter Harrison Sr.
Allerton was born May 26, 1828, in Amenia, New York, the youngest of nine children of Samuel Waters Allerton Sr., a tailor and woolen mill operator, and his wife, Hannah ( née Hurd). [1] [2] [3]
He was a descendant of Mayflower pilgrims Isaac Allerton [3] and Elder William Brewster. Isaac Allerton married Brewster's daughter Fear, who became the mother of Samuel Allerton's ancestral line.
In 1835 when Allerton was seven, his father's woolen mill business failed financially, and the family property was auctioned off. [1] This was reported to be a formative experience in Allerton's life. [1] At the age of twelve, Allerton entered the workforce as a farm hand. [1] The family experienced further financial difficulty as a result of the Panic of 1837 and some members moved as far west as Dubuque, Iowa, but ultimately they settled on a farm in Yates County, New York in 1842. [2]
After six years Allerton had saved enough money to buy his parents a farm near Newark, New York, and they moved there.[ citation needed ]
With his oldest brother Henry, Allerton rented and purchased farms, netting profits from them, and became a small-time livestock trader. [1] [2] He increased his involvement in livestock and made money in a venture transporting livestock over land after a break occurred in the rail line between Erie, Pennsylvania and Dunkirk, New York. [1]
Allerton then moved west, ending up in Fulton County, Illinois where he raised cattle for a year. He moved his livestock operations to Chicago in 1860, opening up Allerton Swine Yards at the terminus of the Hudson River Railroad. [4]
On July 2, 1860 Allerton wed Pamilla Wigdon Thompson in Peoria, Illinois. [5] She was the oldest daughter of wealthy cattle farmers Asler and Berintha Thompson who lived near Canton in Fulton County. [4] [6] The Allertons moved into the Orient House, a Chicago boardinghouse. They soon bought a house at 644 Michigan Avenue and lived there until 1879 when they moved to 1936 Prairie Avenue. The Prairie Avenue house had been built for Daniel M. Thompson in 1869, and the Allerton family owned it until it was demolished in 1915.
On June 10, 1863, their daughter Katharine ″Kate″ Reinette Allerton was born. [6]
In 1863 Allerton was a co-founder of the First National Bank of Chicago. [4] [6] [7] For many years, he served as the bank's director, and he continued to hold a financial interest his entire life. [8]
In 1864, Allerton was a key partner in the founding of the Pittsburgh Joint Stock Yards and he was a leader in the push to consolidate Chicago's railroad stockyards into the Union Stock Yards in 1865. [4] He led a group that invested $1 million to construct the St. Louis National Stockyards in 1871 and also invested in stockyards located in Baltimore, Jersey City, St. Joseph, Missouri, and Omaha. [3]
On March 20, 1873, Allerton and his wife Pamilla had their second child, a son named Robert Allerton. [4] [6] A series of three oil paintings of the family by Henry H. Cross (1837−1918) in 1879 showed Samuel and Pamilla in a horse−drawn sleigh, Samuel and Robert in the sleigh, and Robert on his black pony. [9]
Allerton was involved in the creation of the city's first cable car line. [8]
Allerton was widowed on March 15, 1880, when Pamilla died of scarlet fever. On March 15, 1882, he married Pamilla's youngest sister, Agnes C. Thompson. [1] [4] [6] Agnes was 24 at the time of their wedding, whilst Allerton was 53. [6] While he and Agnes never had any children of their own, Agnes acted as a mother and mentor in the arts to Allerton's young son Robert, who was both her stepson and nephew. [6]
Politically, Allerton was a strong conservative Republican. [8] In 1893 he was the Republican nominee for mayor of Chicago.
Allerton died on February 22, 1914, at the Allerton winter home in South Pasadena, California. [8] Allerton's death was caused by diabetes from which he had long suffered. [8] He is buried with his wives Pamilla and Agnes in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.
By the turn of the twentieth century, Allerton was among Chicago's wealthiest men. [6] At one point, he was ranked by the Chicago Tribune as the third-wealthiest man in Chicago, behind only Marshall Field and J. Ogden Armour. [4] He was also a regular presence on Chicago's society pages. [6]
Allerton owned a private Pullman railcar. [4]
In addition to the residence on Chicago's prestigious Prairie Avenue the Allerton family maintained a summer home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin called The Folly and a Mission style winter home in South Pasadena, California. [6]
Allerton owned stockyards and farms throughout the Midwestern United States. [6] He owned over 40,000 acres of farmland in Illinois, Iowa, and Ohio. [8]
At one point, he was a well known breeder of horses for harness racing. [8]
Allerton is a village in Sidell Township, Vermilion County, Illinois, United States. A small portion of the village extends into Champaign County. The population was 262 at the 2020 census.
Hudson is a village in McLean County, Illinois, United States. The population was 1,753 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Bloomington–Normal Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Degory Priest was a member of the Leiden contingent on the historic 1620 voyage of the ship Mayflower. He was a hat maker from London who married Sarah, sister of Pilgrim Isaac Allerton in Leiden. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact in November 1620 and died less than two months later.
Jonathan Ogden Armour was an American meatpacking magnate and only surviving son of Civil War–era industrialist Philip Danforth Armour. He became owner and president of Armour & Company upon the death of his father in 1901. During his tenure as president, Armour and Co. expanded nationwide and overseas, growing from a mid-sized regional meatpacker to the largest food products company in the United States.
The Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., or The Yards, was the meatpacking district in Chicago for more than a century, starting in 1865. The district was operated by a group of railroad companies that acquired marshland and turned it into a centralized processing area. By the 1890s, the railroad capital behind the Union Stockyards was Vanderbilt money. The Union Stockyards operated in the New City community area for 106 years, helping Chicago become known as the "hog butcher for the world," the center of the American meatpacking industry for decades. The yards became inspiration for literature and social reform.
Charles Phillip Ingalls was an American pioneer, farmer, government official, musician, and carpenter who was the father of Laura Ingalls Wilder, known for her Little House series of books. He is depicted as the character "Pa" in the books and the television series.
William Deering was an American businessman and philanthropist. He inherited a woolen mill in Maine, but made his fortune in later life with the Deering Harvester Company.
Isaac Allerton Sr., and his family, were passengers in 1620 on the historic voyage of the ship Mayflower. Allerton was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact. In Plymouth Colony he was active in colony governmental affairs and business and later in trans-Atlantic trading. Problems with the latter regarding colony expenditures caused him to be censured by the colony government and ousted from the colony. He later became a well-to-do businessman elsewhere and in his later years resided in Connecticut.
The Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site is an 86-acre (0.3 km2) history park located eight miles (13 km) south of Charleston, Illinois, U.S., near the town of Lerna. The centerpiece is a replica of the log cabin built and occupied by Thomas Lincoln, father of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln never lived here and only occasionally visited, but he provided financial help to the household and, after Thomas died in 1851, Abraham owned and maintained the farm for his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln. The farmstead is operated by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
The Robert Allerton Park is a 1,517-acre (614 ha) park, nature center, and conference center located in the rural Piatt County township of Willow Branch, near Monticello, Illinois, on the upper Sangamon River. The park and manor house, The Farms, are attributed to owner Robert Allerton, industrialist heir, artist, art collector and garden designer. Robert donated the complex to the University of Illinois in 1946.
Col. Isaac Allerton Jr. was planter, military officer, politician and merchant in colonial America. Like his father, he first traded in New England, and after his father's death, in Virginia. There, he served on the Governor's Council (1687-1691) and for many years in the House of Burgesses, representing Northumberland County and later Westmoreland County.
Samuel Fuller was a passenger on the historic 1620 voyage of the Pilgrim ship Mayflower and became a respected church deacon and the physician for Plymouth Colony.
Robert Henry Allerton, born in Chicago, Illinois, United States, was the son and heir of First National Bank of Chicago co-founder Samuel Allerton. He was a philanthropist who served as a trustee and honorary president for the Art Institute of Chicago, becoming one of its benefactors by donating thousands of artworks. He also became a trustee for the Honolulu Academy of Art, leaving a trust that funds the Academy to this day.
The Allerton Hotel for Women, today known as Hotel 57, is a hotel located at 130 East 57th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is a seventeen-story brick, limestone, and terra cotta building designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon in 1920. It was built on the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 57th Street by the Allerton House Company at a cost of $700,000. It originally had stores on its ground floor. The hotel intended to accommodate six hundred business and professional women and also shelter young girls. When completed in 1923, the Allerton Hotel had room for four hundred tenants. Its occupancy was filled prior to completion and there was a long waiting list. After opening it was so popular that another establishment of its kind was anticipated.
National City was a suburb of East St. Louis, Illinois. Incorporated in 1907, it was a company town for the St. Louis National Stockyards Company. In 1996, the company, which owned all residential property in the town, evicted all of its residents. The following year, because it had no residents, National City was dissolved by court order. Its site was subsequently annexed by nearby Fairmont City, Illinois.
Richard More was born in Corvedale, Shropshire, England, and was baptised at St James parish church in Shipton, Shropshire, on 13 November 1614. Richard and his three siblings were at the centre of a mystery in early-17th-century England that caused early genealogists to wonder why the More children's father, believed to be Samuel More, would send his very young children away to the New World on the Mayflower in the care of others. It was in 1959 that the mystery was explained. Jasper More, a descendant of Samuel More, prompted by his genealogist friend, Sir Anthony Wagner, searched and found in his attic a 1622 document that detailed the legal disputes between Katherine More and Samuel More and what actually happened to the More children. It is clear from these events that Samuel did not believe the children to be his offspring. To rid himself of the children, he arranged for them to be sent to the Colony of Virginia. Due to bad weather, the Mayflower finally anchored in Cape Cod Harbor in November 1620, where one of the More children died soon after; another died in early December and yet another died later in the first winter. Only Richard survived, and even thrived, in the perilous environment of early colonial America, going on to lead a very full life.
Ellen Palmer Allerton was an American poet whose inspiration probably came from her life on farms in rural New York, Wisconsin, and Kansas. She is best remembered for the poems Beautiful Things, The Trail of Forty-Nine and Walls of Corn.