Thomas Fortune Ryan (October 17, 1851 – November 23, 1928) was an American tobacco, insurance and transportation magnate. Although he lived in New York City for much of his adult career, Ryan was perhaps the greatest benefactor of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond in the decades before the Great Depression. In addition to paying for schools, hospitals and other charitable works, Ryan's donations paid for the construction of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond, Virginia. Ryan also made significant donations to Catholic institutions in New York City and Washington, D.C.
Early days
Thomas Fortune Ryan was born on October 17, 1851, near Lovingston, Virginia, the county seat of Nelson County. Despite a myth promulgated by Cleveland Amory regarding his background, Ryan was neither orphaned nor penniless as a youth, nor did his ancestors flee the Great Famine of Ireland as did many who worked on or rode his streetcars. Rural Virginia where Ryan grew up attracted few of those emigrants. Ryan's father was a tailor and managed a small hotel. He traced his ancestry to Protestant Anglo-Irish settlers who came to North America in the seventeenth century.[1]
Ryan's mother, Lucinda Fortune Ryan, died in 1856 when he was five years old. His father remarried and moved to Tennessee two years later. Ryan was raised as a Protestant by his mother's extended family in Lovingston, south of Charlottesville in Virginia's Piedmont. Local Baptist ministers taught the youth to read and write, but Ryan did not attend college. Before the American Civil War, Ryan and his younger brother owned three slaves.[citation needed]
Conversion
Aged 17, three years after the war ended, Ryan fled the lack of economic opportunity in post-war Virginia and moved to the nearest big city, Baltimore, Maryland with $100 in his pocket. En route, Ryan converted to Catholicism, purportedly after long discussions with the conductor.[1]
In Baltimore, John S. Barry, a prosperous dry goods merchant and Catholic, hired young Ryan. By 1872, Barry helped Ryan secure a brokerage assistant position on Wall Street where he would be tutored by William Collins Whitney.[citation needed]
Ryan opened a brokerage firm with two partners, Lee, Ryan & Warren, the following year.
In 1873 Ryan married his former boss's daughter, Ida Mary Barry, whose family were devout Roman Catholics. They had eight children. In 1874, his firm purchased Ryan a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. At the same time, Ryan became active in politics, especially with the Tammany Hall machine that controlled much of the city's operations, giving him political and industrial contacts across the city.[citation needed]
Ryan's fortune began in public transit. In 1883, he founded the New York Cable Railroad and bid on the proposed route from lower Manhattan to Midtown. After numerous legal and financial problems, in 1886 Ryan reorganized his cable railroad as the Metropolitan Traction Company. By 1893, construction of Ryan's rail system was underway on Broadway. Metropolitan continually acquired additional lines so that by 1900 it controlled 3,000 cars and 300 miles of track, the majority of New York's streetcar operations. [citation needed]
Ryan's most profitable investment was tobacco. Having invested in its stocks throughout the 1890s, Ryan joined tobacco assets in 1898, forming The Union Tobacco Company. Shortly thereafter, he merged Union Tobacco with his greatest competitor, James Duke of North Carolina, forming the American Tobacco Company. Together Ryan and Duke developed the British-American Tobacco Company to protect the American tobacco trade in Europe. Upon his death, Ryan also had major holdings in R. J. Reynolds and Liggett & Myers.
In 1905, amid public outcry, Ryan purchased the $400-million-strong Equitable Life Assurance Society, a major factor in the insurance industry. Although Ryan strove to make Equitable more responsive to its policy holders, public reaction to his purchase was overwhelmingly negative. His reputation for cutthroat business dealings in the streetcar and subway businesses made the public distrustful. In 1909, Ryan sold his Equitable stock. Also in 1905, Ryan's Metropolitan street car system was threatened by New York's increasingly popular subway system. He merged Metropolitan with August Belmont Jr.'s Interborough Rapid Transit Company. But the joint company's finances were shaky, and Ryan pulled out. Meanwhile, some $35 million that Ryan had raised in a bond issue were misappropriated. Ryan was investigated for corruption in 1908, but the grand jury brought no charges.[citation needed]
Meanwhile, Ryan was making fortunes with coal mines, banks, public utilities and railroads. He owned Royal Typewriter and backed the maker of the Thompson submachine gun. At one time Ryan had controlling interest in 30 corporations.
Philanthropy
As her husband's wealth grew exponentially, Ida Barry Ryan began making large benefactions to Catholic charitable organizations in New York, Virginia, and across the country. The Ryans funded churches, convents and hospitals in Manhattan, including the architecturally important St. Jean Baptiste Catholic Church on the Upper East Side. In Washington, D.C., they paid for a gymnasium and dormitory at the Jesuit-founded Georgetown University.
In 1901, the Ryans funded the construction of Sacred Heart Church and Sacred Heart School on Perry Street in Manchester, Virginia (now part of Richmond). In the same year, the Ryans donated $250,000 to build a new cathedral in Richmond and soon doubled that donation to ensure that the interior would be of the highest workmanship. The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, whose cornerstone was laid by the apostolic delegate on June 4, 1903, was dedicated by the same nuncio on November 29, 1906, and remains one of the metropolitan area's architectural landmarks.[4] Other Ryan gifts in Virginia included the Cathedral High and the Cathedral Primary schools in Richmond.
In October 1903, Ryan and his wife donated a two-story brick and steam heated building near the Newport News Shipyard to the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth so they could start a Catholic girls school (to be named St. Vincent's de Paul School and later renamed Peninsula Catholic High School). In June 1904, they donated a new building for the Sisters and their 104 students in their charge. The Ryans also financed construction of Catholic churches in Harrisonburg and Charlottesville.
Pope Pius X recognized the couple's generosity by naming him to the papal nobility and giving Ida Ryan the cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice for her work in the Diocese.[5] The couple's lifetime contributions to Catholic charities around the country totalled $20 million. However, Mrs. Ryan refused to allow any funds to be used for "colored work" (including schools and hospitals for Virginia's freed blacks, despite diocesan missionary priorities of the time).[6]
The Ryans' philanthropy also extended to Southern history, the fine arts and exploration. Ryan financed and selected Charles Hoffbauer to create a series of paintings, "The Four Seasons of the Confederacy", commissioned for a major gallery in what is now the Virginia Historical Society. For Jamestown's 300th anniversary in 1907, Ryan donated a collection of portraits of key players in Virginia's settlement. Thomas Ryan also helped finance Virginia explorer Richard E. Byrd's flight to the South Pole. [citation needed]
In 1887, the Ryans bought the Groesbeck mansion near Suffern, New York in what is today the village of Montebello in the Town of Ramapo, a major municipality on the Erie Railroad, and rebuilt it into a summer home they called "Montebello". During the three decades before her death, Ida Barry Ryan funded the construction of the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as well as the Good Samaritan Hospital.
Later years
Ryan announced his intention to retire in 1912. Re-establishing his roots in his native state of Virginia, he had since 1901 maintained "Oak Ridge" in Nelson County, formerly the estate of tobacco trader William Rives and later of former Confederate and U.S. Congressman William Porcher Miles.[7] Ryan also became a Virginia delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1912, which selected fellow Virginian Woodrow Wilson as the party's presidential candidate.
On October 17, 1917, on his 66th birthday, his wife Ida died from heart disease. Twelve days later, Ryan married widow Mary Townsend Lord Cuyler. The resulting scandal did not deter Belgian Cardinal Desire-Joseph Mercier from accepting Ryan's proffered private railway car in 1919, which he used in touring the United States and accepting honorary degrees and awards concerning his country's defense against the invading Germans.[8]
Death and legacy
On November 23, 1928, Thomas Fortune Ryan died, the South's wealthiest native son and the nation's 10th wealthiest man. He left a fortune of more than $200 million. He was buried on his Oak Ridge estate, as was his second wife, Mary. Although a place had been reserved for Ida Barry Ryan in the crypt of Richmond's Sacred Heart Cathedral, she was ultimately interred in the cemetery at St. Andrews-on-Hudson Seminary in Hyde Park, New York (now The Culinary Institute of America).
Altria Group, Inc. is an American corporation and one of the world's largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes, and medical products in the treatment of illnesses caused by tobacco. It operates worldwide and is headquartered in Henrico County, Virginia, just outside the city of Richmond.
Richmond is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. Incorporated in 1742, Richmond has been an independent city since 1871. The city's population in the 2020 census was 226,610, up from 204,214 in 2010, making it Virginia's fourth-most populous city. The Richmond metropolitan area, with over 1.3 million residents, is the Commonwealth's third-most populous.
Nelson County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,775. Its county seat is Lovingston. Nelson County is part of the Charlottesville, VA, Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The Diocese of Richmond is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in Virginia in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Baltimore.
Lewis Ginter was a prominent businessman, financier, military officer, real estate developer, and philanthropist centered in Richmond, Virginia. A native of New York City, Ginter accumulated a considerable fortune throughout his numerous business ventures and became one of Richmond's wealthiest citizens despite his exceptionally modest demeanor. While the Jefferson Hotel and Ginter Park embody some of Ginter's major urban contributions to Richmond, many of his philanthropic gifts were given anonymously to charitable organizations and individuals in need. Ginter served in the Confederacy, attaining the rank of major and played a major role in bringing Richmond back from the ravages of the Civil War. His continued devotion to the city is captured in his famous remark, "I am for Richmond, first and last."
The Diocese of Wheeling–Charleston is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church comprising West Virginia in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Baltimore.
James Henry Dooley was a Virginia lawyer, business leader, politician, and philanthropist based in Richmond during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. He represented Richmond in the Virginia House of Delegates for three terms.
Transportation in Richmond, Virginia and its immediate surroundings include land, sea and air modes. This article includes the independent city and portions of the contiguous counties of Henrico and Chesterfield. While almost all of Henrico County would be considered part of the Richmond area, southern and eastern portions of Chesterfield adjoin the three smaller independent cities of Petersburg, Hopewell, and Colonial Heights, collectively commonly called the Tri-Cities area. A largely rural section of southwestern Chesterfield may be considered not a portion of either suburban area.
John Dubois was a French-born Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of New York from 1826 until his death in 1842.
Denis J. O'Connell was an Irish-born American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as bishop of the Diocese of Richmond in Virginia from 1912 to 1926. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco in California from 1908 to 1912.
Augustine Van de Vyver was a Belgian-born American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the sixth bishop of the Diocese of Richmond in Virginia from 1889 to 1911.
Thomas Albert Andrew Becker was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as the first bishop of the Diocese of Wilmington (1868–1886) and the sixth bishop of the Diocese of Savannah in Georgia (1886–1899).
Barry Christopher Knestout is an American prelate of the Catholic Church who has served as Bishop of Richmond since 2017.
Thomas John McDonnell, D.D., was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church who served as the coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling in West Virginia.
The Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond, Virginia, is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Richmond. The property is located along North Laurel Street at 823 Cathedral Place, facing Monroe Park one block north of Main Street. Construction of the cathedral was begun in 1903, financed by donations of Thomas Fortune Ryan and his wife; it was the only cathedral at that time known to be constructed by the exclusive patronage of a single family.
Joseph Hubert McGuire was an American architect practicing in New York City, where he specialized in Catholic churches and institutions. According to his headstone, McGuire was born January 21, 1865, although all other sources indicate 1866.
The Church of the Sacred Heart, is a Catholic church in Richmond, Virginia that was built in 1901. The congregation was initially Irish and German.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Richmond, Virginia, United States
Ida Mary Barry Ryan was an American philanthropist. She was active in building, endowing, and assisting over 100 churches, chapels, hospitals, and various charities, to which she gave more than US$3,000,000.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
