Henry Huttleston Rogers
Henry Huttleston Rogers (January 29, 1840 – May 19, 1909) was an American industrialist and financier. He made his fortune in the oil refining business, becoming a leader at Standard Oil. He also played a major role in numerous corporations and business enterprises in the gas industry, copper, and railroads. He became a close friend of Mark Twain.
Henry Huttleston Rogers
January 29, 1840
May 19, 1909 (aged 69)
Businessman
- Abigail Palmer Gifford
- Emelie Augusta Randel Hart
5, including Mary Huttleston Coe
Rogers' success in the oil industry began with Charles Pratt in 1866, when he invented an improved process by which naphtha was separated from crude oil during oil refining. John D. Rockefeller bought his and Pratt's business in 1874, and Rogers rose rapidly in Standard Oil. He designed the idea of a very long pipeline for transporting oil, as opposed to using railway cars. In the 1880s, he broadened his interests beyond oil to include copper, steel, banking, and railroads, as well as the Consolidated Gas Company that provided coal gas to major cities. By the 1890s, as Rockefeller was withdrawing from the oil business, Rogers was a dominant figure at Standard Oil. In 1899, Rogers set up the Amalgamated Copper trust, based in Butte, Montana, that dominated an industry in high demand as the nation needed wire to build its electric networks. His last major enterprise was building the Virginian Railway to service the West Virginia coal fields. After 1890, he became a prominent philanthropist, as well as a friend and supporter of Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington.
Early life and education[edit]
Rogers was born in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, on January 29, 1840. He was the elder son of Rowland Rogers (a former ship captain, bookkeeper and grocer) and his wife, Mary Eldredge Huttleston. Both parents were Yankees and were descended from the Pilgrims who arrived in 1620 aboard the Mayflower. His mother's family had earlier used the spelling "Huddleston" rather than "Huttleston". (Consequently, Rogers' name is often misspelled.)
Except for a brief move to Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, during Rogers' early childhood, the family lived in Fairhaven, a fishing village across the Acushnet River from the whaling port of New Bedford. Fairhaven is a small seaside town on the south coast, bordering the Acushnet River to the west and Buzzards Bay to the south. In the mid-1850s, whaling was already an industry in decline in New England. Whale oil was soon replaced by kerosene and natural gas. Henry Rogers' father was one of the many men of New England who changed from a life on the sea to other work to provide for their families.
Rogers was an average student, and he was in the first graduating class of the local high school in 1856. Continuing to live with his parents, he was hired on with the Fairhaven Branch Railroad, an early precursor of the Old Colony Railroad, as an expressman and brakeman. He worked there for three to four years, while carefully saving his earnings.
Business summary: "Hell Hound"[edit]
Rogers was an energetic man, and exhibited ruthlessness, and iron determination. In the financial and business world he could be grasping and greedy, and operated under a flexible moral code that often stretched the rules of both honesty and fair play. On Wall Street in New York City, he became known as "Hell Hound Rogers" and "The Brains of the Standard Oil Trust." He was considered one of the last and great "robber barons" of his day, as times were changing. Nevertheless, Rogers amassed a great fortune, estimated at over $100 million. He invested heavily in various industries, including copper, steel, mining, and railways.
Much of what we know about Rogers and his style in business dealings was recorded by others. His behavior in public Court Proceedings provide some of the better examples and some insight. Rogers' business style extended to his testimony in many court settings. Before the Hepburn Committee of 1879, investigating the railroads of New York, he fine-tuned his circumlocutory, ambiguous, and haughty responses. His most intractable performance was later in a 1906 lawsuit by the state of Missouri, which claimed that two companies in that state registered as independents were actually subsidiaries of Standard Oil, a secret ownership Rogers finally acknowledged.
In Marquis Who's Who for 1908, Rogers listed more than twenty corporations of which he was either president and director or vice president and director.
At his death he held assets later estimated to be worth $100 million, but a 2012 critical examination of his wealth considers $41,000,000 (equivalent to $1,390,000,000 in 2023) a closer estimate.[5]: 69
Philanthropy in Fairhaven[edit]
Rogers was a modest man, and some of his generosity became known only after his death. Examples are found in writings by Helen Keller, Mark Twain, and Booker T. Washington. Beginning in 1885, he began to donate buildings to his hometown of Fairhaven, Massachusetts. These included a grammar school, Rogers School, built in 1885. The Millicent Library was completed in 1893 and was a gift to the Town by the Rogers children in memory of their sister Millicent, who had died in 1890 at the age of 17.
Abbie Palmer (née Gifford) Rogers presented the new Town Hall in 1894. The George H. Taber Masonic Lodge building, named for Rogers' "uncle" and boyhood mentor, was completed in 1901. The Unitarian Memorial Church was dedicated in 1904 to the memory of Rogers' mother, Mary Huttleston (née Eldredge) Rogers. He had the Tabitha Inn built in 1905, and a new Fairhaven High School, called "Castle on the Hill," was completed in 1906. Rogers funded the draining of the mill pond to create a park, installed the town's public water and sewer systems, and served as superintendent of streets for his hometown. Years later, Henry H. Rogers' daughter, Cara Leland Rogers Broughton (Lady Fairhaven), purchased the site of Fort Phoenix, and donated it to the Town of Fairhaven in her father's memory.
After Abbie's death, Rogers developed close friendships with two other notable Americans: Mark Twain and Booker T. Washington. He was instrumental in the education of Helen Keller. Urged on by Twain, Rogers and his second wife financed her college education.
In 1899, Rogers had a luxury steam yacht built by a shipyard in the Bronx. The Kanawha, at 471-tons, was 200 feet (61 m) long and manned by a crew of 39. For the final ten years of his life, Rogers entertained friends as they sailed on cruises mostly along the East Coast of the United States, north to Maine and Canada, and south to Virginia. With Mark Twain among his frequent guests, the movements of the Kanawha attracted great attention from the newspapers, the major public media of the era.