Katana VentraIP

Henry Villard

Henry Villard (April 10, 1835 – November 12, 1900) was an American journalist and financier who was an early president of the Northern Pacific Railway.

For his grandson, the U.S. diplomat, see Henry Serrano Villard.

Henry Villard

Frederick H. Billings

Robert Harris

Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard

(1835-04-10)April 10, 1835
Speyer, Rhenish Bavaria

November 12, 1900(1900-11-12) (aged 65)
Dobbs Ferry, New York

​
​
(m. 1866)​

Henry Villard (grandson)
Oswald Villard, Jr. (grandson)

4, including Oswald

Gustav Leonhard Hilgard
Katharina Antonia Elisabeth Von Pfeiffer

Owned New York Evening Post and The Nation

Born and raised by Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard in Speyer, the Rhenish Palatinate of the Kingdom of Bavaria.[1] Villard clashed with his more conservative father over politics and was sent to a semi-military academy in northeastern France. As a teenager, he emigrated to the United States without his parents' knowledge. He changed his name to Henry Villard, the name of a French classmate,[2] to avoid being sent back to Europe, and began making his way west, briefly studying law as he developed a career in journalism. He supported John C. Frémont of the newly established Republican Party in his presidential campaign in 1856, and later followed Abraham Lincoln's 1860 campaign.


Villard became a war correspondent, first covering the American Civil War, and later being sent by the Chicago Tribune to cover the Austro-Prussian War.[1] He became a pacifist as a result of his experiences covering the Civil War. He would later oppose the American participation in World War I.[3] In the late 1860s he married women's suffrage advocate Helen Frances Garrison, and returned to the U.S., only to go back to Germany for his health in 1870.


While in Germany, Villard became involved in investments in American railroads, and returned to the U.S. in 1874 to oversee German investments in the Oregon and California Railroad.[4] He visited Oregon that summer, and being impressed with the region's natural resources, began acquiring various transportation interests in the region. During the ensuing decade he acquired several rail and steamship companies, and pursued a rail line from Portland to the Pacific Ocean; he was successful, but the line cost more than anticipated, causing financial turmoil. Villard returned to Europe, helping German investors acquire stakes in the transportation network, and returned to New York in 1886.


Also in the 1880s, Villard acquired the New York Evening Post and The Nation,[5] and established the predecessor of General Electric. He was the first benefactor of the University of Oregon, and contributed to other universities, churches, hospitals, and orphanages. He died of a stroke at his country home in New York in 1900.

Career[edit]

Journalism[edit]

On emigrating to America, he adopted the name Villard, the surname of a French schoolmate at Phalsbourg, to conceal his identity from anyone intent on making him return to Germany.[7][8] Making his way westward in 1854, he lived in turn at Cincinnati; Belleville, Illinois, and Peoria, Illinois, where he studied law for a time;[9] and Chicago where he wrote for newspapers. Along with newspaper reporting and various jobs, in 1856 he attempted unsuccessfully to establish a colony of "free soil" Germans in Kansas. In 1856-57 he was editor, and for part of the time was proprietor of the Racine Volksblatt, in which he advocated the election of presidential candidate John C. Frémont of the newly founded Republican Party.

Helen Elise Villard (1868–1917), who married Dr. James William Bell, an English physician, in 1897,[20] and was a semi-invalid most of her life due to a childhood fall down an elevator shaft at the Westmoreland House.[21]

[19]

Harold Garrison Villard (1869–1952), who married Mariquita Serrano (1864–1936), sister of actor Vincent Serrano, in 1897.[23]

[22]

(1872–1949),[24] who married Julia Breckenridge Sanford (1876–1962) and who succeeded his father as owner and publisher of the New York Evening Post and The Nation. [25]

Oswald Garrison Villard

Henry Hilgard Villard (1883–1890), who died young.

[26]

Elizabeth Caruthers

, ed. (1911). "Villard, Henry" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Chisholm, Hugh

; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "Villard, Henry" . New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.

Gilman, D. C.

Memoirs of Henry Villard

Volume I

The Early History of Transportation in Oregon Edited by Oswald Garrison Villard (University of Oregon Press, 1944)

Reviewed here

Buss, Dietrich G. Henry Villard: a study of transatlantic investments and interests, 1870-1895 (Arno Press, 1978).

Cochran, Thomas C. (1949) "The Legend of the Robber Barons." Explorations in Economic History 1#5 (1949) deals largely with Villard.

online

Alexandra Villard de Borchgrave; John Cullen (2001). Villard: The Life and Times of an American Titan. New York: Doubleday.

Kobrak, Christopher. In Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, vol. 2, edited by William J. Hausman. German Historical Institute. Last modified September 30, 2015.

"A Reputation for Cross-Cultural Business: Henry Villard and German Investment in the United States ."

McKenzie, William A. (2004) [1990]. Dining Car to the Pacific: The Famously Good Food of the Northern Pacific Railway. Minneapolis, Minnesota: . ISBN 978-0-8166-9721-2.

University of Minnesota Press

(2011). Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06126-0.

White, Richard

Brief biography of Henry Villard

: a more detailed biography

Helmut Schwab, "Henry Villard"

Henry Villard Business Papers at Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School