Henry Villard

Henry Villard (April 10, 1835 – November 12, 1900) was a German-American journalist and financier who was an influential leader and the sixth president of the Northern Pacific Railway (1881–1884) which completed its trans-continental route during his tenure in 1883.

Born and raised by Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard in the historic ancient Roman Empire border fortification, then Medieval / Middle Ages town of Speyer, along the Rhine River in the Rhenish Palatinate of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Villard clashed with his more conservative father over politics and was sent to a semi-military academy across the border in northeastern France. As a teenager, he emigrated to the United States in the 1850s without his parents' knowledge. He changed his name to Henry Villard, the name of a French classmate, 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 famed Western explorer ("The Pathfinder") and military officer in the United States Army of John C. Frémont (1813–1890), of the newly established Republican Party in his first presidential candidate campaign representing the new political party in the 1856 presidential election, and four years later followed former U.S. Representative (congressman) from Springfield, Illinois of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), in his bid for the American Presidency in the 1860 presidential election campaign.

Villard became a war correspondent, first covering the ensuing American Civil War (1861–1865), and later being sent back overseas by the Chicago Tribune to Europe (because of his childhood experiences and knowledge of foreign languages) to also cover the brief Austro-Prussian War in 1866, between two German-speaking totalitarian / authoritarian regimes fighting for political supremacy in Central Europe. It was also significant because with the quick decisive Prussian military victory over the neighboring Austrian Empire enabled the rising Kingdom of Prussia under dynamic Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898, served Prussia 1862–1871 / Imperial Germany 1871–1890), to exclude Austria and its ruling Habsburg imperial dynasty from future German affairs and to then lead and dominate the unification campaign to create a new centralized German Empire in Central Europe. This occurred four years later in Paris after a similar defeat of rival Emperor Napoleon III of the Second French Empire and his French Army military forces of France in the subsequent Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. 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, 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.

Early life and education

thumb|right|Henry Villard (left) at about age 13, with mother (center), sister Emma (right) and uncle Robert (above)

He was born in Speyer, Palatinate, Kingdom of Bavaria. His parents moved to Zweibrücken in 1839, and in 1856 his father, Gustav Leonhard Hilgard (who died in 1867), became a justice of the Supreme Court of Bavaria, at Munich.

Villard entered a Gymnasium (equivalent of a United States high school) in Zweibrücken in 1848, which he had to leave because he sympathized with the revolutions of 1848 in Germany. He had broken up a class by refusing to mention the King of Bavaria in a prayer, justifying his omission by citing his loyalty to the provisional government. Another time, after watching a session of the Frankfurt Parliament, he came home in a Hecker hat with a red feather in it. Two of his uncles were strongly in sympathy with the revolution, but his father was a conservative, and disciplined him by sending the boy to continue his education at the French semi-military academy in Phalsbourg (1849–50).

Originally his punishment was to be apprenticed, but his father compromised on the military school. 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.

thumb|upright|Henry Villard in 1866

Thereafter he was associated with the New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, for which he covered the Lincoln-Douglas debates; On visiting Oregon, he was impressed with the natural wealth of the region, and conceived the plan of gaining control of its few transportation routes. His clients, who were also large creditors also of the Oregon Steamship Company, approved his scheme, and in 1875 Villard became president of both the steamship company and the Oregon and California Railroad. In 1876, he was appointed a receiver of the Kansas Pacific Railway as the representative of European creditors. He was removed in 1878, but continued the contest he had begun with Jay Gould and finally obtained better terms for the bond holders than they had agreed to accept. After some contention with the old managers of the Northern Pacific road, Villard was elected president of a reorganized board of directors on 15 September 1881.

thumb|left|The [[Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company steamship Columbia. Launched in 1880, it was the first commercial application of Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb.]]

After attending Thomas Edison's 1879 Menlo Park, New Jersey, New Year's Eve demonstration of his incandescent light bulb, Villard requested that Edison install one of his lighting systems onboard Oregon Railroad and Navigation's new steamship, the Columbia. Although hesitant at first, Edison eventually agreed to Villard's request. After being mostly completed at the John Roach & Sons shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania, the Columbia was sent to New York City, where Edison and his personnel installed its lighting system. This made Columbia the first commercial application of Edison's light bulb.

With the aid of the Oregon and Transcontinental Company, his railroad line to the Pacific Ocean was completed, and it was opened to traffic with festivities in September 1883. The project had cost more than expected, and some months later these companies experienced a financial collapse. Villard's financial embarrassment caused the collapse of the stock exchange firm of Decker, Howell, & Co., and Villard's attorney, William Nelson Cromwell, used $1,000,000 to promptly settle with creditors.

thumb|Group photograph of [[Hermann von Helmholtz|Hermann Helmholtz, his wife (seated) and academic friends Hugo Kronecker (left), Thomas Corwin Mendenhall (right), Henry Villard (center standing) – 1893]]

Villard had also had a hand in the large electric power business founded by Thomas Edison, merging the Edison Electric Light Company, Edison Lamp Company of Newark, New Jersey, and the Edison Machine Works at Schenectady, New York, to form the Edison General Electric Company. Villard was the president of this concern until 1892 when he was forced out after financier J. P. Morgan engineered a merger with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company that put that company's board in control of the new enterprise, renamed General Electric.

Philanthropy

In 1883, he paid the debt of the University of Oregon, and gave the institution $50,000. As the University of Oregon's first benefactor, he had Villard Hall, the second building on campus, named after him.

He liberally aided the University of Washington Territory. the only daughter of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

Helen Elise Villard (1868–1917), who married Dr. James William Bell, an English physician, in 1897, and was a semi-invalid most of her life due to a childhood fall down an elevator shaft at the Westmoreland House.
Harold Garrison Villard (1869–1952), who married Mariquita Serrano (1864–1936), sister of actor Vincent Serrano, in 1897.
Oswald Garrison Villard (1872–1949), 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.
Henry Hilgard Villard (1883–1890), who died young. The monument at his grave site was executed by Karl Bitter.

Three years after his death, his daughter Helen brought a suit against the executors and trustees of his will. She claimed that Villard was of unsound mind when he made the will and was the result of fraudulent influence exercised over him by his wife and his two sons. In the will, she was only left $25,000 due to the fact that she married against her father's wishes. She contended that there was no mention of the $200,000 worth of securities she said her father claimed to have left her. Helen lost her suit as the Judge ruled in 1905 that her delay in filing suit had forfeited the right to attack the will. An appeal was rejected by the courts in 1910.

Descendants

Through his son Harold, he was the grandfather of Henry Serrano Villard (1900–1996), the foreign service officer and ambassador, and Vincent Serrano Villard, and Mariquita Villard Platov. a member of the American University in Cairo, Henry Hilgard Villard (1911–1983), the head of the economics department at the City College of New York and the first male president of Planned Parenthood of New York City, and Oswald Garrison Villard Jr. (1916–2004), a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.

Residences

In the late 1870s, Villard bought an old country estate known as "Thorwood Park" in Dobbs Ferry, New York. The home, which featured sweeping views of the Hudson River, was renovated by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead and White in the early 1880s.

In 1884, Villard hired Joseph M. Wells of the architecture firm McKim, Mead and White to design and construct the Villard Houses, which appear as one building but in fact is six separate residences. The houses are located at 455 Madison Avenue between 50th and 51st Street in Manhattan with four of the homes opening onto the courtyard facing Madison, while the other two had entrances on 51st Street. The homes are in the Romanesque Revival style with neo-Renaissance touches and feature elaborate interiors by prominent artists including John La Farge, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Maitland Armstrong.

After Villard's bankruptcy, the Villard House was purchased by Elisabeth Mills Reid (1857–1931), wife of Whitelaw Reid, a diplomat and the editor of the New York Tribune, and the daughter of Darius Ogden Mills and the sister of Ogden Mills, bankers and financiers.

References

;Notes

;Sources

Memoirs of Henry Villard (2 vols., Boston, 1904)
Volume I at Wikisource
Volume II at Wikisource
The Early History of Transportation in Oregon Edited by Oswald Garrison Villard (University of Oregon Press, 1944) Reviewed here

External links

Brief biography of Henry Villard
Helmut Schwab, "Henry Villard": a more detailed biography
Henry Villard Business Papers at Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School