Thomas Fortune Ryan
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (March 2024) |
Thomas F. Ryan | |
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Born | Nelson County, Virginia, U.S. | October 17, 1851
Died | November 23, 1928 New York City, U.S. | (aged 77)
Occupation | Financier |
Political party | Democrat |
Spouses |
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Children | 8 |
Relatives |
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Signature | |
Thomas Fortune Ryan (October 17, 1851 – November 23, 1928) was an American tobacco, insurance and transportation magnate. Although he lived in
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,
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]
Fortune building
Ryan opened a
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
Ryan's most profitable investment was tobacco. Having invested in its stocks throughout the 1890s, Ryan joined tobacco assets in 1898, forming The
In 1905, amid public outcry, Ryan purchased the $400-million-strong
Ryan also invested in King Leopold II's Congo Free State. In 1906, he cofounded the American Congo Company with Daniel Guggenheim.[2] He was also an investor in other Belgian colonial concession companies, including the diamond and lumber conglomerate Forminière.[3]
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
In 1901, the Ryans funded the construction of Sacred Heart Church and Sacred Heart School on Perry Street in
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 "
In 1916, Thomas Fortune Ryan was also the principal financial backer of
On October 17, 1917, on his 66th birthday, his wife Ida died from heart disease. Twelve days later, the widower 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).
Ryan's eldest son
References
- ^ a b Slipek Jr., Edwin (January 19, 2005). "The Tycoon: The story of Thomas Fortune Ryan, and his legacy in Richmond". Style Weekly. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
- ^ Wuliger, Robert (October 10, 2007). "America's Early Role in the Congo Tragedy". The Nation. Retrieved September 19, 2021.
- ^ Forminière 1906-1956 (in French). Brussels: Ed. L. Cuypers. 1956. pp. 12–13.
- ^ Gerald P. Fogarty, Commonwealth Catholicism (University of Notre Dame Press 2001) p. 331-333
- ^ Fogarty, p. 334
- ^ Fogarty pp. 491-492
- ^ "Oak Ridge Estate Marker, R-57". MarkerHistory.com. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved December 5, 2021.
- ^ Rogarty at p. 360
External links
- December 3, 1928 TIME magazine article titled "Death of Ryan" at the Wayback Machine (archived November 3, 2012)
- Works by or about Thomas Fortune Ryan at Internet Archive