Oil merchant and philanthropist, born in Watertown, Massachusetts, USA. One of 11 children, he grew up in adverse circumstances. He went to work at age 10 and moved to New York City in 1851. He specialized in paints and oils (185467) before he formed Charles Pratt & Co to refine crude oil at Greenpoint, NY, and the resultant product was marketed worldwide as an illuminant. He sold his firm to John D Rockefeller (1874) and then became immensely wealthy while working for Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co. He founded Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (1887) and the Pratt Institute Free Library, and gave generously to various educational institutions.
Pratt was a pioneer of the U.S. petroleum industry, and established his kerosene refinery Astral Oil Works in Brooklyn, New York. Pratt's product later gave rise to the slogan, "The holy lamps of Tibet are primed with Astral Oil." Rogers into his business, forming Charles Pratt and Company in 1867, which became part of John D.
Pratt became an advocate of education, and founded and endowed the Pratt Institute which bears his name.
Youth, Education
Charles Pratt was born in Watertown, Massachusetts, one of eleven children.
Whale Oil, Petroleum, Astral Oil
In nearby Boston, Massachusetts, Pratt joined a company specializing in paints and whale oil products.
Pratt recognized the potential replacement of whale oil with natural oil for lighting purposes, and became a pioneer of the natural oil industry as new wells were established in western Pennsylvania in the 1860s. Pratt's product later gave rise to the slogan, "The holy lamps of Tibet are primed with Astral Oil." Rogers, Charles Pratt and Company
In the mid-1860s, Pratt met two aspiring young men, Charles Ellis and Henry H. Previously, Pratt had bought whale oil from Charles Ellis in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, the young men's coastal hometown. They struck a deal and pre sold the entire output of their small venture, Wamsutta Oil Refinery, at McClintocksville near Oil City to Pratt's company at a fixed price.
However, a flaw in the arrangement was that Ellis and Rogers had no wells and were dependent upon purchasing crude oil to refine and sell to Pratt. The young entrepreneurs struggled to try to live up to their fixed price contract with Pratt, but soon their surplus of funds was wiped out.
Charles Ellis gave up, but in 1866, Henry Rogers went to Pratt in New York City and told him he would take personal responsibility for the entire debt. Pratt made Rogers foreman of his Brooklyn refinery, with a promise of a partnership if sales ran over fifty thousand dollars a year. Rogers moved steadily from foreman to manager, and then superintendent of Pratt's Astral Oil Refinery. True to his word, Pratt soon gave Rogers an interest in the business. In 1867, with Henry Rogers as a partner, he established the firm of Charles Pratt and Company. In the next few year Rogers became, in the words of Elbert Hubbard, Pratt's "hands and feet and eyes and ears" (Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen, 1909).
Standard Oil
In the early 1870s, Pratt and Rogers became involved in conflicts with John D. The New York interests formed an association, and about the middle of March 1872, sent a committee of three, with Rogers, of Charles Pratt and Company, as head, to Oil City to consult with the Oil Producers' Union there.
A short time later, Rockefeller approached Charles Pratt with his plans of cooperation and consolidation. Pratt talked it over with Rogers, and they decided that the combination would benefit them. Rogers formulated terms which guaranteed financial security and jobs for Pratt and himself. Charles Pratt and Company (including Astral Oil) became one of the important formerly independent refiners to join Rockefeller's organization, and it was to become part of the Standard Oil Trust in 1874. Pratt's eldest son, Charles Millard Pratt (1858-1913) became Secretary of Standard Oil.
Although the merger deal made him a wealthy man, as a member of the board of directors of Standard Oil, Pratt was a frequent critic of Rockefeller, who was always respectful to him. With Pratt's death in 1891, Rockefeller's position as the most powerful man in the oil industry, already well established, became unassailable.
Pratt's former protégé, Henry H. Rogers, who kept his residence in New York City after moving there at Pratt's request, also invested outside of Standard Oil, and became one of the wealthiest men in the world.
Heritage
Pratt Institute
Charles Pratt is credited with recognizing the growing need for trained industrial workers in a changing economy. In 1886, he founded and endowed the Pratt Institute, which opened in Brooklyn, New York in 1887.
Marriages and Children
In 1854, Charles Pratt married Lydia Ann Richardson (? They had two children:
Charles Millard Pratt (1855-1913) and Lydia Richardson Pratt (1857- ) who married Frank Lusk BabbottAfter her death, he married her sister in September 1863, Mary Helen Richardson. John Teele Pratt (1873-1927) and Harold I. Pratt (1877-1939)
Long Island Gold Coast mansions
Pratt settled in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York about 1890.
At Glen Cove, on Long Island, Charles Pratt's six sons and two daughters later built their homes. In 2004, most of the extant Pratt mansions along the Gold Coast there are still in use:
Welwyn, originally the home of Harold I. The Manor House, built for John Teele Pratt, is now Harrison House Conference Center. Killenworth, originally the house of George Dupont Pratt, is now the retreat for the Russian Delegation to the United Nations.Other notable Pratt family members
Charles Pratt's great-grandson Andy Pratt (born 1947 in Boston), whose father Edwin H Baker Pratt was headmaster of the patrician school Buckingham Browne & Herbert Pratt was a guitar-playing adventurer and eccentric much admired by Henry James, who met him in Italy and may have used him as the model for the character "Gabriel Nash" in The Tragic Muse.Charles Pratt II
Charles Pratt's grandson, Charles Pratt II, was a famous photographer, publishing several books of photographs and prose including The Garden and the Wilderness, Here on the Island, Edge of the City, The Rocky Coast, and a childrens book called At Night. He also was Rachel Carson's photographer for Silent Spring and A Sense of Wonder.
After 1939, both ships were operated by Panama Transport Co., a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey At the beginning of World War II, on December 21, 1940, the S.S.
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