Financier and publisher, born in Speyer, Germany. From a prominent Bavarian family, he left for the USA after political disagreements with his father. He changed his name to avoid being forced back to Germany, landed in New York (1853), and travelled to relatives in Illinois, where he read law and learned English. In 1858 he covered the LincolnDouglas debates for a German-language newspaper in New York City, the Staats-Zeitung, and soon began to write for several other papers, including the New York Herald and Tribune. In 1868 he became secretary of the American Social Science Association in Boston, enabling him to study public and corporate finance and sparking his interest in railway finance. Going to Oregon (1874) as the representative of German bondholders of the Oregon & California Railroad, he soon took over as president. When in 1876 he was also made the receiver of the Kansas Pacific Railway, he decided to form a transportation monopoly in the Pacific Northwest. Although large debts forced him out of control (1884), he is considered one of the most important railway promoters of the 1880s. Meanwhile, he had shifted his interests back to the East, buying the New York Evening Post (1881) and helping found the Edison General Electric Co (1889). He expanded his publishing company to acquire the Nation and generally supported liberal and progressive causes.
| Henry Villard | |
|---|---|
| Born |
April 10, 1835 Speyer, Rhenish Bavaria |
| Died | November 12, 1900 |
Henry Villard (April 10, 1835 – November 12, 1900), was an American journalist and financier of German origin.
He was born in Speyer, Palatinate. Henry Villard was educated at a Gymnasium (equivalent of "high school") of Zweibrücken, at the French semi-military academy in Phalsbourg in 1849-50, at the Gymnasium of Speyer in 1850-52, and at the universities of Munich and Würzburg in 1852-53.
It was at this time that he adopted the name Villard.
At the close of the war he married, January 3, 1866, Helen Frances Garrison, the daughter of the anti-slavery campaigner, William Lloyd Garrison.
The fortune he made was not in journalism. In Oregon, Villard gained such a strong position in the transportation field that he was able to obtain a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific Railway and became (1881) its president. In New York, he gained control of the New York Post and merged smaller companies to form the Edison General Electric Company, the forebear of General Electric and was its president until 1893.
On his passing in 1900, Henry Villard was interred in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
User Comments Add a comment…