Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Sr.

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Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Sr.
Born	February 28, 1881 New Jersey
Died	December 25, 1963 Hartley House, Harding Township, New Jersey
Occupation	Owner and Chairman of the Remington Arms Company
Spouse	Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge
Children	Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Jr.
Parents	Emma Hartley and Norman Dodge

Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Sr. (February 28, 1881 – December 25, 1963) was the chairman of the board of Remington Arms Company and a member of the family associated with the Phelps Dodge Corporation.

He was the son of Norman W. Dodge and the grandson of William E. Dodge Sr., his paternal grandfather. He also was the grandson and successor to Marcellus Hartley, his maternal grandfather, who was a famous merchant and financier of New York City and who died in 1902.

The death of Marcellus Hartley left his grandson as heir to a large fortune of 60 million at the age of twenty-one, while he was attending Columbia University and living with his grandmother Mrs. Marcellus (Frances) Hartley at 282 Madison Avenue.

[edit] Education and early adulthood

He was graduated from Columbia University in 1903 where he was president of his class, president of the Y.M.C.A, manager of the track team, and coxswain of his class crew (sometimes referred to as, college rowing).

Upon his graduation, he and his maternal aunt, Mrs. George W. (Helen Hartley) Jenkins presented the Hartley Hall dormitory to Columbia, which became its largest dormitory and created more of a college atmosphere for the new campus in Morningside Heights.

The Orinoco watershed, the Orinoquia - an area of South America visited on the yacht Wakiva I in 1906 by Marcellus Dodge and a party of friends

Well known in society and an avid yachtsman, in 1906 he took a party of his friends on the Wakiva I, a large pleasure and cruising yacht, to the upper waters of the Amazon River, the Orinoco in Venezuela and Colombia, and the Guianas-British Guiana, Dutch Guiana, and French Guiana.

[edit] Marriage

In 1907 he became engaged and married to (Ethel) Geraldine Rockefeller of 689 Fifth Avenue. She was a child of William and Almira Geraldine Goodsell Rockefeller, and was estimated to have her own fortune of over 100 million dollars. They were said to be the wealthiest newlyweds in the country when they married.

After living together at Hartley Farms, they bought all of the land between two estates held by his family in Morris County, New Jersey that lay between Madison Avenue in Madison and Spring Valley Road in the New Vernon and Harding Township section of Morristown, where Geraldine built a grand country estate among the rolling hills that she named Giralda Farms. They eventually resided separately on the adjoining estates. He preferred the New Jersey residence, but his wife regularly stayed in her Manhattan residence for two or three days each week. His residence, which had been in his family for generations, has been preserved with a conservation easement and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. At one time Hartley Farms covered a thousand acres.

They had one child, Marcellus Hartley Dodge, Jr., who died in an automobile crash in Mogesca, France in 1930.^[1] His mother built and extensive memorial to him as a civic center in Madison along with the train station she built opposite the center. They also donated a structure on the campus of Princeton University, from which their son had been graduated shortly before his death.

At the time of his marriage Dodge was president and a director of the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, president of the Bridgeport Gun Implement Company, director of the Equitable Trust Company, director of International Banking Company, director of M. Hartley Company, a member of the Lawyers Club of New York City, the Essex County Country Club, and the City of New York Club.

An accomplished equestrian, Dodge became the founder of the Spring Valley Hounds, a hunt club that not only conducted hunts for their members among the many estates nearby, but also held a major annual horse show in New Jersey. Competitions included those for hunters and open jumpers, as well as for saddle horses of three and five gates. Many of the competitors followed the international horse show circuit that closed its season with the November exhibition at Madison Square Garden on Fiftieth Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan each year. Nearby, the American Equestrian Team formed for the Olympics from these ranks, it was founded just off of Spring Valley Road, on van Beuren Road at the Coates estate.

[edit] Remington Arms Company

Eventually he became the chairman of Remington Arms Company. The Remington Arms and Union Metallic Cartridge factories at Bridgeport, Connecticut were described as the greatest small arms and ammunition plant in the world by the editor of the New York Times in 1916. Cash control of the company was acquired by E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company of Wilmington, Delaware in 1933, but Dodge remained at the head of the business.

View of the polo fields of Marcellus Hartley Dodge during the 1935 dog show held by his wife, Geraldine - this was the location of secret arms and ammunition supply discussions during WWII

During the Second World War his company was the supplier of sixty-nine percent of the arms, ammunition, and munitions being used by the federal government and secret meetings about this were held on his country estate, Hartley Farms, at his polo fields which, except for the war years, also were used from 1927 as the site of the exhibition of the Morris and Essex Dog Show held by his wife, Geraldine. During these meetings General Dwight D. Eisenhower and he became close friends.

He was a member of the board of trustees of Columbia University and was the founder of the the Marcellus Hartley Dodge Cup that is awarded in crew. The Marcellus Hartley Dodge Award is bestowed in his honor. ^[2]

[edit] Champion of the Great Swamp

When the remnants of Glacial Lake Passaic, the Great Swamp that abutted his estate was targeted for development as an airport by the New York Port Authority and nearby citizens formed the Jersey Jet Site Association in 1959 to protect it by purchasing properties to assemble for donation to the government as a federal park, he joined their efforts. [1] He was one of first trustees of the North American Wildlife Foundation that completed the acquisition of enough of the Great Swamp to protect the massive natural resource. Legislation also championed by later Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, while he was a congressman from Arizona was passed on November 3, 1960 protecting the important natural resource. In 1964 the park was dedicated after he had become Secretary Udall. [2]

The Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge was dedicated in 1968 and named the M. Hartley Dodge Wildlife Refuge. [3]

[edit] Death

He died on Christmas Day, December 25, 1963 at Hartley House, on Hartley Farms on Spring Valley Road in Harding Township, New Jersey. ^[3]

In the New York Times he was described as an outstanding citizen, remembered above all for the warmth and generosity of his personality.

[edit] Legacy

He was a well-known philanthropist. Beginning with a donation of a residence building for students in 1904, Hartley Hall, that he and his aunt, Helen Hartley Jenkins, donated, he provided many gifts to Columbia University [4], and numerous other institutions and organizations.

[edit] External links

• Marcellus Hartley Dodge letter (on archive.org)

[edit] References

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