Louis Severance

Louis Henry Severance (1838–1913), Oilman and philanthropist was a founding member of the Standard Oil Trust, the first treasurer of Standard Oil,^[4] and a sulfur magnate.

Biography

Louis H. Severance was born in Cleveland on August 1, 1838; his father, Solomon, having died that July.^[5] He and his brother Solon were raised by the widow Mary Severance,^[6] in the Cleveland home of her father,^[7] David Long (Cleveland's first physician).^[8] Louis picked up his mother's commitment to the Presbyterian mission and the anti-slavery cause.^[9]

He attended public school, and at 18 (in 1856)^[7] joined the Commercial National Bank.^[5] The following year a friend from his church introduced Severance to the Norwalk belle Fanny Benedict;^[10][11] they married in 1862, producing John Severance in May 1863.^[7] That year Severance became a 100-day Union army volunteer,^[12] in the defense of Washington D.C.^[7]

His bank lent to John D. Rockefeller's oil business, and in 1864 Severance started an oil exploration,^[4][7] and refinery business himself, in the oil boom town of Titusville, Pennsylvania.^[13] The family prospered; Elizabeth was born in 1865,^[14] and Anne Belle in 1868.^[15] In 1872 their last child was stillborn, and Fanny died in 1874.^[7] After this, he returned to Cleveland,^[16] where the children's uncle, Solon, raised them with his own three children.^[4] (Louis Severance later supported his nephew, Allen; funding his lifelong study of theology.)^[17]

By 1876 Rockefeller's Standard Oil had a near industry monopoly and Severance joined as the Ohio company's treasurer. While at Standard, he founded another company, mining sulfur, and because it held the patent on the Frasch process it too monopolized a profitable industry.^[13]

He retired in 1894,^[18] a very wealthy man,^[13] and married the equally rich Florence Severance (only daughter of the Standard Oil millionaires Stephen and Anna Harkness).^[19] Florence Severance died within a year of the marriage. Her estate increased his fortune further,^[4] and in retirement he was a leading sponsor of Ohio education, the YMCA, and overseas Presbyterian missions. He was a church elder and in 1904 the vice moderator of its General Assembly; he paid for chapels in Cleveland, as well as missions, colleges, and hospitals in Asia,^[16] and donated $50,000-$100,000 annually directly to the church.^[20] His son-in-law wrote "While his philanthropies were very broad and he responded to appeals of every sort, he seems to have been dominated by one fundamental idea,—the building up of the Christian church."^[21]

Dying suddenly,^[5] and intestate,^[22] his estate was divided between his two surviving children (Annie Belle having died in 1896).^[15] His heirs were: John L. Severance (a businessman,^[16] who became an important patron of the arts in Ohio)^[23] and Elizabeth S. Allen (a philanthropist, who became Elisabeth Severance Prentiss, and established the public health charitable foundation of that name).^[24]

Established

• L.H. Severance Scholarship: annual undergraduate academic scholarship at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania
• L.H. Severance Gymnasium (1912): at the University of Wooster.^[25] —He largely funded the rebuilding of the entire university after it burned down in 1901,^[16] including a new Severance Library.^[5] He had sufficient influence to have Wooster fraternities and sororities banned in 1902^[26] (on the grounds that they were un-Christian).^[13]
• Severance Hospital, Seoul (opened in 1904 as the first Western-style hospital building in Korea^[27] after a large 1900 donation from Severance to support the missionary care there).
• The Severance chemical laboratory (1901),^[28] Oberlin College.^[14][29]

References