Henry Villard view entire page
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| Above: Henry Villard, for whom Villard Hall at UO is named. Patron of Thomas Edison, and America's most famous design artist, St. Gauden, whose work at right is from the Villard Mansion. | |
By far, the most influential 'Forty Eighter' in Oregon was Henry Villard. Nemesis of small time railroad scams like those of Avery (click here), Hogg (click here) and Nash (click here), Villard was Joe Avery's favorite target.
Henry Villard was born Ferdinand Heinrich Gustav Hilgard, attended the Gymnasium in Speyer, Bavaria, and was a nephew of 2 of the leaders of the '48 Revolt in Germany. His sympathies lay with his uncles and their political movement, which estranged him from his father. He fled to the U.S. at the age of eighteen and changed his name to Villard. He became a journalist, covered the Lincoln Douglas-Debates, and became a friend of Abe Lincoln, both having strong antislavery sentiments. Villard married the daughter of the nation's most famous abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison. Most famous Lincoln stories come from Henry Villard's collection. When the Civil War broke out, Villard accompanied the Union armies and his stories made him famous. His son was a founding member of the NAACP, and his grandson was the ambulance driver in Europe who was the given the diary of Ernest Hemingway's lover, Agnes von Kurowsky. The diary was the basis for the Sandra Bullock movie, In Love and War.
| In Love and War |
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The rest of his story is from the American Biographical Dictionary:
"In 1871, to restore his failing health, he
went to Germany and then to Switzerland. In Germany again, in the winter of
1873, he was brought into contact with a protective committee for the
bondholders of the Oregon & California Railroad Company. He became a member
of the committee, and the following year was sent to Oregon as their
representative, to investigate and recommend as to the future policy to be
employed by the bondholders. He perfected a plan for the harmonic operation of
the Oregon & California Railroad, the Oregon Central Railroad, and the
Oregon Steamship Company, which owned a fleet of steamers plying between
Portland and San Francisco; in 1876 he became president of the first and last
named companies. Meanwhile he had joined a committee for the protection of the
bondholders of the Kansas Pacific Railway, and when in 1876 this company became
financially embarrassed he was named a receiver of the road, a position which
forced him to match his wits with such redoubtable foes as Jay Gould and Sidey
Dillon of the Union Pacific. It was in connection with this company that he
achieved his first important financial success and laid the foundation of
his later fortune.
Villard's real love, however, was the Oregon country. On his first visit to the
region he had been very favourably impressed with its possibilities and there
gradually developed in his mind the idea of building a railway empire in the far
Northwest. Perceiving the great strategic value of the south bank of the
Columbia River as a railway route, he purchased the Oregon Steam Navigation
Company from Simeon Gannett Reed and his associates in 1879, organized the
Oregon Railway & Navigation Company, and proceeded to construct a railway
eastward from Portland along this route. His plan was to make this line the
Pacific Coast outlet for any northern transcontinental railway which might be
built, and to concentrated the trade of the Northwest in Portland. As he
progressed with his plans, however, he clashed with the Northen Pacific, then
recovering from the financial disasters of the seventies, whose objective was
Puget Sound. Appreciating the great advantage which the superior harbor of the
Sound would give the Northern Pacific over his own road with terminus at
Portland, Villard resolved to prevent the completion of the rival road. When his
offer of running rights over his line to tidewater was refused, he decided to
purchase a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific. After quietly buying
the stock of the Company to the limit of his resources (December 1880 - January
1881), he appealed to his friends and supporters for assistance. Issuing a
confidential circular to about fifty persons, he asked them to subscribe toward
a fund of eight million dollars, the precise purpose of which was not then
revealed. It is eloquent testimony to the confidence which he inspired in men
that, besides the sum first requested, an additional twelve million dollars was
eventually subscribed. This transaction, commonly known as the "Blind
Pool", remains one of the notable achievements in the annals of railway
finance.
With the means thus secured he established his control of the Northern Pacific;
he organized a holding company - the Oregon & Transcontinental - to
harmonize the interests of his various railway properties; on Sep.15, 1881, he
became president of the Northern Pacific, and completed the line in 1883. Since
he also controlled the Oregon & California Railroad, and had recently
organized the Oregon Improvement Company for the development of the natural
recources of the region, he now dominated every important agency of
transportation in that part of the country. His triumph, however, was of short
duration. Because of a combination of circumstances, including faulty estimates
of construction costs, the Northern Pacific, upon its completion, was confronted
with a huge deficit which forced the resignation of Villard from the presidency
early in 1884. From 1884 to 1886 he was in Germany, recovering from a nervous
breakdown; in the latter year he returned to New York as agent of the Deutsche
Bank. With the aid of Germany capital he saved the Oregon & Transcontinental
in September 1887, and reentered the board of the Northern Pacific in 1888,
where, for the next two years, he strove earnestly, but unsuccessfully, to
effect an adjustment of the clashing interests of the various cities and
transportation companies of the Pacific Northwest. His failure in this effort
was attended by his retirement from the Orgeon Railway & Navigation Company,
though after a brief interval he continued as chairman of the board of the
Northern Pacific until 1893, when his railway career came to an end.
Meanwhile Villard was displaying his versality by activities along other lines.
His early realization of the possibilities of the electrical industry prompted
him to extend financial assistance to Thomas A. Edison and to found the Edison
General Electric Company in 1889. In 1881 he inaugurated, under the direction of
Raphael Pumpelly, the Northern Transcontinental Survey, an examination of the
Northern Pacific land grant of genuine scientific value. Nor had his activity as
a financier dulled his earlier interest in journalism. When, through his
finacial successes with the Kansas Pacific and the Oregon Railway &
Navigation Company, he became a man of wealth, his thoughts quickly turned to
the possibility of controlling a journal of independence and fearlessness, and
of such high editorial standarts as to compel attention from the entire country.
Accordingly, in 1881, he aquired a controlling interest in the New York Evening
Post, placed Horace White, E. L. Godkin, and Carl Schurz in charge of the
editorial department, and, as a guarantee of independence on the part of the
paper, promtply abdicated the right of influencing its editorial policy.
During the years 1879 to 1883 Villard was probably the most important railway
promoter in the United States. In those years he was frankly aiming at a
monopoly of transportation facilities in the Pacific Northwest; yet he showed no
disposition to take unfair advantage of such a position, or to victimize the
people of the region. Although alert to the protection of his interests against
rival companies, he displayed fairness, moderation, and breadth of view in
dealing with the cities on the Coast. "