Life
She was born in 1835 and was raised by her grandmother in Clayton, New York. She met Cyrus Hall McCormick in 1857 while visiting friends in Chicago. They were married in 1858. While Cyrus was working out a controversy involving his patent of the reaper they lived in Washington, DC. She had a keen business sense and became a great asset to her husband. Nettie became his financial counselor and oversaw many of the business affairs. She toured expositions in McCormick’s interest making contacts for the company. The Great Fire destroyed McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. Despite Cyrus’s thoughts of retirement, Nettie insisted on rebuilding even larger than before.
The McCormicks provided $100,000 to bring the Hanover Seminary to Chicago. The school was renamed McCormick Theological Seminary soon after Cyrus’s death in 1884. Nettie continued to fund buildings, endowing professorships, and scholarships at the seminary even after his death. Nettie donated to over forty schools and colleges. At the time of her death she left more than $1 million to be divided among various institutions. At Tusculum College, one of the many colleges Nettie supported, every September 13 observes Nettie Fowler McCormick Service Day. On this day students perform community service in her honor. She is buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.
Read more about this topic: Nancy Fowler Mc Cormick
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“One of the most horrible, yet most important, discoveries of our age has been that, if you really wish to destroy a person and turn him into an automaton, the surest method is not physical torture, in the strict sense, but simply to keep him awake, i.e., in an existential relation to life without intermission.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.”
—Bible: Hebrew Exodus 21:23.
“The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)