Philanthropy
Upon the death of his brother John, Chauncey learned that he was the sole heir to an estate worth $1,600,000. Concerned that the laws of New York would prevent the proper fulfillment of his brother’s wishes, Chauncey instituted legal proceedings and, after six years of court battles, won the right to disperse his brother’s estate. Chauncey distributed his brother’s money, totalling $1,500,000 to various charities, mostly in the New York area.
Rose was equally generous with his money in Terre Haute, where his philanthropic activities were reported in an 1875 New York Times article to have exceeded $2,000,000 in currency of that day. Among his numerous benefactors were the Providence Hospital, the Free Dispensary and the Rose Orphan Asylum, to whom he endowed enough money to ensure it would remain permanent.
Rose also contributed enough money to build and endow the Rose Polytechnic Institute (now the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology). The cornerstone for the college was laid on September 11, 1875 but it did not begin operations until March 5, 1883, long after Rose's death. It remains to this day one of the few colleges solely dedicated to science and engineering. Rose organized it as the Terre Haute School of Industrial Sciences with an initial endowment of $500,000, so that “this institution has a productive capital, exclusive of buildings”.
Significantly, Rose intended none of the institutions funded or founded by him, save the incorporated name of Rosedale to bear his name. Other name ties resulting from posthumous commemorative changes by his grateful recipients.
Rose died in Terre Haute, Indiana on August 13, 1877.
Read more about this topic: Chauncey Rose
Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)