Henry Huttleston Rogers
Notable among the early employees of the FBR was Henry Huttleston Rogers. Born in 1840, he was the son of a former ship's captain and grocer in Fairhaven. After graduating from high school in 1857, "Hen" Rogers hired on with the Fairhaven Branch Railroad as an expressman and brakeman. He worked for three or four years, carefully saving what he could from his meager earnings.
In 1861, he pooled $600 in savings with a partner's $600, borrowed another $600, and they used their stake to build a small oil refinery near Oil City in the newly-discovered oil fields of western Pennsylvania. Eventually, Henry Rogers rose within the growing petroleum industry to become one of the three key men in John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil trust. One of the wealthiest persons in the United States, he had active interests in petroleum, natural gas, copper, and coal enterprises.
Rogers was also involved in many railroads as a director and investor. He was a director of the Sante Fe, St. Paul, Erie, Lackawanna, Union Pacific, and several other large railroads. He also involved himself in at least three West Virginia short-line railroad projects, one of which would grow much larger than he probably anticipated.
Rogers and West Virginia coal developer and manager William Nelson Page planned and built the 450-mile (720 km) long Virginian Railway (VGN), which was financed at a cost estimated at $40 million almost entirely from his personal fortune. In April 1909, he traveled with his close friend, Mark Twain, to Norfolk, Virginia for a completion celebration and banquet. The next day, they began a tour of the new route, with major stops in Virginia at Victoria and Roanoke, and at Princeton, West Virginia. The following month, Rogers suffered a massive stroke and died in New York City at age 69. His body was transported by railroad back home to Fairhaven for internment in the family mausoleum in Riverside Cemetery. The mausoleum is patterned after the Temple of Minerva in Athens, Greece. His first wife, Abbie, and several family members are also interred there.
In Fairhaven, the Rogers family's gifts are located throughout the town. These include Rogers School, Town Hall, Millicent Library, Unitarian Memorial Church and Fairhaven High School. An inscribed granite column on the High School lawn is dedicated to Rogers.
For more details on this topic, see Henry H. Rogers.Read more about this topic: Fairhaven Branch Railroad
Famous quotes containing the word rogers:
“And those handmade presents that children often bring home from school: They have so much value! The value is that the child put whatever he or she could into making them. The way we parents respond to the giving of such gifts is very important. To the child the gift is really self, and they want so much for their selves to be acceptable, to be loved.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)