Parents
Henry Rogers and Abbie Gifford had been raised in working-class families of Mayflower lineage in the small coastal fishing town of Fairhaven, adjacent to New Bedford, in Bristol County, Massachusetts. Long a whaling port, the industry was in serious decline as they became teenagers. Childhood sweethearts, they were both among the graduates of Fairhaven's first high school class in 1857. Afterwards, Henry went to work on a local railroad and saved carefully for several years. Petroleum was replacing whaling oil for lighting, and at 21, he invested his $600 savings, and in 1861, set out with a friend for the newly-discovered oil fields of Venango County, Pennsylvania .
In 1862, Henry returned to Fairhaven on vacation, and he and Abbie were married. Returning to western Pennsylvania, the young couple lived in a one-room shack near Oil City, where Henry Rogers and his a partner worked at their tiny Wamsutta Oil Refinery for several years. The first daughter, Anne, was born there in 1865. Living frugally and working hard, Rogers drew the attention of oil pioneer Charles Pratt, who hired him. Moving with Abbie and Anne to Brooklyn, he soon became Pratt's right hand. Rogers developed a process for separating naphtha from crude oil, and received a U.S. patent in 1870. A few years later, Henry Rogers helped negotiate successfully when John D. Rockefeller acquired Pratt interests to become part of Standard Oil.
By 1874, Henry Rogers had become a wealthy principal in Standard Oil, and was living in New York City and maintaining a summer home in Fairhaven. In later years, he became one of the wealthiest men in the United States. He held many investments outside of his key role at Standard Oil. Particularly noteworthy, in the early 20th century, was the 440-mile (710 km) "engineering marvel" Virginian Railway, a low gradient route from southern West Virginia coal fields to the Atlantic port of Hampton Roads, which was built almost entirely from his private fortune, an unparalleled feat. 100 years later a large portion of the former Virginian Railway, which was merged into the rival Norfolk and Western in 1959, forms a key piece of the Norfolk Southern rail network.
Read more about this topic: Mary (Mai) Huttleston Rogers Coe
Famous quotes containing the word parents:
“Was I not born in this Realm? Were my parents born in any foreign country?... Is not my Kingdom here? Whom have I oppressed? Whom have I enriched to other’s harm? What turmoil have I made to this Commonwealth that I should be suspected to have no regard of the same?”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“Another appealing aspect to having grandparents is that they do help, to give [your child] a sense of continuity—of his place in the world and in the generations. Not only do grandparents help him intellectually to comprehend that there are parents of parents, but they also aid him in understanding where he fits in the succession of things. Even a very young child can begin to feel a sense of rootedness and history.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“I believe that all the survivors are mad. One time or another their madness will explode. You cannot absorb that much madness and not be influenced by it. That is why the children of survivors are so tragic. I see them in school. They don’t know how to handle their parents. They see that their parents are traumatized: they scream and don’t react normally.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)