43 Facts About Henry Flagler

Henry Morrison Flagler was an American industrialist and a founder of Standard Oil, which was first based in Ohio.

Henry Flagler was a key figure in the development of the Atlantic coast of Florida and founder of the Florida East Coast Railway.

Henry Flagler is known as a founder of the cities of Miami and Palm Beach, Florida.

Henry Flagler's father was Isaac Flagler, a Presbyterian minister and great-grandson of Zacharra Flegler, whose family had emigrated from the German Palatinate region to Holland in 1688.

Henry Flagler recruited Henry Flagler to join him, and the youth went to Ohio at age 14, where he started work in 1844 at a salary of US$5 per month plus room and board.

Henry Flagler later joined Daniel in a grain business started with his uncle Lamon in Bellevue, Ohio, and made a small fortune distilling whiskey.

Henry Flagler sold his stake in the business in 1858.

Henry Flagler found that salt mining required more technical knowledge than he had and struggled in the industry during the Civil War.

Henry Flagler collapsed when the war undercut commercial demand for salt.

Henry Flagler returned to Bellevue having lost his initial $50,000 investment and an additional $50,000 he had borrowed from his father-in-law and Daniel.

Henry Flagler believed that he had learned a valuable lesson: invest in a business only after thorough investigation.

Flagler's stepbrother Stephen V Harkness invested $100,000 on the condition that Flagler be made a partner.

Henry Flagler was in a special position to make those deals due to his connections as a grain merchant.

Henry Flagler documented the company's espionage, price wars, heavy-handed marketing tactics, and courtroom evasions.

When Henry Flagler envisioned successes in the oil industry, he and Rockefeller started building their fortune in refining oil in Cleveland, Ohio.

Henry Flagler served as a vice president through 1908 and was part of ownership until 1911.

Ida Alice Henry Flagler had been a caregiver for Mary.

Henry Flagler found the city charming, but the hotel facilities and transportation systems inadequate.

Franklin W Smith had just finished building Villa Zorayda and Flagler offered to buy it for his honeymoon.

Henry Flagler returned to St Augustine in 1885 and made Smith an offer.

Henry Flagler built a railroad bridge across the St Johns River to gain access to the southern half of the state and purchased the Hotel Ormond, just north of Daytona.

Henry Flagler built the Alcazar Hotel as an overflow hotel for the Ponce de Leon Hotel.

Henry Flagler completed the 1,100-room Royal Poinciana Hotel on the shores of Lake Worth in Palm Beach and extended his railroad to its service town, West Palm Beach, by 1894, founding Palm Beach and West Palm Beach.

Two years later, Henry Flagler built the Palm Beach Inn, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Palm Beach.

Henry Flagler originally intended West Palm Beach to be the terminus of his railroad system, but in 1894 and 1895, severe freezes hit the area, causing Henry Flagler to reconsider.

Henry Flagler encouraged fruit farming and settlement along his railway line and made many gifts to build hospitals, churches and schools in Florida.

Henry Flagler dredged a channel, built streets, instituted the first water and power systems, and financed the city's first newspaper, The Metropolis.

In 1897, Henry Flagler opened the exclusive Royal Palm Hotel on the north bank of the Miami River where it overlooked Biscayne Bay.

Henry Flagler became known as the Father of Miami, Florida.

In 1901, Henry Flagler bribed the Florida Legislature and Governor to pass a law that made incurable insanity grounds for divorce, opening the way for Henry Flagler to remarry.

Henry Flagler was the only person to be divorced under the law before it was repealed in 1905.

Henry Flagler wanted to take advantage of additional trade with Cuba and Latin America as well as the increased trade with the west that the Panama Canal would bring.

Over 30 years, Henry Flagler had invested about $50 million in railroad, home and hotel construction and had made donations to suffering farmers after the freeze in 1894.

Henry Flagler allegedly used convicts leased from Florida prison camps, the majority of them African-American, to clear land for the Royal Palm Hotel in Miami and to build the Florida East Coast Railway from West Palm Beach to Miami and the rail extension to Key West.

Henry Flagler used labor agencies to bring around 4,000 new immigrants to Florida who contracted to work until their transportation costs had been paid off.

In March 1913, Henry Flagler fell down a flight of marble stairs at Whitehall.

Henry Flagler never recovered and died in Palm Beach of his injuries on May 20,1913, at 83 years of age.

Only his son Harry Harkness Henry Flagler survived of the three children by his first marriage in 1853 to Mary Harkness.

On February 24,2006, a statue of Henry Flagler was unveiled in Key West near the spot where the Over-Sea Railroad once terminated.

Also, on July 28,2006, a statue of Henry Flagler was unveiled on the southeast steps of Miami's Dade County Courthouse, located on Miami's Henry Flagler Street.

Henry Flagler's third wife, Mary Lily Kenan Henry Flagler Bingham was born in North Carolina.

The top-ranked Kenan-Henry Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is named for Henry Flagler and his wife, who was an early benefactor of UNC along with her family and descendants.

The Bingham-Henry Flagler marriage figured prominently in several books that appeared in the 1980s, when the Bingham family sold the newspaper in the midst of great acrimony.