39 Facts About Henry Villard

Henry Villard was an American journalist and financier who was an influential leader and the sixth president of the Northern Pacific Railway which completed its trans-continental route during his tenure in 1883.

Henry Villard changed his name to Henry Villard, the name of a French classmate, to avoid being sent back to Europe, and began making his way west, briefly studying law as he developed a career in journalism.

Henry Villard became a pacifist as a result of his experiences covering the two conflicts at home and abroad of the Civil War and European wars In the late 1860s.

Henry Villard married women's suffrage advocate Helen Frances Garrison and the daughter of famed newspaper publisher and slavery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and returned to the US, only to go back to Germany several years later for his health in 1870.

Henry Villard visited Oregon that summer, and being impressed with the region's natural resources, began acquiring various transportation interests in the region.

Henry Villard returned to Europe, helping German investors acquire stakes in the transportation network, and returned to New York in 1886.

Also in the 1880s, Henry Villard acquired the New York Evening Post and The Nation, and established the predecessor of General Electric.

Henry Villard was the first benefactor of the University of Oregon, and contributed to other universities, churches, hospitals, and orphanages.

Henry Villard died of a stroke at his country home in New York in 1900.

Henry Villard was born in Speyer, Palatinate, Kingdom of Bavaria.

Henry Villard's parents moved to Zweibrucken in 1839, and in 1856 his father, Gustav Leonhard Hilgard, became a justice of the Supreme Court of Bavaria, at Munich.

Henry Villard was a distant relative of the physician and botanist George Engelmann who resided in St Louis, Missouri.

Henry Villard entered a Gymnasium in Zweibrucken in 1848, which he had to leave because he sympathized with the revolutions of 1848 in Germany.

Henry Villard had broken up a class by refusing to mention the King of Bavaria in a prayer, justifying his omission by citing his loyalty to the provisional government.

Henry Villard showed up for classes a month early so he could be tutored in the French language beforehand by the novelist Alexandre Chatrian.

Henry Villard sent statistics to the New York Herald that were intended to influence the location of a Pacific railroad route.

Henry Villard followed Lincoln throughout the 1860 presidential campaign, and was on the presidential train to Washington in 1861.

Henry Villard became a principal correspondent of the New York Herald in 1861.

The young Henry Villard was not content with working for a single newspaper and became a pioneer of newspaper syndication.

In 1865, when Horace White became managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, Henry Villard became its Washington correspondent.

Henry Villard stayed on in Europe in 1867 to report on the Paris Exposition.

Henry Villard returned to the United States from his correspondent duties in Europe in June 1868, and shortly afterward was elected secretary of the American Social Science Association, to which he devoted his labors until 1870, when he went to Germany for his health.

Henry Villard was removed in 1878, but continued the contest he had begun with Jay Gould and finally obtained better terms for the bond holders than they had agreed to accept.

European investors in the Oregon and San Francisco Steamship Line, after building new vessels, became discouraged, and in 1879 Henry Villard formed an American syndicate and purchased the property.

Henry Villard acquired that of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which operated fleets of steamers and portage railroads on the Columbia River.

Henry Villard began the construction of a railroad up Columbia River.

On failing in his effort to obtain a permanent agreement with the Northern Pacific Railway, which had begun its extension into the Washington Territory, Henry Villard used his Columbia River steamship line as his railroad's outlet to the Pacific Ocean.

Henry Villard then succeeded in obtaining a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific property, and organized a new corporation that was named the Oregon and Transcontinental Company.

On 4 January 1884, Henry Villard resigned the presidency of the Northern Pacific.

Henry Villard had had a hand in the large electric power business founded by Thomas Edison, merging the Edison Electric Light Company, Edison Lamp Company of Newark, New Jersey, and the Edison Machine Works at Schenectady, New York, to form the Edison General Electric Company.

Henry Villard aided Harvard University, Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History.

Henry Villard has been honoured with the freedom of the city, and there is a bust of him on the compound of the Speyer Diakonissen Hospital.

Henry Villard devoted large sums to the Industrial Art School of Rhenish Bavaria, and to the foundation of fifteen scholarships for the youth of that province.

Henry Villard supported archaeologist Adolph Bandelier in his research on South American history and archaeology.

Henry Villard died of a stroke at his country home, Thorwood Park, in Dobbs Ferry, New York.

Henry Villard was interred in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.

Henry Villard claimed that Villard was of unsound mind when he made the will and was the result of fraudulent influence exercised over him by his wife and his two sons.

Henry Villard contended that there was no mention of the $200,000 worth of securities she said her father claimed to have left her.

In 1884, Villard hired Joseph M Wells of the architecture firm McKim, Mead and White to design and construct the Villard Houses, which appear as one building but in fact is six separate residences.