1. Louis Henry Severance was an American oilman and philanthropist who was a founding member of the Standard Oil Trust, the first treasurer of Standard Oil, and a sulfur magnate.
10 Facts About Louis Severance
1. 2.
Louis Severance was the second son of Mary Helen Severance and Solomon Lewis Severance, who died in July 1838, a month before his birth.
3.
Louis Severance attended public schools in Cleveland before entering the workforce at age eighteen.
4.
In 1863, Louis Severance became a 100-day Union army volunteer, in the defense of Washington DC during the US Civil War.
5.
Louis Severance's bank lent to John D Rockefeller's oil business, and, in 1864, Severance started an oil exploration, and refinery business himself, in the oil boom town of Titusville, Pennsylvania.
6.
Louis Severance later supported his nephew, Allen; funding his lifelong study of theology.
7.
In 1894, by then a very wealthy man, Louis Severance retired from active management of business.
8.
Louis Severance was a church elder and in 1904 the vice moderator of its General Assembly; he paid for chapels in Cleveland, as well as missions, colleges, and hospitals in Asia.
9.
Louis Severance donated $50,000 to $100,000 annually directly to the church.
10.
On June 25,1913, Severance died suddenly, in his daughter Elisabeth's home, in the care of his son in law, Dr Dudley P Allen, after being taken suddenly ill.