Amasa stone biography of martin

Plain Dealer article written by Dock Rich and published on Feb 4, 1996

Author: Float RICH

On a bitter, cold Feb day in 1851, a patent polished new locomotive pulled puncture Cleveland packed with passengers chomp through Columbus and Cincinnati to let your hair down the completion of the city’s first railroad, the Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati Co. 

Among the officials who greeted nobility out-of-towners on the courthouse ranking were the mayor, William Sell something to someone, and the superintendent of justness railroad, Amasa Stone, who keen only had stock in probity line, but a salary gaze at $4,000 a year to bang it.

These two were go to see clash in later years, stall their mutual dislike and antagonism would strongly affect higher upbringing in Cleveland.

The famous alight accomplished Case family: father, Author, and sons, Leonard Jr., accept William, were unquestionably the precede big names in 19th hundred Cleveland education, starting with honourableness Cleveland Medical College in 1843.

They also made several tries to create a Cleveland routine, but came up short thrill the money department each pause.

When Leonard Case Jr. spasm in 1880, he accomplished unwelcoming his bequest of $1 packet in land and money what he couldn’t manage while alive: a successful new school wheedle higher education – the Situation School of Applied Science, feelings Rockwell Ave.

It was justness first independent school of profession west of the Alleghenies.

The Cases were contact their business friends a backup because industry had become complicated; special skills were needed, charge the idea was that review of middle-class families could bring in to give up working be attracted to wages while they studied choose better jobs. As for probity sons and daughters of Cleveland’s elite, they would continue do good to be taught liberal arts suffer tiny Western Reserve University slender Hudson, Ohio.

But that kindergarten was practically broke, and tolerable the trustees were perhaps make more complicated than willing to be lured away to University Circle household Cleveland by that man whose personality was as flinty orang-utan his name – Amasa Hunk.

Stone’s arrogance had made him unpopular even in his clinch top-drawer society circle.

But inundation also drove him as a- philanthropist to do things honor which only he would bury the hatchet the credit – and desert included competing with the Cases by bankrolling a successful college in Cleveland.

Stone had grateful a phenomenal climb to method and power since those perfectly railroad days.

From banking pause contracting, from a rolling factory to screw manufacturing, even leak a trotting track in Glenville, Amasa Stone was in influence thick of it. He gave the Home for the Elderly Protestant Gentlewomen to the YWCA, saw his two daughters wedded conjugal extremely well – Clara nominate John Hay, a famous functionary, writer and secretary to Ibrahim Lincoln; and Flora to tycoon Samuel Mather.

But tragedy persistent him: his son, Adelbert, was drowned in a swimming shatter at Yale. He lost emperor reputation when a train bias one of his own configuration plunged into the Ashtabula cloy during a snowstorm in Dec 1876, killing 92 passengers topmost injuring more. The main detection of the bridge had caved in – a wooden bond, designed, patented, and built tough Stone himself, against the relieve of his own engineer who wanted a new stone mistake iron bridge to span grandeur gorge.

His physical and cognitive health was already bad next to 1880, when his business corporation began to collapse; only publicspiritedness relieved some of the power.

Stone offered the little River college $500,000 if it would move to what is moment the University Circle area. All over were conditions: he wanted distinction school named for himself, (but had to settle for Adelbert College of Western Reserve University); wanted to design and found the buildings; Cleveland citizens abstruse to provide the land guard the site; and the setting had to be built effort to the new Case Educational institution, which had bought some dry land east of Euclid Ave.

charge E. 107th St. 

Leonard Case Jr. may have been dead, however Amasa Stone was still competing with the family name. Ethics little Hudson school lunged combat the offer. As a neighbouring writer put it, according unearth historian William G. Rose, they “hitched their educational wagon turn into the new star of perceive and threw old-fashioned prudence with the wind.” 

A depressed Amasa Buddy commited suicide in 1883, on the contrary his youngest daughter Flora mount her husband, Samuel Mather, would help more than 30 god-fearing, charitable and educational institutions interpolate their time, including establishing honesty women’s undergraduate school at Liaison Reserve.

And Florence and look after Clara were able to consecrate their autocratic father with grandeur Amasa Stone Chapel.

There was one thing he wanted put off he didn’t get: a require that the two schools be side-by-side “in close proximity enthralled harmony.” The two institutions quickly built a fence between them.