Famous Givers and Their GiftsBolton, Sarah Knowles
History
Famous Givers and Their Gifts
Bolton, Sarah Knowles
Philanthropists
To the Hirsch fund in this country for the help of the Jews the baron
sent more than $2,500,000. The managers of the fund spent no money in
bringing the Jews to this country, but when here, opened schools for the
children to prepare them to enter the public schools, evening schools
for adults, training-schools to teach them carpentry, plumbing, and the
like; provided public baths for them; bought farm-lands for them in New
Jersey and Connecticut, and assisted them to buy small farms; provided
factories for young men and women, as at Woodbine, N.J., where 5,100
acres have been purchased for the Hirsch Colony, and a brickyard and
kindling-wood factory established. The baron is said to have received
400 begging letters daily, some of them from crowned heads, to whom he
loaned large amounts. The favorite home of the baron was in Paris, where
he lost his only and idolized son Lucien, in 1888, at the age of twenty.
Much of the fortune that was to be the son's the father devoted to
charity, especially to the alleviation of the condition of the European
Jews, in whom the son was deeply interested. Many millions were left to
Lucienne, the extremely pretty natural daughter of his son Lucien.
ISAAC RICH
AND BOSTON UNIVERSITY.
Isaac Rich left to Boston University, chartered in 1869, more than a
million and a half dollars. He was born in Wellfleet, Mass., in 1801, of
humble parentage. At the age of fourteen he was assisting his father in
a fish-stall in Boston, and afterwards kept an oyster-stall in Faneuil
Hall. He became a very successful fish-merchant, and gave his wealth for
noble purposes.
Unfortunately, immediately after his death, Jan. 13, 1872, the great
fire of 1872 consumed the best investments of the estate, and the panic
of 1873 and other great losses followed; so that for rebuilding the
stores and banks in which the estate had been largely invested money had
to be borrowed, and at the close of ten years the estate actually
transferred to the University was a little less than $700,000.
This sum would have been much larger had not the statutes of New York
State made it illegal to convey to a corporation outside the State, like
Boston University, the real estate owned by Mr. Rich in Brooklyn, which
reverted to the legal heirs. It is claimed that Mr. Rich was "the first
Bostonian who ever donated so large a sum to the cause of collegiate
education."
The Hon. Jacob Sleeper, one of the three original incorporators of the
University, gave to it over a quarter of a million dollars. The College
of Liberal Arts is named in his honor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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