Isaac Rich was an American merchant and philanthropist.
Background
Isaac Rich, the eldest of the eleven children of Robert and Eunice (Harding) Rich, was born on October 24, 1801 at Wellfleet, Massachussets. He was a descendant of Richard Rich who was in Dover, New Hampshire, before 1673, and in 1680 moved to Eastham, Massachussets.
Education
Isaac received little formal education, but his business training began early.
Career
At fourteen he was in Boston, helping to support the family by selling fish on the streets and in his father's fish stall. Untiring and energetic in his salesmanship, he later delighted to tell how he was the first man who ever blew a fish-horn on the streets of Boston.
When he was nineteen, his father's death forced him to be increasingly active. He opened an oyster stall in Faneuil Hall Market, and a customer loaned him $600 in order that he might increase his profits by buying in cargo lots. His first profit was $100. On this small beginning he built one of the largest fish businesses in Boston. Accumulated profits he invested in ships, some of which were built in partnership with David Snow. The Civil War caused him to turn from shipping to real estate, in which a considerable portion of his fortune was made. As a boy selling fish, Rich had been stirred, through the kindly interest of Wilbur Fisk, then a Methodist pastor in Charlestown and subsequently president of Wesleyan University, by a desire to enter the ministry.
As a member of the Bromfield Street Church, however, he became one of the most prominent Methodist laymen, and his philanthropies were chiefly in connection with educational institutions of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Rich died in 1872, reputedly one of Boston's wealthiest men.
To Boston University, a new institution which had been chartered in 1869 with Rich as one of the petitioners, he left practically his whole estate, appraised at $1, 500, 000.
It was to be held in trust for ten years and then turned over to the University. Much of it consisted of Boston real estate holdings and, owing to inflated values, broken by the panic of 1873, and the destruction of buildings in the Boston fire of 1872, the total amount received by the University at the completion of the trust was less than $700, 000.
Achievements
Views
Quotations:
"God didn't give me a call. I prayed for one but it didn't come. "
Connections
He married Sarah Andrews in 1822, and their four children had predeceased him.