leather merchant philanthropist
Daniel Burton Fayerweather was born at Stepney, Fairfield County, Connecticut, a son of Lucius and Amelia (Beardsley) Fayerweather. His grandfather, Captan Samuel Fayerweather, was a veteran of the Revolution and the War of 1812. In Daniel’s boyhood his father died and he was bound out to a farmer in the neighborhood.
The work was hard and the boy had practically no opportunity for schooling. So highly did he value education that after he came of age he sought and gained admission to a boys’ boarding school in Connecticut, where the pupils were from five to seven years his juniors (letter of John M. Toucey in Shoe and Leather Reporter, Dec. u, 1890).
Released from his term of service before its completion, he learned shoemaking and was successful in that trade, but because of uncertain health he was in time forced to look elsewhere for employment.
When nothing better offered, he went to Virginia and there engaged in what was called in those days “tin-peddling, ” or selling wares from door to door through the country.
When he could not get cash for his merchandise he took hides in payment and thus made a start in the leather business, from which he was eventually to derive a fortune.
Having recovered his health in the outdoor life which he led in the South, Fayerweather was ambitious to get into the leather trade, but it was not until 1854, when he was thirty-two years of age, that an opportunity of the kind he had been seeking came to him.
He was offered a clerkship in the New York house of Hoyt Brothers which he eagerly accepted, and within one year he was admitted to the firm.
From that time on his rise was steady and significant until his death in 1890, when he was senior partner in the house doing the largest leather business in the United States, if not in the world.
Fayerweather & Ladew had tanneries in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia, as well as in New York.
From factories which were operated in New York City an immense output of belting and sole-leather was marketed annually.
His success was based on the strictest integrity and the soundest financing.
He had few rivals, but continually found and exploited new territory.
In the wholesale leather district of New York, near the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge, he was known to scores of men as “Dan, ” and beyond the bounds of that business district his name was rarely heard or printed, even after he had reached the rank of millionaire. He quietly sought the counsel of President Roswell D. Hitchcock of Union Theological Seminary, and from October 1884 to November 1890, only three men knew that on the former date Fayerweather had signed a will giving from $50, 000 to $300, 000, as well as additional gifts from the residuary estate, to each of a score of American colleges.
Not one of the men who met Fayerweather from day to day suspected that he was harboring plans of philanthropy on a great scale; most of them underestimated his wealth; and only a few knew of his disposition to give largely of it.
It was also clear that he had made no provision whatever for having his own name perpetuated as a donor, or for restricting the institutions in the use of the funds bestowed.
A codicil made on the day of his death gave full control of the estate to the executors, who, after providing for his widow, Lucy (Joyce) Fayerweather (1824 - 1892), proceeded to carry out the testator’s bequests to the colleges.
