Cornell University Library: Bought With the Income of the Sage Endowement Fund Given in 1891 (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Cornell University Library: Bought With the ...)
Excerpt from Cornell University Library: Bought With the Income of the Sage Endowement Fund Given in 1891
Back in Piccadilly on a May morning! To the traveller from the East, the Old familiar roar of London traffic was like the music of a mother's voice.
Major Marchmont stood at his Club window, after four years' absence - years of vivid colour and hot adventure. Torrid climes had dried up his fresh English com plexion, but his frame was still wiry from his passionate love Of the Chase.
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Henry Williams Sage was a wealthy New York State businessman, philanthropist, and early benefactor and trustee of Cornell University.
Background
He was born on January 31, 1814 in Middletown, Connecticut, United States, a descendant of David Sage who emigrated from Wales, and settled in Middletown about 1652. Henry's father was Charles Sage, who was shipwrecked on the Florida coast in 1838 and killed by Indians; his mother, Sally (Williams) Sage. Most of his youth was spent in Bristol, Connecticut, until 1827, when the family moved to Ithaca, N. Y.
Education
He still cherished the hope of a professional career, however, and for a time studied medicine with Dr. Austin Church of Ithaca; but circumstances conspired to make him a business man. Ill health interrupted his medical studies.
Career
In 1832 he entered the employ of his uncles, who, under the firm name of Williams & Brothers, were merchants and owners of transportation lines over the waterways of central New York. He revealed abilities of a high order, and in five years became proprietor of the business. Soon he was one of the substantial and influential men of the region and in 1847 was elected on the Whig ticket to the legislature.
Appreciating the demand for lumber that the rapid development of the country would create, he undertook to supply it on an extensive scale. Buying in 1854 a large tract of timber land around Lake Simcoe, Canada, he manufactured it there, and soon after, with John McGraw, began to draw upon the Michigan forests, his manufacturing establishment being at Winona.
In 1857 he moved to Brooklyn, where he was intimately associated with Henry Ward Beecher in the affairs of Plymouth Church. Returning to Ithaca in 1880, he made that city his home until his death seventeen years later.
Cornell University was the principal object of his thought and benefactions. In 1870 he was elected to the board of trustees and in 1875 succeeded Cornell as chairman, serving until his death. In 1870 he offered to erect a college for women, and although there was opposition to making the university a coeducational institution, his offer was accepted and Sage College, a woman's dormitory, with lecture rooms and other equipment, was opened in 1874.
He exerted his influence against the sale of the national lands held by the college, at a time when the trustees were sorely tempted to dispose of them. He furnished the funds for the erection of a chapel, dedicated in June 1875, established the Sage School of Philosophy at a cost of more than a quarter of a million of dollars, gave $560, 000 to the library and its endowment, made a substantial gift to the museum of archeology, and otherwise contributed to the financial needs of the institution.
No less valuable was the business sagacity which he exercised in the administrative work of the university during more than twenty-five years of its early history. In 1871 he founded the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at the Yale Divinity School.
(Excerpt from Cornell University Library: Bought With the ...)
Personality
Sturdy in frame, with a full beard, clean-shaven upper lip, firm mouth, and shrewd eyes, Sage was in appearance the typical successful business man of the Victorian era.
Interests
He was especially interested in religion, psychology, and philosophy.
Connections
His wife was Susan Elizabeth (Linn) Sage, who died in 1885.