John Chippewa Crerar was an American financier and philanthropist. He directed a railway equipment manufacturing plant, was a member of the Pullman Palace Car Company and was also a bank and railroad director.
Background
John Chippewa Crerar was born on March 08, 1827 in New York City, New York, United States. His parents, John and Agnes Smeallie Crerar, were born in Scotland. His father died in July 1827 when John was only a few months old. Later Mrs. Crerar married William Boyd, whose business was in iron and steel.
Education
John received common-school education.
Career
In his eighteenth year John Crerar began to work under his step-father, and after about five years was sent as a bookkeeper to an affiliated branch of his firm in Boston. He returned to New York after a short time and engaged himself, still as bookkeeper, to another business house also dealing in iron.
In 1856, he formed with Morris K. Jesup a friendship which affected his life profoundly as regards both business and philanthropy. He entered Jesup’s firm, first as employee and soon as partner, and in 1862 went to Chicago in connection with the branch of the firm inaugurated there in 1859, a manufactory of railroad supplies and contractors’ materials. A few months after his arrival, in company with one of Jesup’s emissaries who had preceded him, he bought over all the interests of the firm in his locality. Circumstances were propitious and the administration excellent; the complexity and wealth of the new business increased rapidly.
In 1867, Crerar was one of the incorporators of the Pullman Palace Car Company organized by his friend G. M. Pullman. He remained a director in this company throughout his life. He became also a director of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, of the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company, and president of the Chicago & Joliet Railway Company. He was a civic force of great importance, lending his influence and resources to any cause that seemed to him at once sound of itself and conducive to the development of Chicago.
Until the death of his mother in 1873 he continued to regard New York as his home, and he specified in his will that he be buried beside her in Brooklyn. The influence of his mother probably accentuated an hereditary bent toward ecclesiasticism. In this regard he was fervent, an active protagonist of orthodoxy. He could not fancy what the story of Jonah and the whale had to do with religion, but he was careful to make a bequest to a certain church contingent upon its “preserving and maintaining the principles of its faith, ” and he remembered to ban from the library he founded “all nastiness and immorality, ” that is, he explained, “dirty French novels and all skeptical trash and works of questionable moral tone. ” His will, written about three years before his death, made legacies to many friends and to certain cousins related to him through his mother, but omitted mention of other cousins equally related to him through his father.
Members of the latter group contested the will vigorously at the time of his death, but it was sustained by the courts in 1893. The major portion of his vast estate was left to the many philanthropic purposes dear to him, to the endowment of scholarships, churches, and mission boards, and, most notably, to the erection of “a collossal statue of Lincoln”, and to the creation of the John Crerar Library, an institution which in 1918 had total assets of over $5, 500, 000. It was not he, but his friends, named by him as trustees of this library, who determined to make it primarily a place of scientific and technical reference. They felt that in this way they might best supplement the other library facilities of Chicago, and at the same time might exclude automatically from its collections those classes of books which the great financier had prohibited as incompatible with “healthy, moral and Christian sentiment. ”
Religion
Crerar was a member of the Scottish Presbyterian Church. He attended church regularly and constantly read the Bible.
Politics
Crerar was a Republican throughout his life. He only made one personal political attempt. In 1888 he accepted a nomination and was elected a presidential elector, for the Benjamin Harrison campaign.
Membership
Crerar was president of the Mercantile Library Association, and played an active civic role as a member of the Union Club, the Union League Club, and the Century Club.
Personality
In the personal relationships which came as a result of his associations in business, Crerar was characterized by geniality and imagination. His other contacts were restricted. He lived quietly, in hotels, and when he was urged by his friend Jesup to engage in his lifetime in large-scale philanthropies, he demurred, saying, “I am satisfied and content. ”