William Jackson Clothier was an American coal merchant and athlete.
Background
William Jackson Clothier was born on September 27, 1881 in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the ninth (and last) child of Mary Clapp Jackson and Isaac Hallowell Clothier, a founder of the Strawbridge and Clothier department store in Philadelphia.
Education
He was educated at Haverford School and Swarthmore College, of which his father was a trustee. After two years at Swarthmore, Clothier transferred to Harvard, from which he graduated in 1904. In college Clothier played football, ice hockey, and tennis.
Career
As early as 1899 he had been a finalist in the Pennsylvania State Tennis Championship. He won the title in 1901, 1902, and 1903. In 1902 he won the National Intercollegiate Championships in both singles and doubles, and in 1903 and 1904 he was the runner-up in the National Singles Championship. In 1905, Clothier was a member of the first American Davis Cup team to go abroad, and he also played on the Davis Cup team in 1906. In the latter year he won the National Singles Championship at Newport. From 1901 through 1914, Clothier was nationally ranked among the top ten American tennis players eleven times. Many years later, Clothier and his son, William Jackson II, won the National Father and Son title in 1935 and 1936. They were runners-up in 1937 and 1941. After graduation from Harvard, Clothier worked briefly for Edward B. Smith and Company in Philadelphia. In 1905 he became the Philadelphia representative of Wrenn Brothers and Company, bankers of New York and Boston. From 1907 to 1921 he was partner in the banking house of Montgomery, Clothier, and Tyler. Meanwhile, in 1911, Clothier organized, and in 1915 became president of, Boone County Coal Corporation of Sharples. Also in 1911 he began to purchase land in the Pickering Valley near Valley Forge. Eventually his Valley Hill Farm covered almost 1, 000 acres. He joined his pack of hounds with those of the recently founded Pickering Hunt Club, and was master of the hounds at Pickering from 1911 until 1951. He won the National Singles Tennis Championship that summer and the Radnor point-to-point race in the fall. He made Valley Hill Farm a spectacular recreational center. Every year from 1913 until 1950, when the mansion burned down, the farm was the site of the annual Pickering Race Meet and Farmers' Day in November, and competitors and spectators came from the surrounding area to take part. The Clothiers also bred and trained horses and hounds. Clothier was instrumental in establishing the International Tennis Hall of Fame at Newport, in 1954, serving as its president from 1954 to 1957. He kept it going largely with his own funds, and acquired a sizable collection of tennis memorabilia for its museum. Clothier was a prototype of the early twentieth-century country gentleman. Country Life described him as "purposeful in all things, correct, unostentatious, enthusiastic, thorough. " "Hunting with Clothier, " the article continued, "is stout and straight . .. not meant to be fun. " The reader can almost see him riding in a point-to-point race or leading a bucket brigade of local children as they iced the half-mile toboggan run at Valley Hill Farm or presiding graciously over the trophy table at race meet day. Clothier retired from his coal corporation in 1957. He spent the rest of his life at Valley Hill Farm, where he also died.
Achievements
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Clothier has copied Whitman, but is not so good. His twist service is much the same as Whitman's, and he always follows it up to the net, He volleys well, and is especially severe overhead. His volleying is considerably superior to his ground strokes.
Connections
Clothier married Anita Porter on February 21, 1906. The wedding took place in the groom's bedroom because he had broken his pelvis in a riding accident two weeks earlier. Neither he nor the bride seemed daunted by the medical prognosis that Clothier might never again play tennis or ride to hounds. The Clothiers had five children. Anita Clothier shared her husband's interest in tennis, hunting, horses, and dogs.