Background

Russell Conwell was born on February 15, 1843, in South Worthington, Massachusetts, United States to a poor family of farmers: Martin and Miranda (Wickham) Conwell. He grew up on a 350-acre hardscrabble subsistence farm, located about 15 miles from Westfield, and had two siblings.

Education

Russell Conwell studied at Wilbraham Wesleyan Academy. After that he went to major in law at Yale University. In 1862, before graduation, Conwell enlisted in the Union Army where he served till the end of the American Civil War. On his return, Conwell enrolled at Albany Law School.

Career

After Wesleyan Academy, Conwell worked for a year as a schoolteacher. In 1861, when the American Civil War started, he decided to go to the army. Finally, in a year, he managed to join Company F of the 27th Massachusetts Volunteers (The Mountain Boys) and started the military service in North Carolina. In 1865 Conwell retired as Lieutenant colonel.

Over the next years, he worked as a lawyer, an immigration agent, and founded two newspapers: Minneapolis Daily Chronicle and Somerville Journal. Almost a decade later, Conwell changed course and decided to commit to the ministry. In 1872 he took on the position of an assistant at Baptist church in Lexington where served till 1879. Approximately in 1880 Conwell was ordained as a Baptist minister and was appointed to Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia as pastor. The church, struggling from debts, prospered under his leadership, moving eventually to the much larger Baptist Temple.

Conwell’s church offered more than just sermons - there was food, physical activity, financial assistance, and education. In 1884, the young pastor was approached by a few young men who asked Conwell to tutor them to prepare for the ministry. When the number grew to 40 students, the classes were moved to the church basement. A few years later, Conwell announced that he would be forming Temple College, with a formal schedule of classes. Two hundred prospective students signed up in the first month. And so, the University became more than a place, it became an idea. From 1887 Conwell served as its first president. In 1907 the place eventually became a university.

However, the noble philanthropist didn't stop. He also founded Conwell School of Theology, two hospitals in the City of Brotherly Love, and Boston Young Men’s Congress.

Besides, Conwell left his mark as a writer and a public speaker. He published a number of works which include campaign biographies of Ulysses S. Grant, James A. Garfield, and his famous Acres of Diamonds speech, that he delivered more than 6 000 times, helped countless individuals to come into the knowledge of the meaning of true wealth and how to attain it without getting sidetracked by selfishness and greed.

Achievements

• Russell Conwell was named among twenty-five outstanding preachers in the United States.
  
  By the time of his death in 1925, his speech Acres of Diamonds had reportedly earned him $8 million. Thanks to it, Russell Conwell provided almost 1,700 young people with the opportunity to go to college, and played a significant role in assisting 91,000 more to reach their educational goals.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Why Lincoln laughed

    (One who lived in Lincoln's time, and who has read a thous...)

    1922
  • Acres of Diamonds

    (You will discover how this lawyer, minister, writer, educ...)

    1890
  • The Life, Travels, and Literary Career of Bayard Taylor

    (The nearness and magnitude of Bayard Taylor’s life make i...)

    1879
  • Life and public services of Gov. Rutherford B. Hayes 1876
  • Observation: every man his own university 1917
  • Why and how: Why the Chinese Emigrate, and the Means They Adopt for the Purpose of Reaching America 1871

Views

Russell Conwell believed that opportunity lurked in everyone’s backyard. He was concerned that everyone could and ought to get rich and then use that money for the good of others.

Conwell was a proponent of the idea that anyone, man or woman, should have the opportunity for education. The first graduating class at Temple included four women out of 18 graduates. Conwell also believed that the cost of learning should be just sufficient enough for students to appreciate the advantages of education.

In his speeches, he always emphasized the value of being educated, devotion to the Protestant ethic, and the importance of family and community service.

Quotations: "Keep clean, fight hard, pick your openings judiciously, and have your eyes forever fixed on the heights toward which you are headed."

"We must know what the world needs first, and then invest ourselves to supply that need, and success is almost certain."

"There is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of someone else. It is all wrong to be poor, anyhow."

"Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money."

Personality

Conwell has been remembered as "a captain of erudition, an educational entrepreneur - who sought to democratize, persify and widen the reach of higher education." He was a brilliant, entertaining, and motivating pastor, and his energy, organizational skills, and gifted oratory attracted many new parishioners in the churches he served.

Russell Conwell was a voracious reader with a photographic memory and may have been familiar with Adam Smith.

Interests

• reading

Connections

In 1865 Conwell married Jane P. Hayden. In a couple of years after her death, he got married to Sarah J. Sanborn. He had three children: a son and a daughter in the first marriage, and one daughter in the second marriage.

Father:

Martin Conwell

Mother:

Miranda (Wickham) Conwell

Spouse:

Sarah J. Sanborn

Spouse:

Jane P. Hayden

investor:

William Bucknell

References

• Victorian Flight: Russell Conwell and the Crisis of American Individualism Book by Daniel W. Bjork.
  1979
• Russell H. Conwell and His Works Find out why Russell Conwell was the preeminent inspirational speaker of the early 20th century, culminating with his seminal "Acres of Diamonds" parable, which is presented in this exquisite volume, the first of its kind released at Conwell's passing.
  1917
• The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches
  1954