Background
Samuel Cupples was born on September 13, 1831 at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was the son of James Cupples, an Irish educator, who emigrated from County Down, Ireland, in 1814, and his wife Elizabeth Bigham.
manufacturer merchant philanthropist
Samuel Cupples was born on September 13, 1831 at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was the son of James Cupples, an Irish educator, who emigrated from County Down, Ireland, in 1814, and his wife Elizabeth Bigham.
He was educated chiefly by his father, who had established a business school in Pittsburgh.
At the age of fifteen he went down the Ohio to Cincinnati, where he was employed by Albert O. Tyler, a wooden-ware merchant. The firm of Samuel Cupples & Company was formed in 1851 and Cupples began business with a stock of wooden-ware in St. Louis which soon became the chief manufacturing and shipping city for wooden-ware.
To relieve congestion in freight handling and a lack of warehouse facilities Robert S. Brookings and Cupples established the Cupples Station by acquiring conveniently located land and erecting some fifty buildings so arranged as to have railway trackage to every building. This terminal operation proved to be immediately successful for it met an economic necessity for the heavy shippers of St. Louis.
Cupples and others became interested in “head and hand” education and established the St. Louis Training School of Washington University, which became a model for the United States and other countries.
His active participation in manual training brought him into touch with other branches of Washington University work. He and his partner in business and philanthropy, R. S. Brookings, gave to the Washington University for its endowment the Cupples Station property. Thus the great terminal of St. Louis serves its manufacturing and shipping needs and provides income to educate its youth.
The School of Engineering and Architecture at Washington University was given by him, and with its endowment he provided twelve scholarships to graduates of the Manual Training School, saying that he believed the road to education should be made open at the top. Cupples lived to be over eighty years of age. During the last thirty years he was practically an invalid and his chief interest lay in his philanthropies.
He did not live to see the Robert Barnes Hospital completed, of which he was one of the trustees under the will of Robert Barnes.
Samuel Cupples married Margaret Amelia Kells in 1854 and had a child, which died in infancy. Margaret died four years after marrying.
Cupples married her sister, Martha Sophia Kells, in 1860. They had three children, all of whom died in infancy. This is why he adopted Amelia, daughter of a third sister, Harriet Kells Lowman.
Cupples and his daughter, Amelia Cupples Scudder, were survivors of the sinking of the British ocean liner RMS Republic in January 1909.