Financier merchant philanthropist
Samuel Livingston Mather was born on July 13, 1851 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was the eldest son of Samuel Livingston Mather and Georgiana Pomeroy (Woolson) Mather. His mother was a grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper; his father was descended from the Rev. Richard Mather.
Samuel attended the Cleveland high school and Saint Mark's School, Southboro, Massachussets, and intended to enter Harvard College in 1869.
During the summer of 1869 he was time-keeper and payroll clerk in his father's business, the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, at Ishpeming, Mich. Seriously injured in an explosion at the company's mines, July 14, he was an invalid for nearly two years, an experience which probably prepared the way for many of his charitable interests. He then traveled in Europe for a year and a half, slowly recovering his health and acquiring an intimate knowledge of European culture. On his return to the United States late in 1873, he entered the employ of the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, to learn the business his father had made extraordinarily successful. Following his marriage, October 19, 1881, he spent another period in extensive travel abroad. In 1883, with Col. James Pickands and Jay C. Morse, he organized Pickands, Mather & Company, dealers in iron ore, coal, and pig iron. On the death of Pickands in 1896 Mather became senior partner, and the business grew enormously under his guidance. The company became one of the two or three largest shippers of iron ore from the Lake Superior ranges, operated coal mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, blast furnaces at Chicago, Toledo, Duluth, and Erie, and a large fleet of freight carriers on the Great Lakes. Through stock ownership in the Lackawanna Steel, the Youngstown Sheet and Tube, and United States Steel concerns, the partners in Pickands, Mather & Company were assured of a market for their products. Mather's brother, William G. Mather, became president of the Cleveland Cliffs Iron Company in 1890, the successor of the old family property, the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, and Samuel was a director in this organization and also in the United States Steel. The industrial history of Northern Ohio, and to a considerable extent of the United States, is the record of the achievements of the Mathers in the iron and steel business.
In the view of Mather's closest friends his first interest was his church, the Protestant Episcopal. He was senior warden of Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, an active officer in the diocese of Ohio, an annual delegate to the diocesan convention, and regularly a deputy to the General Convention. He was also a member of the National Council of the Episcopal Church.
Mather left $100, 000 in his will to Kenyon College. His vigorous, dominating personality impressed all who were associated with him. He grasped the details of complex situations whether in business, charitable, or educational affairs; remembered these details when others thought them forgotten; and reached decisions with promptness and finality. His wife, who was actively interested in all his charities, died in 1909; three of their four children survived him.
On October 19, 1881, Mather married Flora Amelia Stone, youngest daughter of Amasa Stone and only sister of Mrs. John Hay.
1 July 1817 - 8 October 1890 President of the Cleveland Iron Mining Co.
1831 - 2 November 1853
22 September 1857 - 5 April 1951
3 September 1853 - 9 August 1939
8 April 1852 - 19 January 1909
21 September 1889 - December 1969
19 May 1894 - 19 September 1973
1882 - 13 Sep 1960
1884 - 9 February 1920
