Charles William Harkness (December 17, 1860 – May 1, 1916) was a son of Stephen V. Harkness (an original investor in the company that became Standard Oil) and his second wife, the former Anna M. Richardson.

Early life

Charles was born in

Monroeville, Ohio Monroeville is a village in Huron County, Ohio, United States. The population was 1,300 at the 2020 census. History Monroeville was originally called Monroe, and under the latter name was laid out in 1817. The village was named after James Mon ...

on December 17, 1860. His parents were Stephen V. Harkness (1818–1888) and the former Anna Marie Richardson (1837–1926), his father's second wife. He was the brother of

Edward Harkness Edward Stephen Harkness (January 22, 1874 – January 29, 1940) was an American philanthropist. Given privately and through his family's Commonwealth Fund, Harkness' gifts to private hospitals, art museums, and educational institutions in the Nort ...

, noted philanthropist and half brother of Lamon V. Harkness. He was a cousin of

William L. Harkness William Lamon Harkness (August 8, 1858 – May 10, 1919) was an American businessman and inheritor of a large share of Standard Oil. Early life William Lamon Harkness was born in Bellevue, Ohio, the son of Daniel M. Harkness, who was the half-br ...

. His early education was in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

at The Brooks Military Academy. He earned a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

from

Yale College Yale College is the undergraduate college of Yale University. Founded in 1701, it is the original school of the university. Although other Yale schools were founded as early as 1810, all of Yale was officially known as Yale College until 1887, ...

with the Class of 1883. While at Yale, he was described as "care-free, happy, irresponsible as the rest of us."

Career

On his father's death in 1888, Charles inherited stock in Standard Oil amounting to the second largest holding in the company, surpassed only by that of the

Rockefeller family The Rockefeller family () is an American industrial, political, and banking family that owns one of the world's largest fortunes. The fortune was made in the American petroleum industry during the late 19th and early 20th centuries by brot ...

. Harkness became a director at Standard Oil and was a director of the Southern Pacific Railway Company, the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the Tilden Iron Mining Company, and managed his father's immense holdings.
Case Western Reserve Society Annual Report - October, 1917 Harkness purchased the Henry Flagler townhouse at 685 Fifth Ave, New York and also owned a home in Madison, NJ and a winter home in St. Augustine, FL.

Personal life

On May 27, 1896, Harkness married Miss Mary Warden in Philadelphia, PA. Mary was the daughter of William G. Warden, who was an early Standard Oil partner, and the granddaughter of industrialist Daniel Bushnell. Harkness fell seriously ill in fall 1915. After spending part of winter in St.Augustine at his wife's family home at Warden Castle, he returned home to New York, where he died May 1, 1916. Since he had no children, the large portion of his Standard Oil stock was left to his brother Edward S. Harkness. One half his residual estate, his home in New York at 2 West 54th Street and his country home in Madison, NJ (designed by James Gamble Rogers who designed many Harkness buildings) were bequeathed to his wife Mary. He left $100,000 as a token of affection and esteem to his brother Lamon V. Harkness although Lamon had already died a year before Charles' death. Lamon had been quite wealthy in his own right from his inheritance from their father Stephen V. Harkness.
CW Harkness, New York Times Obituary May 9, 1916

Legacy

Harkness Tower Harkness Tower is a masonry tower at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Part of the Collegiate Gothic Memorial Quadrangle complex completed in 1922, it is named for Charles William Harkness, brother of Yale's largest benefactor, Edward ...

at Yale is named after Charles W. Harkness. Anna Harkness, his mother, donated $3,000,000 to build the

Memorial Quadrangle The Memorial Quadrangle is a residential quadrangle at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Commissioned in 1917 to supply much-needed student housing for Yale College, it was Yale's first Collegiate Gothic building and its first project ...

of dormitories in his memory. Harkness Tower contains the Yale Memorial Carillon, a carillon of 54 bells, the largest of which is inscribed "In Memory of Charles W. Harkness, Class of 1883, Yale College." The Cleveland Museum of Art has a $100,000 permanent endowment known as the Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund,The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 15, No. 2, February 1928
/ref> which was created through a donation from his widow, Mary Warden Harkness.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Harkness, Charles W. 1860 births 1916 deaths Yale College alumni American energy industry businesspeople Charles Burials at Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York) People from Monroeville, Ohio