Francis Beidler (1854 – March 4, 1924), was a Chicago-based lumberman active in the first decades of the 20th century.

Biography

Francis Beidler was born in Chicago in 1854. With partner

Benjamin F. Ferguson Benjamin Franklin Ferguson (died 1905) was an American lumber merchant and co-founder of the ''Santee River Cypress Lumber Company''. The firm specialized in the harvesting of Old-growth forest, old-growth timber from the blackwater river bottoml ...

, he was the co-founder and owner of the Santee River Cypress Lumber Company. Starting in 1881, the Santee Cypress Company purchased of land in central South Carolina. The Company's holdings, which Beidler and Ferguson's personnel logged actively from 1881 onward, included large parcels of riverine bottomland in central South Carolina. The Beidler blackwater lands included large resources of valuable

bald cypress ''Taxodium distichum'' (baldcypress, bald-cypress, bald cypress, swamp cypress; ; ''cipre'' in Louisiana) is a deciduous conifer in the family Cupressaceae. It is native to the southeastern United States. Hardy and tough, this tree adapts to a w ...

timber. Beidler became the sole operating partner of the company after Ferguson's death in 1905. Francis Beidler died at his home in Chicago on March 4, 1924.

Legacy

The Santee Cypress operations were extremely profitable. Lands purchased for as little as $2.00/acre ($5.00/hectare) contained

old-growth An old-growth forest or primary forest is a forest that has developed over a long period of time without Disturbance (ecology), disturbance. Due to this, old-growth forests exhibit unique ecological features. The Food and Agriculture Organizati ...

cypress trees as large as in circumference. A mill, located in nearby Ferguson, sawed up the logs cut from Beidler-owned blackwater properties. Many of the timbers located close to key rivers and adjacent "guts" (intermittent creeks) were cut down. However, not all of the timbers could be carried to the mill in this way. A nationwide economic downturn in 1913-1914 led to the suspension of Santee Cypress's logging operations. The Ferguson mill shut down in 1915.

National park

Beidler's 1915 order to his personnel to lay down their saws was a significant break point. It made possible the eventual preservation of two blackwater creek systems that lay within Santee Cypress-owned South Carolina property. The properties that make up today's

Congaree National Park Congaree National Park is a national park of the United States in central South Carolina, 18 miles southeast of the state capital, Columbia. The park preserves the largest tract of old growth bottomland hardwood forest left in the United Sta ...

, near Columbia, and the

Francis Beidler Forest The Francis Beidler Forest is an National Audubon Society, Audubon wildlife sanctuary in Four Holes Swamp, a blackwater river, blackwater creek system in South Carolina, United States. It consists of over 18,000 acres (73 km²) of main ...

, near Orangeburg, both trace their ownership through Beidler and the Santee Cypress Company. Both of these land parcels have since been enrolled on the

Ramsar list of wetlands of international importance Ramsar sites are protected under by the Ramsar Convention, an international treaty for the conservation movement, conservation and sustainable use of wetlands, recognizing the fundamental ecological functions of wetlands and their economic, cultura ...

Foundation

Beidler used part of the fortune earned from the Santee River Cypress Lumber Company to bequeath $1.5 million (in 1924 USD) to the Illinois-based Francis Beidler Foundation. The Foundation remains active as of 2019. Credited donations include moneys paid to save and interpret the architecturally significant Glessner House in Chicago.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beidler, Francis 1854 births 1924 deaths 19th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American businesspeople Philanthropists from Illinois Burials at Rosehill Cemetery 20th-century American philanthropists Businesspeople from Chicago