Charles Broadway Rouss

Charles Broadway Rouss (born Charles Baltzell Rouss; February 11, 1836 – March 3, 1902) was an American businessman and philanthropist. Starting as a dry goods businessman in Winchester and Richmond, Virginia, he moved to Manhattan and established a dry goods business there. A former private in the Confederate States Army, he gifted his wealth to the city of Winchester and memorials to the Confederate cause in New York and Virginia.

Early life Charles Baltzell Rouss was born on February 11, 1836, in Woodsboro, Maryland, to Belinda (née Baltzell) and Peter Hoke Rouss. He later adopted the middle name Broadway after Broadway in Manhattan. In 1841, his father purchased "Runnymede" in Berkeley County, Virginia. In 1846, he entered the Winchester Academy. From the ages of 14 to 18, he worked as a clerk at a general store owned by Jacob Senseny in Winchester.

Career In 1854, Rouss began to start his own mercantile business, a pins-and-needles store. He purchased an advertisement after speaking to Arunah Shepherdson Abell of The Baltimore Sun. He owned a chain of retail outlets throughout the United States. He also gifted three fire engines and for the Winchester's first fire department. It was later renamed the Rouss Fire Company.

Rouss gifted to the University of Virginia for a physical laboratory. He described the building as "the Temple of the Lost Cause".

Rouss donated to victims of the Johnstown Flood. He also established an art scholarship for American students in Paris. They had a son who died young in 1891. They also had another son and daughter, Peter Winchester and Virginia. His wife died in 1899. Rouss lived in a mansion on 5th Avenue, Manhattan. He hosted dinners on Sundays to parties of 50 people. He was friends with Robert G. Ingersoll He died of heart disease and dropsy on March 3, 1902, at his home in Manhattan. Today, a portrait of Rouss hangs in Rouss City Hall in Winchester.