Louis Severance

Louis Henry Severance (August 1, 1838 – June 25, 1913) was an American oilman and philanthropist who was a founding member of the Standard Oil Trust, the first treasurer of Standard Oil, and a sulfur magnate.

Early life Severance was born in Cleveland on August 1, 1838. He was the second son of Mary Helen (née Long) Severance (1816–1902) and Solomon Lewis Severance (1812–1838), who died in July 1838, a month before his birth. He and his older brother Solon were raised by his widowed mother, in the Cleveland home of their maternal grandparents, Juliana (née Walworth) Long and Dr. David Long, who was Cleveland's first physician.

Severance picked up his mother's commitment to the Presbyterian mission and the anti-slavery cause. His father had been one of Cleveland's dry goods merchants who went into partnership as Cutter & Severance. Solomon was also the secretary of the Cleveland Anti-Slavery Society, and treasurer of the Cuyahoga County Anti-Slavery society.

He attended public schools in Cleveland before entering the workforce at age eighteen. in the defense of Washington D.C. during the U.S. Civil War. where the children's uncle, Solon, raised them with his own three children.

By 1876, Rockefeller's Standard Oil had a near industry monopoly and Severance joined as the Ohio company's treasurer. While at Standard, he founded another company, mining sulfur, and because it held the patent on the Frasch process it too monopolized a profitable industry. by then a very wealthy man, Severance retired from active management of business. In his retirement, he was a leading sponsor of Ohio education, the YMCA, and overseas Presbyterian missions. He was a church elder and in 1904 the vice moderator of its General Assembly; he paid for chapels in Cleveland, as well as missions, colleges, and hospitals in Asia. His son-in-law wrote "While his philanthropies were very broad and he responded to appeals of every sort, he seems to have been dominated by one fundamental idea,—the building up of the Christian church."

Personal life The year after he joined the Commercial National Bank, a friend from his church introduced Severance to the Norwalk belle Fannie Buckingham Benedict (1839–1874). They married in 1862 and together, Fannie and Louis were the parents of: and an important patron of the arts in Ohio. He married Elisabeth Huntington DeWitt (1865–1929) in 1891. Elisabeth Severance (1865–1944), Anne Belle Severance (1868–1896), who died on the Isle of Wight, aged 28. Fanny Severance (1872–1872), who was stillborn.

His wife Fannie died in 1874. Florence died within a year of the marriage and her considerable estate increased his fortune further. As he died intestate, his estate was divided between his two surviving children. —He largely funded the rebuilding of the entire university after it burned down in 1901, (on the grounds that they were un-Christian). after a large 1900 donation from Severance to support the missionary care there). The Severance Chemical Laboratory (1901), at Oberlin College. Severance Hall is named for John L. Severance and his wife Elisabeth.