Henry M. Flagler

• Born: January 2, 1830
• Birthplace: Hopewell, New York
• Died: May 20, 1913
• Place of death: West Palm Beach, Florida

American entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist

Flagler used a fortune acquired in the oil industry to build railroads and luxury hotels in Florida, thus establishing that state as a prime destination for tourists and enabling his heirs to pursue numerous philanthropic endeavors.

Sources of wealth: Oil; railroads; real estate; tourism

Bequeathal of wealth: Spouse; children; charity

Early Life

Henry Morrison Flagler was born into the family of a Presbyterian minister in Hopewell, New York. His father, the Reverend Isaac Flagler, married Elizabeth Caldwell Morrison Harkness after the death of her first husband, providing a family connection that would give young Flagler his start in business. Flagler left school after the eighth grade and moved to Bellevue, Ohio, where he worked in his cousin’s grain business, L. G. Harkness and Company, for $5 a month plus room and board. By the time he left this company in 1849, Flagler had demonstrated his worth as a salesman, increasing his salary to $400 a month. In 1852, he joined another family business, D. M. Harkness and Company, and soon married Mary Harkness. Their first child, Jennie Louise, was born on March18, 1855, and their second child, Carrie (who would die at the age of three), on June 18, 1858. On December 2, 1870, Mary gave birth to Henry’s only son, Harry Harkness Flagler, who would later become an important philanthropist in his own right.

First Ventures

Flagler’s entry into the salt business failed with the declining price for salt that followed the Civil War. His small fortune eliminated, Flagler returned to another Harkness family businesses,where he met John D. Rockefeller, who was working at that time for a firm that sold grain and other produce on commission. When Rockefeller left the grain business to enter the emerging petroleum industry, he approached Flagler for a loan to support his new venture. Stephen Vanderburgh Harkness agreed to become a silent partner in Rockefeller’s company only if Rockefeller gave Flagler a position as partner. In 1870, the chemist Samuel Andrews joined with Rockefeller, Harkness, and Flagler to create the company that would soon be known as Standard Oil.

Within two years, Standard Oil had purchased or merged with all other oil companies in Cleveland and embarked on a plan to become a major national industry. The company’s headquarters was relocated to New York, and by 1879, Standard Oil had captured 90 percent of the American oil market. By producing only the amount of oil needed to maintain a consistently high price, the original partners in the company all became extremely wealthy. Flagler and his wife purchased a spacious home on Fifth Avenue, but because of Mary’s poor health the couple also spent part of each year in Florida on the advice of Mary’s doctor. Through their winters in the Jacksonville area, Flagler became convinced that the region had potential for development and began formulating plans that would eventually introduce him to yet another source of wealth.

Mature Wealth

Flagler’s wife Mary died on May 18, 1881, the year before the Standard Oil Trust was formed. This trust pioneered a new concept in business: Rather than functioning as the property of any individual owner, Standard Oil would be owned in common by a group of stockholders, with major decisions rendered by a board of trustees. Instead of receiving profits directly from the company’s operations, Rockefeller, Flagler, and the other partners received their incomes from trust certificates, which became more valuable as the business continued to expand. On June 5, 1883, Flagler married Ida Alice Shourds, who had cared for Mary in her final illness. Because of Flagler’s familiarity with Florida, the couple honeymooned in St. Augustine, which Flagler found distressingly lacking in convenient hotel accommodations.

With the trust now in charge of Standard Oil’s day-to-day operations, Flagler began building a hotel worthy of St. Augustine’s history and charm. Named the Hotel Ponce de Leon, Flagler’s 540-room resort started the trend of making Florida a tourist destination for America’s elite. Realizing that a major hotel would prosper only if it were easy to reach, Flagler purchased and extended local railroad lines, eventually forming the Florida East Coast Railway. The almost instantaneous success of the Ponce de Leon after it opened in 1888 caused Flagler to continue expanding his tourist empire. He proceeded south to Daytona with the Hotel Ormond in 1890 and extended his railroad to West Palm Beach in 1894, which he initially believed would be the southernmost point to which tourists would travel. Flagler’s Royal Poinciana Hotel on the shores of Lake Worth boasted 1,150 rooms, and in 1896, he opened the Palm Beach Inn on a pristine stretch of Atlantic coastline.

In addition to the Ponce de Leon, Flagler operated two other hotels in St. Augustine: the Alcazar, which later became the Lightner Museum, and the Cordova, which had been built by Franklin Smith in 1888 and originally named the Casa Monica (the name it was given once again following its 1997 restoration). Flagler’s hotels were innovative for their features and luxurious appointments. At one time, the Cordova had the largest indoor heated pool anywhere; the Alcazar was one of the earliest examples of poured concrete construction in the United States; and the Royal Poinciana Hotel once boasted that it was the largest wooden structure in the world. Flagler’s guests would frequently arrive at his hotels in private railcars, attended by a sizable household staff and equipped with numerous trunks of clothing. Guests would often change their clothing for each meal and wear the latest fashions for the numerous parties, balls, and social gatherings held in the hotels and at nearby estates.

Flagler’s hotels originally remained open only from mid-December through late February, since Florida summers proved too hot for the elite clientele from Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. However, when cold winters hampered business in 1894 and 1895, Flagler decided to extend his railroad south to Biscayne Bay Country, a site that avoided the frigid conditions farther north. Julia Tuttle, a local citrus grower, offered Flagler a substantial land grant in order to develop the area, and by 1896 Flagler had provided the infrastructure necessary for a city to thrive. When it was proposed that the new town be called Flagler, the industrialist demurred, preferring the name Miami after the tribe of Indians that had given their name to a local river. It was thus in the new city of Miami that Flagler opened his Royal Palm Hotel in 1897.

For several years, Ida Alice’s mental health grew increasingly unstable, and in 1901 Flagler took advantage of a new law that allowed him to divorce her on the grounds of insanity. On August 24 of the same year, Flagler married Mary Lily Kenan, the sister of the philanthropist William Rand Kenan, Jr. As a wedding present, Flagler built Mary Lily a lavish estate, which she named Whitehall, not far from the Palm Beach Inn, later renamed The Breakers in honor of the waves that continually lapped its sandy beaches. Flagler then spent seven years extending his railroad to Key West. He and his wife also became central figures in the Palm Beach social scene and helped inaugurate what became known as the season, an annual period when the wealthy would migrate from the north to Flagler’s luxurious hotels along the eastern coast of Florida. In 1913, Flagler suffered a severe fall at Whitehall and died on May 20. He was buried in St. Augustine in a plot that he shares with his first wife and his eldest child, Jennie Louise.

Legacy

Henry Morrison Flagler’s influence on Florida was substantial. He helped transform what had been a largely uninhabited region into a major tourist destination, established a standard for luxury in the hotel industry that would be imitated by many successors, and helped create the city of Miami. Flagler’s wealth also became the basis for numerous philanthropic enterprises through the efforts of his third wife and his son. The William R. Kenan, Jr., Charitable Trust, named for the brother of Mary Lily Kenan Flagler, became a major benefactor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has funded numerous other educational and cultural endeavors at such institutions as Florida Atlantic University, Sweet Briar College, Princeton University, and the Smithsonian Institution. In 1968, another of Flagler’s heirs, Lawrence Lewis, Jr., founded Flagler College, using the former Hotel Ponce de Leon as its central building. The fortune developed by Henry Morrison Flagler through his enterprises in oil, railroads, and the hotel industry thus continues to benefit the educational and cultural activities throughout the region that Flagler once called home.

Bibliography

Akin, Edward N. Flagler, Rockefeller Partner and Florida Baron. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1991. Probably the best scholarly account of Flagler’s life available. Thoroughly footnoted with extensive and detailed information.

Braden, Susan R. The Architecture of Leisure: The Florida Resort Hotels of Henry Flagler and Henry Plant. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. An exhaustively researched account of Flagler’s role in the resort hotel industry in Florida. Places each of Flagler’s hotels in its historical, architectural, and cultural context.

Chandler, David Leon. Henry Flagler: The Astonishing Life and Times of the Visionary Robber Baron Who Founded Florida. New York: Macmillan, 1986. A general overview of Flagler’s life that is highly readable, presenting a good introduction to the age of such figures as John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Flagler.

Graham, Thomas. Flagler’s St Augustine Hotels: The Ponce De Leon, the Alcazar, and the Casa Monica. Sarasota, Fla.: Pineapple Press, 2002. A brief but engaging overview of Flagler’s three great hotels in northeast Florida, written by a professor of history at Flagler College.

Standiford, Les. Last Train to Paradise: Henry Flagler and the Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Railroad That Crossed an Ocean. New York: Crown, 2002. A popularized account of Flagler’s last great endeavor—the plan to extend his Florida East Coast Railway to Key West.