Severance was born in Cleveland on August 1, 1838.[2] 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.[3] He and his older brother Solon were raised by his widowed mother,[4] in the Cleveland home of their maternal grandparents,[5] Juliana (née Walworth) Long and Dr. David Long, who was Cleveland's first physician.[6]
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.[7]
He attended public schools in Cleveland before entering the workforce at age eighteen.[5]
His bank lent to John D. Rockefeller's oil business, and, in 1864, Severance started an oil exploration,[1][5] and refinery business himself, in the oil boom town of Titusville, Pennsylvania.[9] In 1872, after the stillborn birth of his fourth child, he returned to Cleveland,[10] where the children's uncle, Solon, raised them with his own three children.[1] Severance later supported his nephew, Allen; funding his lifelong study of theology.[11]
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.[9]
Later life
In 1894,[12] by then a very wealthy man, Severance retired from active management of business.[9] 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.[13]
Severance Hospital in Seoul is named in his honor. He donated $50,000 to $100,000 annually directly to the church.[14] 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."[15]
Personal life
The year after he joined the Commercial National Bank, a friend from his church introduced Severance to the Norwalkbelle Fannie Buckingham Benedict (1839–1874).[16][17] They married in 1862 and together, Fannie and Louis were the parents of:[5]
His wife Fannie died in 1874.[5] In 1894, he married the equally rich Florence Severance (1857–1895), the only surviving daughter of Standard Oil millionaires Stephen and his second wife, Anna Harkness.[24] Florence died within a year of the marriage and her considerable estate increased his fortune further.[1]
On June 25, 1913, Severance died suddenly,[3] in his daughter Elisabeth's home, in the care of his son in law, Dr Dudley P. Allen, after being taken suddenly ill.[25] As he died intestate,[26] his estate was divided between his two surviving children.[21]
Severance Hospital, Seoul (opened in 1904 as the first Western-style hospital building in Korea[29] after a large 1900 donation from Severance to support the missionary care there).
Severance Hall is named for John L. Severance and his wife Elisabeth.[32]
References
Notes
^The children's birth names are recorded in A history of Cleveland and its environs; the heart of new Connecticut, but, by 1881, Severance's youngest daughter was registered both as "Anne Belle" and "Annie Belle" in the Oberlin College calendar (p. 78), and appears as Annie B. Severance in the 1880 Cleveland census. Her life is recorded in the book In memoriam: Annie Belle Severance (1896).[22]
^ abcdFrazier, Ian (2002). Family. Picador. pp. 160–163. ISBN978-0-312-42059-8. He added millions from sulphur to the $8 million he already had from oil.
^The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History gives 1894 as the year Severance retired both from Standard Oil and the Union Sulphur company. These are based on the Severance Family Papers and give the year he stopped working. Other sources — like White, S. (1913) & Avery, E. M. (1918) — give the official retirement year: 1895
^ abcAvery, E. M. (1918). A history of Cleveland and its environs: Biography. Vol. II. The Lewis Publishing Company. pp. 324, 325, 326. Cleveland Linseed Oil Company [treasurer...] president of the Colonial Salt Company [...] treasurer of the Linde Air Products Company [...] Cleveland Steel Company vice president
^Allen, Dr. D. P. (October 1913). Oberlin Alumni Magazine. {{cite journal}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
^Barton, D. W. "Ch. 15: Life in Norwalk in the 1850s, A New Generation". Archived from the original on June 11, 2010. Retrieved June 1, 2010. [Fanny's brother, Dave Benedict] took Louis to Norwalk to visit his family, and introduced him to his sister Fanny. Fanny was seventeen at the time, and liked the looks of this young bank employee from Cleveland. The feeling was mutual, and Louis started to court her.
^Wickham, Captain William S. (December 25, 1918) [1901]. "Norwalk, Its Men and Women, and Some of the Girls I Have Met". The Firelands pioneer. Vol. XX. Norwalk, Ohio: The Firelands Historical Society. p. 2085. OCLC2446934. The most beautiful of all the pretty girls—and there have been many first and last—who ever left Norwalk as a bride was Fanny Benedict. She was the undisputed belle of the town. She married Mr L. H. Severance
