Women Philanthropists Born in 1828

Women Philanthropists

Born In 1828

       Ellen Collins (1828-1912) worked on getting supplies to the sick and wounded during the Civil War and then worked in the New York National Freedman’s Relief Association for education for blacks. She investigated conditions in asylums, hospitals and almshouses as a visitor for the State Board of Charities.  In 1880 she used $21,179 of her inheritance to buy and renovate 3 old tenement houses.  She then leased 4 adjoining houses.  With good management and reduced rents the units were low-cost housing at its best.  For 23 years her homes yielded satisfactory returns.  In 1903 she sold to new owners who carried on her policies.  The site in 1970 became a public housing project called Gov. Alfred E. Smith Houses.  Her estate of more than $200,000 included gifts to New York Quakers and some black educational institutions.

Caroline Rand (1828-1905) and her husband Elbridge Rand, with money from successful livestock and lumber businesses, supported the abolition movement and helped found the Republican Party.  Widowed in 1887, Rand turned her attention to education and social issues.  In 1893 she gave $35,000 to establish the Department of Applied Christianity at Iowa College in Grinnell with a young minister, George Herron, as head.  Its purpose was to expand the message of encouraging a sense of responsibility in the wealthy to work on social problems.  The E.D. Rand Foundation lectureship brought speakers like Jane Addams to the campus.   Caroline’s daughter Carrie (1867-1914) was instructor of physical education at the college and donated $8000 of the $9470 cost of the new E.D.Rand Gymnasium for women.  College officials claimed the Herron message was preventing donations to the college.  Herron resigned and with the Rand mother and daughter helped create the Socialist party in Indianapolis in 1901. Carrie and George Herron married in 1901. With a bequest of $100,000 from her mother, Carrie and Morris Hillquit set up the Rand School of Social Science in New York City in 1906 which lasted until 1956.

Margaret Sage (1828-1918) and her husband Russell supported many causes including the humane treatment of animals, suffrage, temperance, and educational opportunity.  When her husband died in 1906, Sage inherited more than 63 million dollars and began philanthropic endeavors on a large scale.  First, in 1907 she established the Russell Sage Foundation with 10 million dollars to improve social and living conditions for the poor.  Smaller amounts went to churches, schools, hospitals, the YWCA and the YMCA.  She contributed to the Standish Hall dormitory at Harvard and gave $650,000 to Yale for the Pierson-Sage campus.  In 1910 she gave a new campus to the Emma Willard School and founded the Russell Sage College for women’s vocational education.

Sage’s total public gifts totaled from $75,000,000 to $80,000,000.  Her will provided $1,600,000 to Syracuse University, $800,000 to 13 Eastern colleges, Tuskegee, Hampton and the New York Public Library.  Religious bequests totaled about $7,500,000.  The endowment of the Russell Sage Foundation grew by $5,600,000.  Sizable gifts went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Botanical Gardens, and the New York Zoological Society.

Her philanthropic philosophy grew from the conviction that the idle wealthy with their sexual immorality set a bad example for those not so rich.  She felt that practical education was needed to develop moral responsibility through self-help for the poor.

Jane Stanford (1828-1905) and her husband supported San Francisco’s kindergartens of Sarah Cooper and a children’s hospital in Albany, New York and other groups.  Following the death of their son in 1884 at age 15, the Stanfords decided to found a university.  Jane took charge of planning and developing the institution which opened in 1891 as The Leland Stanford Junior University.  Widowed in 1893, she overcame problems resulting from the panic of 1893, as well as claims of $15,000,000 in 1893 by the US government which was eventually thrown out by the Supreme Court in 1896.  The university grew with an ambitious building program, but unfortunately low salaries for faculty produced poor morale. Stanford seemed to feel the honor of working at the university could make up for low salaries.  By 1901 Stanford transferred more than $11,000,000 to the university.

Catharine Lorillard Wolfe (1828-1887) received a large inheritance in 1872 from her father which, added to her Lorillard inheritance, gave her a fortune of about $12,000,000.  Following the example of her father, she began with gifts and endowments totaling a million dollars to churches and help to aged and infirm clergy, the Children’s Aid Society, a Home for Incurables, and Union College.

In 1884-5 she financed the first American archaeological expedition to Iraq by the American School of Classical Studies.  This led to the excavation in 1888 of the city of Nippur by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania.

She also donated her collection of 120 paintings and 22 watercolors by French and German artists to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  They were valued at $500,000 in 1887 and she contributed an additional $200,000 for the upkeep of the collection.  She was one the first philanthropists to extend gifts to artistic and scientific causes.