The Midas of the Wabash

Robert C. Kriebel

Description

The Midas of the Wabash is a biography of noted businessman John Purdue (1802-1876), whose donations of time and money led to the founding of Indiana's land grant university, Purdue University, in 1869. Purdue also contributed to economically important bridge, railroad, and cemetery construction, the existence of Lafayette Savings Bank and the Battle Ground Collegiate Institute, cattle farming, Lafayette's public school system, and countless other worthy enterprises. This is the first published full length study of Mr. Purdue's life and work beyond casual street-talk that portrayed Purdue as a difficult individual with whom to work. This biography incorporates research efforts by previous writers with facts gleaned from newspaper coverage, official documents, and a few rare samples of Mr. Purdue's letters. In this way, a complete picture of the man and myth is generated.

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. 1802–1837

2. 1837–1855

3. 1855–1865

4. 1865–1876

5. Purdue University

6. Funeral and Estate

7. Since John Purdue

Appendix

References

Index

Sujets

• Midwest
• Histoire
• State
• United States
• History
• Local

Informations

• Publié par: Purdue University Press
• Date de parution: 15 juillet 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781557539267
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Midas of the Wabash
The Midas of the Wabash
A Biography of John Purdue
Robert C. Kriebel
Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright © 2002 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kriebel, Robert C., 1932–
The Midas of the Wabash: A Biography of John Purdue/Robert C. Kriebel.
    p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55753-287-7
1. Purdue, John, 1802–1876. 2. Purdue University—Benefactors—Biography. I. Title. LD4672.65.P87 K75 2002 378.772’95—dc21 2002068091
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 1802–1837
2 1837–1855
3 1855–1865
4 1865–1876
5 Purdue University
6 Funeral and Estate
7 Since John Purdue
Appendix
References
Index
Preface
This will be brief and to the point.
A four-story, nineteenth-century brick building that is still standing in downtown Lafayette once housed the Lafayette Milling Company, millers of flour. More recent owners rehabbed it for offices. Every noon, for a couple of years, its basement filled with the chat and clatter of lunch-hour patrons of The Milling Company restaurant, later renamed Hunters Pub.
There, one noon in early 2000, a county judge, a writer, a retired Purdue University vice president, and an advertising executive munched on chips and sipped iced tea while waiting at their table for the sandwiches to arrive.
“What can you tell me about John Purdue?” the writer asked the vice president.
“Not much,” the vice president said, “except that he must have been an s.o.b. to work with!”
As it happens, that analysis was not completely wrong or right, as this volume will show.
The vice president didn’t need to know better; he only needed to know more.
-Robert C. Kriebel  Lafayette, Indiana
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to recognize and thank the following persons, listed alphabetically, for their assistance in providing and/or interpreting facts about John Purdue’s life story:
Jane Murrow Atherstone, Hemet, California; Michael Atwell, Assistant Director, Purdue University Galleries; Roseanna Behringer, Office of the Purdue University Trustees; Jay Cooperider, former Editor, Office of University Publications, Purdue University; Dennis Dunn, publisher and businessman, West Lafayette, Indiana; George L. Hanna, attorney, Lafayette, Indiana; Mark Jaeger, staff member, Special Collections and Archives, Purdue University; Marilyn S. Mann, Otterbein, Indiana; Katherine M. Markee, Associate Professor of Library Science, Interim Head Special Collections and Archives, Purdue University; Ruth Martin, Wingate, Indiana; Doris A. Pearson, Secretary to the Purdue University Board of Trustees; Pam Pendleton, Lafayette, Indiana; Walter Salts, West Lebanon, Indiana; Paul Schueler, Curator of Collections, Tippecanoe County Historical Association; Mike Schuh, professional abstractor, Lafayette, Indiana; Paula Alexander Woods, author, lecturer, Tippecanoe County historian, West Lafayette, Indiana.
— 1 —
1802–1837
I n all their books, articles, and unpublished studies, historians packing assorted credentials have left a blurred and faulty account of all the good works and talent of the Indiana businessman John Purdue (1802–1876).
Sure, the stunning beneficence that led to the opening of Purdue University in 1874, the act of giving, which alone raised John Purdue to hall-of-fame status, has been rehashed again and again. But in truth Citizen Purdue, who was a merchant of wealth, also should be hailed for forty years of canny investing, fair play, and boundless generosity. He should be known as a plodding, selfmade man who had acquired intelligence and taste. He also should be remembered as a visionary with diverse interests and admired as a chap for whom honesty became a passion. He should be exalted as a role model for any who master business and finance then give of their gains to help their fellow citizen.
In their odd track record of selective worship and broad neglect, past writers also have left a rocky trail of facts, even on such foundation stones as the date and place of John Purdue’s birth. For example:

• Ella Wallace, writing in a Lafayette newspaper eleven years after Purdue’s death, reported that his life began on “Oct. 3, 1801, near Shepardsburg, Pennsylvania.” Wrong date, wrong year, no Shepardsburg.
• Purdue University historians William Hepburn and Louis Martin Sears in a 1925 book opted for “Oct. 31, 1802, in Huntington County, Pennsylvania.” Right date, right year, but no Huntington County. (It’s spelled Huntingdon.)
• University staffers Thomas R. Johnston and Helen Hand in a book in 1940 chose “Oct. 31, 1802, at Germany near Shepardsburg, Huntington County, Pennsylvania.”
It remained for Robert W. Topping, in his 1988 university history A Century and Beyond, to hit the bull’s eyes. John Purdue had been born October 31, 1802, the only son among the nine children of Charles and Mary Short Purdue. Their eighteen-by-twenty-four foot log cabin home stood on the eastern lower slope of Blacklog Mountain, in the Alleghenies, in Germany valley, near Shirleysburg, in Shirley Township of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. 1
Charles Purdue could have reached the valley from Maryland, Virginia, England, or even Scotland. The name Purdue, of vague and arguable origin, could be deciphered in any of a dozen ways in handwritten public ledgers that predate the typewriter. A grandnephew of John Purdue, C. P. Thompson, in a monograph sent to Purdue University probably in the late 1920s, wrote with misleading certainty that:
John Purdue’s father … came from Scotland to Pennsylvania. It is said there were quite a colony of the Purdue family in Scotland, and that they originally were from France but had intermarried with the Scotch.
But that’s only Thompson’s story. Researcher Robert Hartley Perdue found in 1934 that the 1790 census of Pennsylvania listed Peter Perdow and John Purdon in Philadelphia; William and John Purdy in Montgomery County; Silas Purdy in Northampton County; Leonard Purdy in Chester County; Robert Purdy in Lancaster County; James Purday, Patt Purday, and Archibald Purday in York County; and William Purday and John Purday in Mifflin County.
Ten years later the Pennsylvania census registered a certain Charles Purdin in Shirley Township, Huntingdon County, as head of a family of one adult male, one adult female, and three females under age ten. The next census, that of 1810, listed a C. Purdoo in Shirley Township, head of a family of two females between sixteen and twenty-six; one male under ten; four females under ten. “Charles Purdin and C. Purdoo were apparently the same person and undoubtedly the father of John Purdue,” Robert Hartley Perdue concluded. He further searched Pennsylvania probate court, as well as tax and deed books, but found no mention of Charles Purdue with that spelling; unless, of course, Charles Purdue was camouflaged in other bewildering public records scribbled in handwriting as Perdue, Perdew, Pardew, Perdiu, Pardue, Pedeu, Peden, Pedan, Padan, Pediau, and Podau.
“The family is known to have had migratory tendencies as far back as the bellfounders in England in the early 1600s,” Robert Hartley Perdue wrote, stating no source. 2
Hepburn, in 1962 when he was Purdue University’s librarian emeritus, compiled a twelve-page essay on “The Name of Purdue.” In it he reported that Purdue is considered to be English, traceable in England to the late 1500s. But inconclusive theories about its origin also hold that the name derives from the Latin per deum or from the French par Dieu or perdu. “The only safe conclusion one may draw about the ancestry,” Topping wrote with admirable frankness, “is that it seems rife with confusion.”
Other details about the Charles Purdue family of Shirley Township, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, are only slightly more accessible and reliable, and they often are contradictory. By some accounts, the family seems to have had to struggle to stay well fed and comfortably housed, and the parents accumulated only meager savings. Charles Purdue is said to have worked at several jobs. These likely involved sharecropping or farming on rented land in a region that produced wheat, oats, corn, buckwheat, barley, and maple syrup. Some say Charles also fired charcoal furnaces at an iron smelter. The latter is especially intriguing if, in fact, he descended from English bellfounders.
Elmer E. Anderson, a distant relative in a short John Purdue biography compiled in about 1929, described Charles Purdue as a “poor, hard-working, honest pioneer” who “lived in a log cabin … with a family of eight [sic] children.” Robert Hartley Perdue pictured Charles Purdue as a “poor, hard-working, honest pioneer. Times were hard and [the young son] John was early on the list of ‘hired help.’ At age eight he was first sent to a country school where he at once evinced his natural taste for intellectual culture.”
But in 1953 George Wesley Munro, a retired Purdue University electrical engineering professor who compiled John Purdue lore as a retirement hobby, sketched a far different picture: “The family lived [near rivers] which furnished power to make iron, a chore not yet taken over by the steam engine. [Charles Purdue] was gainfully engaged in the iron-making pro