Henry Morrison Flagler Biography
Henry Morrison Flagler was born on January 2, 1830 in Hopewell, New York, to Reverend Isaac and Elizabeth Caldwell Harkness Flagler. At the age of 14, after completing the eighth grade, Flagler moved to Bellevue, Ohio where he found work with his cousins in the grain store of L.G. Harkness and Company, at a salary of $5 per month plus room and board.
Eventually, Flagler became a partner in the newly organized D. M. Harkness and Company with his half-brother, Dan Harkness in 1852. The following year, on November 9, he married Mary Harkness. On March 18, 1855, their first child, Jennie Louise, was born. Jennie Louise lived until 1889, when at the age of 34, she died following complications from child birth. A second child, Carrie, was born on June 18, 1858, but she only survived three years later. On December 2, 1870, the Flagler’s last child and only son, Harry Harkness Flagler, was born.
In 1862, Flagler founded the Flagler and York Salt Company, a salt mining and production business in Saginaw, Michigan, with his brother-in-law Barney York. However, by 1865, the end of the Civil War resulted in a drop in the demand for salt and the Flagler and York Salt Company collapsed. Heavily in debt, Flagler returned to Bellevue, Ohio - his initial investment of $50,000 and an additional $50,000 he had borrowed from his father-in-law and Dan Harkness were lost, though he eventually managed to repay all of the money borrowed.
The next year Flagler re-entered the grain business as a commission merchant. During this time, Flagler became acquainted with John D. Rockefeller, who worked as a commission agent with Hewitt and Tuttle for the Harkness Grain Company. During the mid 1860s, Cleveland was the center of the oil refining industry in America. Rockefeller decided to leave the grain business to start his own oil refinery and in 1867, needing capital for his new venture, he approached Henry Flagler. Flagler secured $100,000 from a relative on the condition that he be made a partner and John D. Rockefeller, Samuel Andrews and Henry Flagler formed a partnership with Henry Flagler receiving 25% of the shares.
On January 10, 1870, the Rockefeller, Andrews and Flagler partnership was organized as a joint-stock corporation named Standard Oil and in just two years Standard Oil became the leader in the American oil refining industry, producing 10,000 barrels per day. Five years later Standard Oil moved its headquarters to New York City, and the Flaglers moved to their new home at 509 Fifth Avenue in New York City.
In 1878, Flagler's wife, who had always struggled with health problems, was very ill. On the advice from Mary's physician, she and Flagler visited Jacksonville, Florida for the winter. Unfortunately, Mary did not recover. She died on May 18, 1881 at age 47, leaving Henry Flagler with a young son to raise alone. Two years after Mary's death, Flagler married Ida Alice Shourds. Soon after their wedding, the couple traveled to St. Augustine, Florida where they found the city charming, but the hotel facilities and transportation systems inadequate. However, Flagler believed that Florida had the potential to attract large numbers of tourists. Though Flagler remained on the Board of Directors of Standard Oil, he gave up his day-to-day involvement in the corporation in order to pursue his interests in Florida. He returned to St. Augustine in 1885 and began construction on the 540-room Hotel Ponce de Leon. Realizing the importance of a transportation system to support his hotel ventures, Flagler purchased the Jacksonville, St. Augustine & Halifax Railroad, the first railroad in what would eventually become the Florida East Coast Railway.
The Hotel Ponce de Leon opened January 10, 1888 and was an instant success. Two years later, Flagler expanded his Florida holdings, building a railroad bridge across the St. Johns River to gain access to the southern half of the state, and purchasing the Hotel Ormond, just north of Daytona.
By 1894 Flagler built the Hotel Royal Poinciana on the shores of Lake Worth in Palm Beach and extended his railroad further south to West Palm Beach. The Hotel Royal Poinciana soon became the largest resort in the world. In 1896 Flagler added the Palm Beach Inn (later renamed The Breakers in 1901) overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Palm Beach.
Probably in the late 1880s, Henry Flagler first began to think about ultimately extending his railroad and hotel system all the way to Key West. However, the timimng of his plans his plans were accelerated somewhat when the severe freezes of 1894 and 1895 affected the area around Palm Beach but not the settlement known today as Miami, which was about sixty miles further south. Julia Tuttle, the Florida East Coast Canal and Transportation Company, and the Boston and Florida Atlantic Coast Land Company offered Flagler land to bring his railroad further south, which he set about doing immediately.
Flagler's railroad, renamed the Florida East Coast Railway in 1895, reached Biscayne Bay by 1896. Flagler dredged a channel, built streets, instituted the first water and power systems, and financed the town's first newspaper, the Metropolis. When the town incorporated in 1896, its citizens wanted to honor the man responsible for its growth by naming it "Flagler." He declined the honor, persuading them instead to use an old Indian name for the river the settlement was built around, Miami or Miama. A year later, Flagler opened the exclusive Hotel Royal Palm in Miami.
Flagler lost his second wife, Ida Alice, to mental illness, which she suffered from for many years, finally being institutionalized in 1895. On August 24, 1901, Flagler married for the third time, to Mary Lily Kenan. The couple soon moved into their Palm Beach estate, Whitehall. Built as a wedding present to Mary Lily in 1902 and designed by architects John Carrere and Thomas Hastings, Whitehall was a winter home of more than 100,000 square feet and 75-plus rooms. It was described in 1902 by the New York Herald as, “... more wonderful than any palace in Europe, grander and more magnificent than any other private dwelling in the world.”
Since the late 1880s, Henry Flagler began considering ultimately extending his railroad and hotel system all the way to Key West. In 1905, when the United States took on the Panama Canal Project, Flagler decided that it was finally time to extend the railroad to Key West, and accelerated his plans to build an additional 156 miles of track, mostly over water, which he named the Over-Sea Railroad. At the time, Key West was one of Florida's most populated city, and would become the United States' closest, deep water port to the Panama Canal. Flagler hoped to take advantage of additional trade with Cuba and Latin America as well as the increased trade with the West that the Panama Canal would bring. In 1912, the Florida Over-Sea Railroad to Key West, the most ambitious engineering feat ever undertaken by a private citizen, was completed and Flagler arrived in Key West on January 22nd to be greeted by thousands of grateful citizens and several days of celebration.
A little more than a year later, Flagler fell down a flight of stairs at Whitehall. He never recovered from the fall, and died of his injuries on May 20, 1913, at 83 years of age. He was laid to rest in St. Augustine alongside his daughter, Jennie Louise and first wife, Mary Harkness.
Following an amazing career as a founding partner and “the brains” behind Standard Oil, which was the largest and most profitable corporation in the world for more than a century, Henry Flagler invested himself in the development of Florida. During the next quarter century, he literally invented modern Florida. The transportation infrastructure and the tourism and agricultural industries he established remain, even today, the very foundation of Florida’s economy, while the building of the Over-Sea Railroad remains the most ambitious engineering feat ever undertaken by a private citizen.