 Let us begin. So good afternoon and welcome. I'm Pat Parazzini, Director of Alumni Engagement Regional Chapter Development for Fairfield University, and I am so thrilled to be able to bring this presentation to you via Zoom. In my position here at the university, I have the pleasure of working with alumni from across the country, coordinating with chapter leaders and volunteers to host events that keep alumni connected to and engage with Fairfield. We have nine regional chapters from Boston to Washington DC alphabetically and from Boston to San Francisco geographically. So I hope to meet you all in person and event your local area and the very near future. Thank you. I know you've all been on a lot of Zoom presentations and right now somebody is mowing the lawn next to me. Before I introduce our esteemed guest presenter, I would like to go over the format of the lecture today. There's a PowerPoint slide presentation, and our guest lecturer will be speaking to those slides. We will break for questions, so please type your questions via the chat function on the Zoom, and I will relay them to our guest. And please make sure your video and audio capabilities are turned off. Back by popular demand, I have the great honor and pleasure of introducing Dr. Kurt Schlichting. Dr. Schlichting, Fairfield University is the E. Gerald Corgan 63 chair in humanities and social sciences emeritus. At Fairfield, Dr. Schlichting served as the dean and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Waterfront Manhattan from Henry Hudson to the High Line 2018 is his third book for Johns Hopkins University Press. Grand Central Terminal 2002 won the Association of American Publishers Award for Best Professional Scholarly Book in Architecture and Urbanism. Grand Central was the basis for the 2008 PBS American Experience, Grand Central, and award-winning documentary. Dr. Schlichting was the academic advisor and appeared on screen as well. His academic research is at the cutting edge of the field of Historic Geographical Information System, HGIS, which he used to study the Irish in New York and Newport, Rhode Island. In the spring of 2017, he was a visiting fellow at the Moore Research Institute, National University, Ireland, Galway. Currently, he's the co-director of the NYH GIS, New York Historic GIS, centered at the New York Public Library and is an advisor to the Library's Center for Digital Humanities. He remains active at Fairfield University, serving as co-principal investigator for the Center for Social Action's major project to conduct a needs assessment for the United Way of Grants, Connecticut. Kurt and I have now partnered four times on events to actual tours of Grand Central Station and one of the New York City War Front, and then our inaugural online offering and these events are always incredibly well attended. I give you all Dr. Kurt. Well, listen, I want to say hi to everyone who's here, who's here remotely. Yes, we're all getting used to this world of Zoom and it may be a new reality for lots of us for the foreseeable future. Well, that was very nice of Pat to give me that biography and as Pat mentioned, my most recent book is Waterfront Manhattan and that was published in 2018. But what I'd like to do is I'd like to talk to you about Fairfield University as a gilded age tale. And it's about the founding of the university and I want to set that into a particular framework. So here are the major questions. What did the Industrial Revolution change American society? I mean, we take it for granted and now we are some arguing the post industrial revolution or in the computer revolution. And then why do we, as a particular era, it's at the from the end of the Civil War in 1865 to the Great Depression. And that's called the gilded age. Well, it turns out that Mark Twain and Dudley Warner, a partner of his published a book, The Gilded Age, A Tale of Today in 1873. It's not what most people think of when they pick up a twain book, and it's certainly not his most famous books, but he really did set the tone or the theme of a gilded age. And is Fairfield University part of that particular tale? And we'll, we'll, we'll make our way through that. This is also a story of New York and in the, in the waterfront Manhattan book I published, I looked at the history of New York City and the use of the harbor. And it's really one of the greatest natural harbors in the world. If you've had a chance to visit New York recently, there's been a rebirth of the waterfront. You can go to the Brooklyn Bridge. You can go to the various parks and sit and look. And at one time this was among the most important harbors in the world. And it made New York City. New York City's origins are with the trade of the United States, with other countries through the eventually through the Panama Canal, and also the obviously the other canals that were built all through New York State, the Erie Canal being the most important one. And it's a, it's, it's a harbor that's well suited for the, for the role that took on. And one important part of New York Harbor is that at low tide. There is deep water right up to the, to the waterfront, especially on the East River. And that's an enormous advantage for particular port. I do like that particular chart I have up where I'm from a British naval chart that's at the New York Public Library. And New York prospers, New York prospers throughout the, the 19th century. And by the 1880s, it's the largest city in the United States. There's over a million people on Manhattan Island. And I got to remember, and I put a reminder there that the city of New York is simply Manhattan Island until 1899, when the other outer boroughs are added. And this is this particular map that you see is called a bird's eye view, so that there were photographers in the 18th century 19th century, who thought of presenting a city through the eyes of a bird. And by 1880, this was by far the busiest port in the United States. It was the second busiest port in the world next to London. It also was the center of the United States financial system. The system that finances our industrial revolution. And it's a leading manufacturing center. We're familiar with Wall Street, but New York had thousands and thousands of factories producing all sorts of goods that were shipped all over the world. And it was the primary port where during the century of immigration from 1824 to 1924. That's the sent the century of immigration. Millions of people came to the United States from all over the world, especially from Europe at that at this particular time. And New York was the primary port they entered. And they entered eventually through Castle Garden, which is in a battery park that you can see there on that particular map. And for example, the United States archives has a database which I've been working with. It's called the Irish famine database. And it's between 1846 and 1851, and there are 604,000 records of ships coming to the United States, coming to the port of New York, and the Irish are flooding into New York City. And by certainly the 1880s, there were, there was, there were more Irish Americans living in Manhattan Island than there were in Dublin. So that it's, it's important to think about this ascendancy of New York, and it will play an important, it plays a center role in the Gilded Age. Now, the, the most important product of the American economy for the entire 19th century was cotton. And that cotton was a result of slavery. And we can, we can never forget how important cotton was to the American economy and the British economy. Ironically, what happens in England is the English Industrial Revolution is a revolution in the production of cloth in particular cotton. So throughout the 19th, 19th century cotton was shipped between the United States and Liverpool. And then that, and then Liverpool sends back gold and silver, and that funds the American Industrial Revolution. And by the way, this is the cotton triangle. I remember this in high school. You would have a textbook on American history and they'd have a picture of the cotton triangle, the triangle between New York, Liverpool and the American South. And ironically, much of the cotton was first shipped to New York, not directly from Charleston or Savannah or New Orleans to Liverpool, but rather first up the coast to New York on smaller sailing ships. It was unloaded and then loaded it onto much larger sailing ships that went directly between New York and Liverpool. And New York City, the financial industry, the shipping industry, the insurance industry funded the cotton, funded the slave plantations in the American South. And you can see on that chart on the left, that cotton was the single most important export for the American economy for a century. Well, then what begins later in the United States than in England. Sometimes we think the Industrial Revolution is the American Industrial Revolution, but the British Industrial Revolution began at the end of the 18th century, so that we have to remember that. But during this period called the Age of Energy, from 1865 to 1915, that period of 50 years, the United States industrializes its textiles, its steel, its oil, its railroads, its electricity. And here are some of the central figures in that Industrial Revolution, and I'm sure many of you can name who these particular photos are of. And so I'll put their names up. Thomas Edison and Electricity, Andrew Carnegie Steel, John D. Rockefeller, oil, J.P. Morgan financing all of that, and then Cornelius Vanderbilt is going to build the New York Central Railroad. So these are some of the titans of the American Industrial Revolution and their characters larger than life. And they're incredibly wealthy. They're incredibly wealthy. It's the equivalent of the wealth that was generated by the computer revolution in Silicon Valley. The wealth is on the same scale. And of course, part of this is this railroad age. So look at these two maps of the United States, 1860 and 1890. That's just 30 years. And you can see on the left, there were railroads. They were primarily in the American North and a little bit out to the Midwest, but not in the American South. And then 30 years later, you have a railroad system that covers the entire United States. We've already built the transcontinental railroad. We've tied all the states together. And think about this transition. We had a colonial world, the world of the American Revolution. In 1790, these 13 colonies, the 13 states were overwhelmingly rural and agricultural. There was practically no industry at all. And then you move to an industrial world, which is urban. It's filled with immigrants. They're laboring in the factories, in the coal mines and the finance. And this produces enormous wealth, wealth on an unimaginable scale. And that wealth is going to fuel the gilded age. We live in Newport Rhode Island and go up Bellevue Avenue and you see mansion after mansion that was built on the wealth of the American Industrial Revolution. Well, Cornelius Vanderbilt is certainly a character in this story. There's a book by Tyler Anbinder called The First Tycoon. And he starts out in an agricultural America. He's born in Staten Island on a farm. His ancestors came from the Netherlands. It was a poor farm. And he borrows some money and he starts a ferry between Staten Island and Manhattan. And that's that particular type of ship you can see. It was called a pari auger. And he makes a fortune. He starts in steamships. And then when he's quite old, he starts in the railroads. And he builds up a railroad empire in a very short period of time. He's now the richest man in the United States. And there's a character chair on the on the left. He has 11 children. And he has two boys, nine girls, two boys, William Henry and Cornelius. But he's America's first tycoon. And he'll play a role. He played his family will play a major role in the gilded age. Well, they build a dynasty, a railroad dynasty from New York to the Midwest, and it's the New York Central Railroad. It's the second largest railroad in the United States, which makes it the second largest railroad in the world. It's the third largest company in the United States. The Pennsylvania Railroad is larger and eventually JP Morgan organizes US Steel and US Steel is the largest company in the United States. But there's a dynasty here. When the Commodore dies, his one son William Henry inherits the greatest fortune in the United States to date in 1855, 1885. It's the third generations. It's the third generation that really are in the center of the gilded age and you can see William Henry's family. There's Cornelius, the second William K. And those two are certainly well known, less well known are Frederick Vanderbilt and George. And then there are two sisters, Florence and Lila. And in Newport, Cornelius, William K. and Frederick build these build mansions and we'll look at some of them as we move forward. George Vanderbilt goes down to Asheville, North Carolina, out in the out in the Great Smoky Mountains, and he builds the largest home ever constructed in the United States, and he calls it built more. And it's now, it's still privately owned, but you can go to build more and it's part of the Great Smoky National Park, which Vanderbilt bought, and then donated eventually the family donated it to the National Park Service. Florence has a home in Newport and Lila marries William Webb, and if any of you know upstate Vermont, just south of Burlington is shell born, and you can go to the mansion and grounds that they built on on on Lake Champlain. And of course at the center of this and at the center of New York is Grand Central which I wrote about, and the Commodore built a depot in 1871 on 42nd Street which you can see on the left. And then eventually that was replaced in 1913 by the Grand Central Terminal that we see today. And I'd like you to just take a note there that the architect is a man by the name of Whitney Warren, and we'll come back to Whitney Warren. Well, another family stands certainly as as grandiose as the Vanderbilt's were so were the Rockefellers, and we're familiar with John D Rockefeller. He goes to Cleveland. At the beginning of the, the petroleum revolution in the United States, you can see on the left hand side the first oil well this drilled in 1859. The ref, the oil is not is not processed where it's drilled. It's shipped to Cleveland. And by 1889 standard oil has a giant oil refinery in Cleveland. And remember that the first product is not gasoline. It's not heating oil. It's kerosene. It's a distillate of the oil that was pumped out of the ground in Pennsylvania. And I'm sure if you were to talk to many of your grandparents or they might remember the kerosene lantern, or having kerosene heat their home, but not gasoline. And standard oil and john D Rockefeller. Rockefeller is one of many, many refiner refining companies, the standard oil company, but john D Rockefeller pursued the other companies, and he bought them out. He would have partners in his business. They would bring capital and they'd buy some of their competition. And then standard oil would prosper and they'd buy more of their competition. And eventually you can see they're in the bottom in the middle that they they move to New York and set up a finery, a refinery on Newton Creek Newton Creek separates Queens and Brooklyn. And that was a prosperous refinery for standard oil because they could ship their kerosene and later gasoline directly from New York Harbor to the rest of the world. And on the right you can see a kerosene delivery wagon. These were ubiquitous all through America. If you live in even a small town. Standard oil would ship in their products by by rail. They'd load it on these carrot these little wagons and they distribute it to people for their homes or businesses. Well, the Rockefeller dynasty is if anything, it's bigger than the Vanderbilt dynasty. And the argument is that John D. Rockefeller had been was the richest man in American history. He had more wealth from standard oil than Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had from the companies that they started. And in 1937, the estimate is that that's worth $340 billion. Now, he has a partner William Rockefeller, his brother. So I'd like you to keep his name in mind. And then Rockefeller John D. has just one son, John D. Rockefeller Jr. A third generation and you can see them. Abby John D. Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York. Winthrop was governor of Arkansas. Lawrence Rockefeller Rockefeller was a philanthropist. David Rockefeller was president of Chemical Bank in New York. And there's a connection here. There's a Fairfield University connection. And it's the Jennings family. Well, what happens is, as Rockefeller and his partners buy up more and more of their, the competition, they set up a trust, and they hold the shares in standard oil and many of the companies that they bought, they hold them in the stand, what's called the standard oil trust. In 1870 is when Rockefeller decides to incorporate. It was a partnership. He had a part of William was a partner. Harkness was a partner, but they needed to have a corporation. And so they decided to incorporate so they must have sat around the table in their offices in Cleveland, and they decided that they would incorporate with 10,000 shares. That would be the, the wealth of the, the shares of the original shares of standard oil trust. And the incorporation included 10,000 shares. And you can see that John D. had the largest share. Harkness and a partner of his an early partner and his brother William had about 1300 shares each. And then the last 1000 shares went to Oliver Burr Jennings of the Jennings family of Fairfield. And sometimes when I would say he had one 10th of the shares, you know, a student would raise their hand and say, Well, you know, geez, well, what's 1000 shares. Well, let me tell you something. If any of you can imagine owning the first one 10th of Microsoft, the original shares when Bill Gates and his partner sat around the table and incorporated. And if you had one 10th of that the original shares which have gone up in value and then split and gone up in value and split and gone up in value and split, you would be truly wealthy today. And you'd be very generous to Fairfield. Well, the standard oil trust is not without controversy. It was, it was a monopolistic enterprise that that Rockefeller built. His argument would be that he brought kerosene and later on oil and gasoline to the American public at the lowest possible cost. But that there was the controversy that the trust eliminated any real competition. By the 1870 standard oil controlled 90% of the drilling, refining and sales of oil in the country. And between 1882 and 1901. There's going to be large lawsuits filed against the standard oil trust. They gave out dividends of $551 million to the original share, mostly to the original shareholders. But some stocks slits that had occurred by that time and that's basically $15 billion. So think of that as the wealth generated by standard oil, which is going to go to the shareholders, the original shareholders and others that followed but it isn't a large group of people. By the way, in 1911, the antitrust suits against standard oil reach the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court rules that it is a monopoly. It violates the, the anti monopoly laws of our country. And they, it's ordered to split up. Well, the Rockefellers company, New York, down a 26 Broadway is the standard oil headquarters, which by the way, years ago, the offices of quick and Riley, quick families company where it in the old, what had been the standard oil headquarters. And then of course, later on the John D Rockefeller Jr. builds Rockefeller Center so the Rockefellers are drawn to New York, all of that, the wealthiest Americans of this, this of our of our industrial revolution are drawn to New York are drawn to New York. Well, the gilded age. The gilded age changes America. And it's all the one thing it does is it drives an arch architectural style. And here's my question. Why does the gilded age turn to Greece and Rome, and the French and English aristocratic worlds for its architectural inspiration. And this is particularly obvious in New York, Newport, and eventually in Fairfield. So we want to think about that the gilded age. Well, if we contrast that with the colonial world that I mentioned to you at the beginning. In Fairfield, you can go to the David Ogden house which was built in 1750. If you live up and along the coast and Connecticut you could visit East Lime where there's some very, very old colonial homes. And of course here in Newport there's a rich trove of colonial homes that survived. Well, these are modest places to live aren't they. This, by the way, these would have been the homes of wealthy wealthy people in the 18th century to be able to afford clapboard was expensive. And you had a particular certainly through New England, you had a particular way of organizing the local architecture around a green in the center of town, where the wealthiest people in town would would build homes that were elegant, but not ostentatious. And an example would be the congregational church the first church up on Greenfield Hill. That has a particular style that's that's modest. And the Quaker meeting house here in Newport, Rhode Island the Quakers had no decorations if you go into this particular building where they often have lectures and you go down you have a wooden church pews, and you have beams. There's no interior decoration. The Quakers were modest people, even the Quakers who had earned a great deal of money or relative had wealth. They were modest. So that was the particular style that we begin the American experience with. And then we get this. And here are the homes of Cornelius Vanderbilt the second, the eldest son of William of William Henry Vanderbilt. He builds this monstrous home on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street it fills the entire block, which became the bond with teller bond with teller occupied the skyscraper the lower parts of the skyscraper that replace that. And then here in Newport, they built the breakers and the breakers still exist. And of course it's a big tourist attraction you can walk through the breakers. And notice that the architect of these two buildings was a man by the name of Richard Morris Hunt. But my question to you all is where does the style come from. This is not, you know, some somehow a giant log cabin. Or it's not in a large colonial home. There's a complete break with the past. There's a complete break with colonial America. And you have this particular style and this is an aristocratic style that is imported from Europe. And how well Richard Morris Hunt is the first American to go to a French school of architecture called the Echo de Beaux Arts. And Whitney Warren did as well as you can see on the right hand side. And this was a school that the French government had established to train architects for the French monarchy and for the French aristocrats. And they were very good at it. They borrowed from Greece and Rome, and they translated it into the breakers. And it was a very different school that they went to. They didn't really go to lectures or not, but it's a fascinating story. And Richard Morris Hunt goes there. He's the first American to attend. And he becomes he starts the American Association of Architecture. And then later on Whitney Warren the architect of Grand Central studies at the Echo de Beaux Arts. And here's a picture of the building where the Echo was on the left bank. It was established in 1671, repressed during the French Revolution, but then restored in the reign of Louis the 18th. It's it, it returns. And it's a particular style. And it comes to America and it certainly comes to New York. And here's two perfect examples. One is Grand Central and Terminal City that followed the Grand Central and went up. And the intention was to go up Park Avenue to the north of Grand Central, which it did. And you can see the Biltmore Hotel. What was the Biltmore Hotel next door to Grand Central on the left hand side and that's where they're building the big tower today. That's the monstrous modern building next to Grand Central. And then on the left, you have the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, the New York Public Library's research library. And both of those buildings were built simultaneously in New York during the Gilded Age. And they both draw on historic precedents from Greece and Rome. When I bring my students to the New York Public Library, we stand in between, in the middle, right between the two lines, and the building is exactly the same distance to the left and right. It's completely symmetrical. That's the, that's the, that's the Boards. That was Greece and Rome. And this was a style that certainly attracted many New Yorkers. And then, later on, William Richard Morris Hunt goes to Newport. And for William K. Vanderbilt builds the marble house. And the marble house is an exact, almost an exact duplicate of the Petit Trayon at Versailles. So if you were to be visiting Paris and you take the train out to Versailles and you go to the palace, you can find the Grand Trayon. And that's a replicate. And then he builds this dining room with gold gild. That's what it is. And this is, again, this is an extravagant view of architecture for the Gilded Age. It has no connection at all with the American architectural past, which by the way, the Guild, many of the Gilded Age architects could also do the shingle style buildings that you can see in Newport, and they do harken back to our colonial past, but not, not, not for the Gilded Age and not for this particular family. And of course, there's another part to this, and it's the upstairs and downstairs and back stairs. Many of the immigrant women who came to America during the Gilded Age from Ireland and Sweden and France, they worked in the mansions. Because the mansions mimicked the aristocratic world of France, and particularly England. And I'm sure many, many of you watched upstairs, downstairs, and it really is the upstairs, downstairs and the back stairs. So if you look at the 1910 census for Marble House, you can see that the chambermaids, the laundress, the kitchen girl, they were Irish. And the footmen and the butler, the butler was from England, ran, the butler really ran Marble House. And then in the back stairs were the scullery made and the, the laundress and the people who supported the entire, the entire edifice. And this was true of all of the mansions in Newport, there's a large Irish American community in Newport today. And their descendants of many of them are descendants of the people who came to work as servants here in. And of course that's the Fairfield story, isn't it the first students who come to Fairfield, come from immigrant backgrounds, including my own. And the Gilded Age was a social, there was a, there was a, the Gilded Age was a social life that you saw portrayed in Downton Abbey. Well, in March of William K Vanderbilt on March, in March of 1883 had a ball and was called the Ball of the Decade. And it's a way of, by the way, for the Vanderbilt's to break into the society that existed, which was of primarily Dutch and English descent. And they weren't part of it, certainly William, certainly Commodore Vanderbilt was not part of it. William K wanted to be, and certainly his wife Alva wanted to be. And look, they're going to this fancy dress ball, and they're dressing up like English aristocrats. William Cage is Louis the 16th, what happened to Louis the 16th? Ask yourself that. Got his head cut off. And Marie Antoinette was, they were beheaded in the plastic concord in the middle of Paris. And then later on, they're mimicked at a fancy dress ball in the, at the home that William K had on Fifth Avenue at 52nd Street, just down the street from his brother Cornelius II and Whitney Warren attended. Whitney Warren was the architect of Grand Central. He was also in that social mayor in that Gilded Age. And then we want to take this one step further. The, not only did the Gilded Age mimic or model itself in New York particularly and in Newport and other social venues on the aristocrats and of France and England. But what they also did, what these very, very wealthy industrialists did is they married their daughters off to the, and sometimes penniless English and French aristocrats. And the, the example of that is Consuelo Vanderbilt, that's William K and his wife Alva's daughter. And Alva arranges her, arranges her marriage to the Duke of Marlboro in 1895. Now the Duke of Marlboro, the family name is Churchill was established by the British government in 1702. And to reward John Churchill for his gallantry as a general in the English armies fighting the, fighting the French. And they, the English crown built Blenheim Palace for the Duke of Marlboro. Blenheim Palace is outside of Oxford. And knows the name Churchill. Well, Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace. His mother was also a American heiress. Her name was Jenny Jerome. And she married a Churchill. The problem was she didn't marry the Duke of Marlboro. She married the then Duke of Marlboro's brother. Who wasn't the Duke. And therefore Winston Churchill for all his life was a commoner and not a British aristocrat. William K provided Consuelo with a dowry of $2.5 million you know there's there's stories written that that provided the toilets in Blenheim Palace or the electricity. You can pick whatever that's the story that's often told. She was divorced in 1921. And by the way, she returned to America. She moved in in the summertime she went back to the marble house with her mother Alva, and they were suffer jets. So they she spends a large part of her time effort and money into trying to secure the vote for women. She was a leading suffer jet. Well, I think it's time for some questions here. And then we're going to take the story to Fairfield. Thank you Kurt. Does anybody have any questions for Dr selecting. And there'll be time at the end as well. Kurt I think we can continue on. Okay. All right. Well, I'm just going to go back to, I like the pictures of Blenheim Palace by the way I've visited Oxford a couple of times and once in the tour of the of the grounds I didn't go into the palace itself. It's still owned by the Churchill family by the way. And if you want a fancy wedding, you can you can you can rent Blenheim Palace. I want to now return to or turn to the Jennings family. In Fairfield there's Jennings Road there's Jennings Beach so we're familiar with that particular name. And the Jennings family goes back to the almost the founding of Fairfield. For example, the 1790 census of the first census, we ever did. There are 25 families with Jennings as their last name in Fairfield. And we saw that this name before Oliver Burr Jennings. He was born in Fairfield. He moves to New York he's ambitious he wants to leave Fairfield small town and still rural Connecticut so we moves to New York and enters what was called the dry goods business, providing selling clothing and and and accessories. And then in the gold rush he moves to San Francisco he moves to San Francisco in 1949, but he's not he doesn't go to the gold fields he's not going to get a pick and shovel and go out to try to find gold. What he does is he and a partner set up a business to to ship goods dry goods. He buys that the miners needed the gold the gold miners to San Francisco and then they sold them. And he made a very handsome small fortune doing that. He comes back to New York, and then he moves to Cleveland. And he meets Esther Goodsell. And she her she's the sister of the wife of William Rockefeller. And Jennings goes into business with the Rockefeller brothers. And you can see where this particular story is is going. And he has five children, Annie B Walter Helen Emma and Oliver G. In 1893 in New York. Now you can see on the right, by this time the Jennings family, because some of the stock had of Oliver Burr had been passed to others in the family, and more stock had been created. In 1892 they owned 3.4% of the standard oil trust. In that long drawn out lawsuit that eventually ends up in the Supreme Court documents financial documents, especially in the Ohio suit became public information. And between 1882 and 1901 the trust distributed $551 million and that's in $1900. That's almost $600 million was distributed to the trust. And you can go look at the documents and see how much of that went to John D Rockefeller, and the largest portion did. But the Jennings family during this time period, their share of the trust paid $16.6 million in dividends. And that's an extraordinary amount of money at this particular historical time. It's worth about $500 million in today's money. So the Jennings family was very, very wealthy. They were extremely wealthy they were among the most wealthy, wealthiest families in the United States. And then Oliver G. Well Oliver G is the youngest son and he by the way when when William when Oliver Burr dies, and they, his, his estate goes through probate. He gives gifts to a whole bunch of people, and then says the remaining part in my trust will be divided equally among my five children. So Oliver Gould Jennings inherited one fifth of basically the wealth of fortune of his father. And he lives he lives a gilded age life there's no question about it. He goes to Andover Academy. He then attends Yale University. He gets a law degree at Columbia. He enters a law firm in New York he's a prosperous what we would call today a corporate lawyer has two sons and he dies in 1937 in Fairfield, and I'm going to get to where he dies. And there's a picture of William K of Oliver G relaxing on the yacht of William K Vanderbilt, a motor yacht, not William K's racing sailboat 136 foot racing sailboat. And he had Oliver G had a home on to East 75th Street, right off of part right off of Fifth Avenue, and his next door neighbor was Benjamin Guggenheim of the Guggenheim Museum family. So he was incredibly wealthy. And he had a summer home in Newport, and a winter home on Jekyll Island in Georgia. And he moved in this gilded age world. He had a home in the family had a home in Newport. And you can see on the left hand side here that's a, that's a Google map, I turned on the landscape. And you can see if those of you who have been to Newport, you come down Bellevue Avenue, you end at rough point, you take a right hand turn you go down a little extension. And if you take a right left and you're at Bailey's Beach, it's actually spouting Rock Beach Association but everybody calls it Bailey's Beach it's the fanciest. It certainly was the fanciest beach club in the country for decade after decade after decade. There's a famous picture of Jackie Kennedy holding John, John Kennedy. Her, her son in her arms and it's at Bailey's Beach. Rough point. And if you look to the right. Frederick Vanderbilt built rough point, which he sold to the father of Doris Duke. And it's eventually now with the, with the restoration foundation here in Newport. And you can see where the Jennings cottage was a cottage that these were giant wood frame buildings. And it was up the street from Edith Wharton's home and lands in now remember they're not I want to want to just mention that they're not contemporaries of one another. Edith Wharton, by the time the Vanderbilt's move into this, I'm sorry the Jennings move to this particular cottage. She's already left for France. But he's Wharton is the age of innocence and the age of innocence is a perfect movie to watch to understand the gilded age. So the van, the Jennings in Newport, they were part of, they were members of, of Bailey's Beach. They were in the social mayor of the, of the Vanderbilt's in Newport. Well, what every wealthy gilded age family needed was a country estate. You would have your home in New York, your summer home in Newport, you'd go to the winter, Jekyll Island, well, you needed a country estate. Well, the Vanderbilt, the Jennings family had had long ties to Fairfield. So over time, what Oliver Gould Vanderbilt does is he buys enough property to create a 255 acre country estate. You can see it outlined there in red. Oh, this, by the way, this is a, this is a 1934 aerial map of Fairfield. And I've superimposed on it, the boundaries of the Jennings estate. And of course, we call Fairfield Beach, we call it Jennings Beach. Now, you might remember Oliver G had a sister, Annie B, Annie B Jennings, and she inherited as much of money as Oliver G did. She never married. But her home, I don't know if you guys can see my cursor was here. This is the old post road here and her home was here, Sonny Lee, and she owned all the land down to the water, including Jennings Beach, which he donated to the town. And the Fairfield Beach Club that you see at the end of Beach Road was her cabana cabana. She was a philanthropist in Fairfield. She donated the first part of the Fairfield Public Library, the building where Tomlinson Middle School is that was Fairfield High School. She donated that. She was active an actor philanthropist in in New York City. By the way, she was not a suffragette. She wouldn't support women's voting but that's a larger story. So Jennings has this large country estate. Well, you need a building on this country estate, don't you now we're looking at that we've zoomed in on this aerial photograph and see the circle in the middle. I'm going to show you that in a moment that's the manor house. And you can see where the prep is below the manor house and then across across North Benson Road. There was the farm and it was literally called the Jennings farm. And you can see where Rafferty Field Field is now was land that they grazed their sheep and cattle on. It was a farm. That's what an aristocrat did. That's what they did in England. That's what they did in France. That's what they did in the United States they they took the model of the English country estate Blenheim Palace. There were sheep and cows at Blenheim Palace, not near the mansion by the way, and that's what they did and they spent, they spent the fall at this estate every single year. So the, they'd live in the man, they live in on East 71st Street in the wintertime. But after they came back from Jekyll Island in the spring, then they'd go up to Newport for the summer season. Then they'd come to the Jennings estate late for the early fall. Well, the he builds a home called Malans. That's the country home he builds. And some of you must be able to see that particular building. And you can see on the bottom left he has extensive greenhouses and gardens. And that includes going down to the Rafferty Field. They were extensive greenhouses. So this is Malans. And the servants followed them around. You can see the 1920 census for East 71st Street, there were 12 servants. Six from Sweden, three from Ireland, one from England, one from Finland and one from Connecticut. But 11 of the 12 were were immigrants coming to America for a variety of reasons. And then they, they work as domestic servants at an East 71st Street. And then later in the next census, by this time, Oliver G is quite, is getting much older. And he's 64. And they've, they're basically living now in Malans. They're not living full time on East 71st Street. And they have 10 servants in the 1930 census. And by the way, for, for, for Malans, that doesn't count the people who worked on the property itself. There were probably 30, 20 or 30 other people who worked keeping the grounds, mode and all of that type of work. And I just picked a name there, Bridget Egan. She, she had come from Ireland. She was 22. She was single. She had been in the country just for three years. And she, she was a servant at the, at the, at Malans in the 1930 census. Well, there's a second industrialist that I want to add to this story. Walter Lasher. He was a Bridgeport industrialist. And you can see he was 1870. His, he was very wealthy. Because he had an $80 million fortune at one time in his life. He wasn't part of the New York Gilded Age. He was part of a much smaller built Gilded Age in Bridgeport, where he was very wealthy. His company was American chain and cable. He was, it was a very successful company. He was one of the highest paid executives in the country. And one of the products that they, that they had the patent for, for a period of time were tire chains. You know, when the first Model T was built, the wheels, the tires were all bald. So as soon as it snowed, you needed some way to grip the grip the pavement. And so you could buy chains for your, your car. You still see these in, up in Vermont in the wintertime. Now, William Lasher decides to build a mansion in Fairfield. And he finds a hundred acres of land on Round Hill Road. And he builds Hearthstone Hall. Well, Hearthstone Hall, we know what Hearthstone is going to become. And he spent a fortune doing this. Here's an invoice that's in our Fairfield archives. This is from the Hayden Company. They were known for decorations of, of mansions. And this invoice is from October and 21. And it's just for the interior furnishings of Hearthstone Hall. The bill is 200, almost $300,000. And you can see there one sofa, $2,800. This could be, I don't know, for many of us, this would be, the furniture would be pretty expensive for, for our homes, wouldn't it? And, but this is the way, this is what Lasher wanted to do. He wanted a country home as well to mimic probably the Jennings family. And I don't know the records are not clear whether or not they socialize together. That's not clear at all. So think of, think of Lasher as the local industrialist. Well, then we bring this forward to the Jesuits and the founding of Fairfield. You can see that the Jesuits have been here since revolutionary time. Georgetown was founded in 1789. By the way, these are not all the Jesuit universities. St. Louis is 1818. University of San Francisco comes before Boston College. In 1926, the Jesuits are prospering. Many, many, many men are entering the order all through the country. And so they, they form the New England province for just the New England states. And around this time, the province had, the Jesuits had 3000 priests in the New England province. And of course, this leads to the founding of Fairfield in 1942. So what the New England province had been doing was they were in touch with Bishop McAuliffe of Hartford. Now, both Connecticut and Rhode Island, there was only one Bishop and that was the Bishop of Hartford. And they said to McAuliffe, what we'd like to do is to open a high school in Southern Connecticut. We know there's many Catholics. There's no Catholic high school in that area. And we see that as a, as a need. The Jesuits had a, a what was called a retreat house on an island. Judding out into Long Island Sound in Norwalk. And so they were familiar with the area. Well, September 15, 1941, a formal letter comes from Bishop McAuliffe to Father Dolan, the provincial. And it's a very short letter. And he says, yes, I'd like you to open a high school. But in the Bridgeport region. And then there's a second paragraph and the second line says this invitation includes the founding of a college in the same area. So now the New England province wants to start a high school and then eventually a college in Fairfield County. And so a mad scramble begins to find a property. You've got to find a piece of property that's big enough to have both a high school, which, which eventually becomes Fairfield Prep. It's called Fairfield Preparatory School. That's what all the the New England province high schools, Boston College Prep was bought is Boston College Preparatory School. So they got to find a property. And they want to do this quickly. Well, it's the end of the gilded age. Great depression ends the gilded age. And then there's death and taxes. And this gilded age ends just at the moment that the Jesuits are searching for a property. Well, in the depression. Lasher goes bankrupt in the in the 1930s. He's overextended. He's had a fortune that was estimated to be $80 million. Most of that is gone. He can't keep up Heartstone Hall. So the town of Fairfield foreclosures on the lasher property for back taxes. And it's abandoned. Well, then Oliver G Jennings dies in 1937. And the Jennings his estate goes through probate and it's affected by the depression and taxes. There are taxes that had to be paid. The Connecticut succession tax the Connecticut estate tax and of course there was a federal estate tax. What in current in the current political battles and we've had is what's called the death tax by by in Congress often. Well, the Jennings descendants are want to want to keep their mother she's not dead. They've got this big house in Fairfield. They've got a house in Newport. They still have the property in 75th Street, which they've leased. But they're there they're not they're not bankrupt. But there are a lot of financial pressures on the Jennings family. And from their probate records we have a student Riley Barrett went down and found the the probate court records for the Jennings family down at the the probate court down on the green and Fairfield. And their their giant pieces of their way bigger than a legal document the probate court records. And Oliver G own 21 parcels of land in Fairfield, which a value of $400,000. The homestead was 77 acres it was called parcel one and it included mailings and the value was $130,000. He had $900,000 in the bank and his stock was worth $6 million. So the total estate's value was $6.9 million. That's in 1937. The Great Depression is still with us. We're not going to recover economically to World War two gets underway. And this is truly a fortune. And you can see on the right, there's a long, full page list of stocks that he owned. And I highlighted the standard oil stock. And that was the single largest stock valued stock he owns still own $46,000 shares. Now remember these shares have have a split and split and split and split. And that was worth almost $3 million. So there's a huge estate here and that includes mailings, mailings. Well, he has to pay the listen this this went on for it took six years to settle this estate. And finally, the estate paid the state of Connecticut to the two taxes owed. And then they pay the internal revenue service $1,828,000. That was huge. And that these three taxes accounted for 33% of the estate. So the pay these taxes they had to liquidate the stock that you see above. Or they had to go to their bank accounts and take money out of the bank to pay their taxes. And you have this giant home mailings and all that property around it. Well, Father Dolan continues to negotiate. He negotiates with the Jennings family there's there's concern that one of the sons doesn't want to sell to a Catholic religious order. But they don't have any other offers for the property. And they decide to sell mailings and 77 acres surrounding 77 acres that make up now Fairfield University. And they sold that in December of 1941 for $43,879. That's McCall of Hall. And notice below, there's a headline that we found in the archives, the Bridgeport Sunday Post, which came out Sunday morning, December 7. 1941 said the headline said beautiful Jennings estate sold to the Jesuits. Well, you all know that Pearl Harbor hadn't happened yet, because it was it was five hours before it's five hours time difference, and the attack hadn't happened yet. And then later on in April of 1942. Father Dolan, the provincial negotiates with the town of Fairfield and and and Catholics and in Fairfield Bridgeport who are helping the Jesuits put this deal together for the last year property. And in April 2 1942. Father Dolan signs the papers and sends a check for $62,500 to the town of Fairfield for the for what would become Bellarmine Hall. So this is like a small miracle. And the Jesuits find to adjoining a states in Fairfield, which put together are just over 200 acres of land, and we'll buy more will buy a property on the corner of North Benson Road and and that's for $106,000. Now that's, that's worth quite a bit of money today isn't it. It's about $2 million. But gosh, you look in the Fairfield citizen or you go on to Ravis real estate. How many, how many homes are for sale in Fairfield today for $2 million. I bet you there's a lot on the market. So this is a this is a foundation story. This is a foundation story. And of course this is our our gilded aged tail. This is a state. And you can see in the blue is the Fairfield University that that jut out to the north we we bought from from from an order that had bought it from a person who bought it from from Jennings. And that's where the Dolan campus is. And there's McCall of wall. Next to North Benson Road. And the Jennings farm to the to the east has been developed. And I should have put this particular street Parkwood Road and that's where I lived for most of the time I was at Fairfield or we were living in Fairfield. And Bellarmine Hall is over here. This is the lasher. This is the lasher property here. And this particular property is the Morehouse property which we also buy. So this is our campus here. And it's our gilded aged tail. So I'll, I think I'll stop there. We have any questions for doctors looking. I always love to listen to your presentation, but this one as a resident of Fairfield for 34 years I was so interested in hearing about this part of our history and fearful views as well. Meena Perry just actually sent another land work in Connecticut and related to the gilded age and also New York City. And of course Harkness, one of the partners at Standard Oil. He has the Harkness House mansion on one East 75th Street and the beautiful Eolia in Waterford, Connecticut, in Harkness State Park. He has, he has that and of course Harkness goes up to Yale, and he builds the main point, the major downtown section of the Yale campus, the colleges and that, you know, there are knock off of Oxford and Cambridge. And then of course the major research library is the Harkness Library. He was a philanthropist as well. And, but can you imagine, you know, those of you who are, can you, you couldn't have put this property together the Jesuits couldn't have done that. You couldn't have gone to 5060 landowners in Fairfield. For example, they looked at, maybe some of you that must know where Fairfield Country Day is. The property was the Fairfield Country Club and they thought of buying that, but it was too far for the students from Bridgeport who are going to come to Fairfield by bus. It's too far to walk. If any of you know where the chimneys mansion is in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport, up on top of that hill in Black Rock, they looked at that particular property. They thought of going to downtown Bridgeport where there were some large, a state like buildings down where the University of Bridgeport is now. But here's this property and it falls together. It's, it's, it's Paul Lakeland and I, Professor Lakeland and I are working on a Fairfield history project and we were looking for a title we might call it the miracle on the sound. We do have a few more questions Kurt. Okay. John Hurley wants to know when were the two prep buildings built. The two, the two new prep buildings are there, they're after World War two. The prep can't build during the war, World War two, because all the construction materials were rationed. So I think the first practice Xavier goes up in 50, that's 51. I'm going to miss my day here. I think they're 4647 when they start those prep buildings. Okay, okay. Sarah rush. What happened to the Jennings home in Newport is it still there. It's still there. Okay, it's still there. It went, they sold that it went to a couple of families and then for a period of time, this is what's happening in Newport. It was divided up into condominiums. And then a wealthy industry, wealthy hedge fund person has bought it, bought out what the condos and is returning it to a single family home. By the way, just as an example of that. There's a famous mansion on the, on the, on the ocean in Newport. We all called it the hurricane house because it's a hurricane had washed through that, and it had been abandoned. And then it was turned into condominiums Jay Leno bought it and bought out the five people who owned condominiums in it. Can you imagine. Oh gosh, that's incredible. Yeah. From Mary Frick, the name Gould was mentioned. There is in Fairfields gold manner. Do you know if there was a house there. There wasn't a house there, to my knowledge. Gould was his. I'm trying to think there's a relationship inside the Jennings family with the goals. And that, that's a public park it's it's cool it's cool manner, but that was part of the Jennings estate. That was part of the Jennings estate so when you cross if you're at the Home Depot, you go underneath the through a, you're going up. You're going up there. And you see Gould, Gould manner park to the right that had been part of the Jennings estate. Right. I think that's on crestwood or it becomes crestwood. Yeah, going up crestwood. Right. That's that's all the Jennings that had been all the Jennings estate, the state there. You know, they, not that they had the mansion on the hill. They had the gardens. But what you also had was a was a small forest. And that particular part of Fairfield was was forested and they, they, they had a carriage track that went into the forest and there's a river there's a little stream that's that's damned up. You know what I'm talking about down down the corner there at Parkwood that that was Jennings did that so they'd have a place to swim. Interesting. I have a question here from Jim Reese. Could you comment on the wealth disparity in the Gilded Age versus America today. I think it's wonderful because indirect direct beneficiary of death taxes. Do you think the death tax needs to be reconstituted from where it stands today. Well, we're we're in a we're in a period of, of, of vast wealth created and that has really were as unwealthy. We're we're as as there's a largest gap between the super wealthy people the 1% and the rest of American society now as it was and it was in the Gilded Age. Some people are arguing that it's greater. But we see it here you can you see it in Fairfield think of Fairfield Beach. I don't know the ages of everyone who was who was on here but when I went to Fairfield in 66. You went down the Fairfield Beach those were shacks. You know people had them for the summer. You know there wasn't there might not have been insulation, maybe in the wall board on the inside. But you know Fairfield students thought it was great and of course there's all men and you know we piled in there and I don't want to say we studied a lot. But look go down Fairfield Beach now and go along Fairfield Beach Road it's it's like a wonderland. It's just these giant mansions that have been built and that money comes from from Wall Street it comes from the, you know, and by the way it comes from many Fairfield, you know, many many Fairfield graduates have succeeded in that world and the word the beneficiary of that. Right. Heard from Janet Fairfield was founded in 1942 but went in actual classroom teaching start 1947. So that the, the idea was to, you know, the war comes, and the drafts on and men are being drafted we're going to have 12 million people in the armed forces excellent I think it's 16 million. In four years are going to predominantly men are going to go through the American military. So there wasn't the, the, the population to to start a college immediately so we start in 47. And the first class arrives in 47. And then they're going to graduate in 51 so I think our 75th anniversary is kind of a moving target isn't it. It could be 42. Well, maybe it's 41. 142. But the first class doesn't arrive to 47. From Julie Gottlieb, is the Gould in Oliver Gould Jennings the same as Fairfields Gould, Gould Manor. Yes, it's the same family that so that when all of when the when the when the Jennings family when Oliver's family, when they donate that land to the town of Fairfield, they name it after, and I can't remember just the, who's, who's, who's made name it is. Okay, but it's inside the Jennings family. Yeah, because Sarah said the name Gould linked to Jay Gould is they linked to Jay Gould as well. I, I don't think so I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. That's a better answer. Okay. Another question from john, it looks like McCauliffe is much smaller than mail and what became of the rest of mail ends was I don't. Okay, I don't, yeah, you know, you know, john, my wife said that to me. It's up into the rest of, if you what what's what it's covered now you know that the land going up there now is is this all trees and we can't see the building to the extent of those pictures. That's a good question. I'm pretty sure it's still it's, I think the main area of the of let's let's just try this here if we go back. To here if you look here at this particular view that's McCauliffe all right, but now you know the townhouses are here. So it's hard to see. But I believe that that that's that it's. And the judge you know the Jesuits, you know they they were delighted to find these buildings that they could, they could move into so the prep opens in 42 right in the fall of 42 and they've got, you know, they've done some renovation in McCauliffe all but not a lot. And then the Jesuits live in Bellarmine Hall and they needed to do less renovation in Bellarmine Hall. So they had a place for the Jesuits to live. And you had McCauliffe to serve as to serve as a, you know, the high school. The second part of John's question was, was any of the stone used to build Xavier or other buildings. The answer to that. I think it was used decoratively around the property but I don't think to build the buildings. The prep buildings there's there we have in our in our archives at the university in the library. There's there's records of the building companies that built those buildings. And you know they had the wait till the war was over to start them. I think that answers all our questions via the chat. Okay. Yeah, it was great. You know, how much I enjoy working with you. I'll show my face pack. I'll turn a light on here. Take off these things. I can't thank you enough for sharing your expertise, your talents, your time with us for the second time on a zoom presentation so I thank you to the folks who were attended. Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. This was fun. This was a lot of fun fun. Yeah. Just to let you know, I've recorded this presentation and it'll be available on the university's YouTube channel. So I will send you all the links to that and just as I always do, there's a reminder to visit www.fairfield.edu front slash alumni events to learn what's going on on campus as well. Thank you. Yeah, I see I see Dave Phoenix in a nice no say Dave. Good to see you. Yeah, it's good to hear from you. I can't see him, but yeah. Okay. All right. Be safe everybody be safe. Thank you all for coming. Hopefully I'll see you all in person. But until then be well stay safe. Thank you. Okay, take care. Thank you. Thank you.