Henry Osborne Havemeyer, “The Most Independent Mind” - Hardcover

Harry W. Havemeyer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1935202731 ISBN 13: 9781935202738

Publisher: Privately Printed, New York, 2011

Synopsis

Henry Osborne Havemeyer was born in New York City, the eighth child of sugar refiner Frederick C. Havemeyer, Jr. and his wife Sarah Louise Henderson. His mother died before he was four, an older brother when he was fifteen and his oldest sister, who looked after him as a child, when he was seventeen. He did not take to formal education and went to work in the family's Brooklyn refinery as a teenager. At 22, he was a full partner in Havemeyers & Elder, the family firm.

In 20 years he became the most expert merchandiser of sugar in the industry's most competitive period. By 1885, he was known as the Sugar King, so named by his father, the country's dean of refiners. The Sugar Trust, which he led for the rest of his life, was based on the belief that cooperation was better than competition for both the industry and the consumer. His name became synonymous with the industry.

While engaged in this effort, he and his wife Louisine collected art, first Old Masters then French Impressionists resulting in the “Splendid Legacy” which Louisine left to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Following his premature death at sixty, he was described not only as a great sugar merchant but also as “an enthusiastic lover of art, a connoisseur of world-wide reputation, devoted to music, himself a performer, a lover of the best books, fond of country life, a good sportsman, devoted to and devotedly loved by his family.”

About this title

About the Author

Harry W. Havemeyer, the grandson of Henry Osborne Havemeyer, is the author of three books on the social history of Long Island's Great South Bay, three biographies of his great grandfather and more distant ancestors and an account of the sugar refining industry in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the 19th Century. He lives with his wife in New York City and Islip, Long Island.

Edition details

• Publisher: Privately Printed, New York
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1935202731
• ISBN 13: 9781935202738
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 196