A Biography of John Purdue Robert C
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Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Purdue University Press Books Purdue University Press Spring 4-15-2002 The idM as of the Wabash: A Biography of John Purdue Robert C. Kriebel Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/purduepress_ebooks Part of the Higher Education Commons, and the Nonfiction Commons Recommended Citation Kriebel, Robert C., The Midas of the Wabash: A Biography of John Purdue. (2002). Purdue University Press. This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. 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 vii Acknowledgments ix 1 1802–1837 1 2 1837–1855 19 3 1855–1865 39 4 1865–1876 63 5 Purdue University 95 6 Funeral and Estate 121 7 Since John Purdue 147 Appendix 165 References 169 Index 173 v 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 vii Acknowledgments The author wishes to recognize and thank the following persons, listed alphabetically, for their assistance in providing and/or inter- preting 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, Asso- ciate Professor of Library Science, Interim Head Special Collec- tions 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, profes- sional abstractor, Lafayette, Indiana; Paula Alexander Woods, author, lecturer, Tippecanoe County historian, West Lafayette, Indiana. ix —1— 1802–1837 n all their books, articles, and unpublished studies, historians Ipacking assorted credentials have left a blurred and faulty ac- count 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 Pur- due 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, self- made 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 ne- glect, 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, 1 2 John Purdue: The Midas of the Wabash 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 Hunt- ington 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 Shepards- burg, Huntington County, Pennsylvania.” It remained for Robert W. Topping, in his 1988 university his- tory 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 Shirleys- burg, 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 Scot- land, and that they originally were from France but had inter- married 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 1Robert Hartley Perdue, curious about possible blood relationship to John Pur- due, further described Germany in 1934 as a “village located between two low mountain ranges.” 1802–1837 3 Purdy in Montgomery County; Silas Purdy in Northampton County; Leonard Purdy in Chester County; Robert Purdy in Lan- caster 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 six- teen 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 Per- due 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 Pur- due.” 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 conclu- sion one may draw about the ancestry,” Topping wrote with ad- mirable frankness, “is that it seems rife with confusion.” Other details about the Charles Purdue family of Shirley Town- ship, Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, are only slightly more 2Admitting that his data “leads nowhere,” Robert Hartley Perdue further opined that “it seems unfortunate that a university of such high standing...should not know the ancestors of its founder. That...is said in the hope that it may interest someone to make the effort.”) 4 John Purdue: The Midas of the Wabash 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 mea- ger 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 de- scended from English bellfounders. Elmer E. Anderson, a distant relative in a short John Purdue bi- ography 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 pic- tured Charles Purdue as a “poor, hard-working, honest pioneer.