Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/372




 * IV..
 * A. Henry Villard.

Gaston, writing on the "Genesis of the Oregon Railway System" says of Villard: "Henry Villard was born in 1835 of an honorable and influential family in Speyer, Kingdom of Bavaria, Germany. In the revolution of 1849 his father was a loyalist, and the presiding judge of an important court. Young Villard was at school at the Gymnasium, wore a red feather in his cap and refused to pray for the king. For this offense he was suspended and managed to get out of his youthful disloyalty by going to a school in France. Subsequently pardoned, he returned and completed his studies at the University of Munich. He came to the United States in 1853, tarried with relatives near Belleville, Ill., for a year, then drifted into journalism, became a war correspondent in the Civil War, made friends with influential people, attracted attention by his ability and genial manners, made some money in speculations, went back to Germany on a visit and made financial friends at Frankfort, who afterwards employed him to look after their interests in investments in America, and put him on the highway to his great success. He was a man of most engaging and genial manners, with nothing of the hard selfishness or avaricious grasp of the typical rich man. No man was more considerate or generous in his praise and assistance to those who worked with or under him or whose work he had made use of. In the days of his prosperity his purse was open wide to all works of charity and benevolence, of which in Oregon was $50,000 to the State University for an irreducible fund, at least $400 of the interest from which to be used annually in the purchase of books for the University library. He gave a like sum to house the orphan children