Edward Hamlin Everett
Edward Hamlin Everett was a late 19th Century industrialist and visionary who made a fortune in glass production and natural gas. He owned sand quarries at Black Hand Gorge, the Cherry Hill Orchard at Toboso, the Newark Natural Gas and Fuel Company and the famous glass factory in Newark that evolved through several name changes from the Newark Star Glass Company to E. H. Everett Company to Ohio Bottle Company to American Bottle Company.
Everett was born in 1851 in Cleveland, Ohio. His father, Henry, died when Edward was three years old, and his mother, Mary Hamlin Everett, remarried Henry William Putnam. The family moved to Bennington, Vermont where Putnam invented the lightning jar method of fastening corks to bottles. Edward became a salesman for Putnam selling supplies for glass-making. In 1880 he purchased the Newark Star Glass Company and began his own successful career in Licking County.
He married Amy Webster King on July 8, 1886. His workers struck natural gas in 1887, so he had it piped to his glass factory to save on the expense of buying coal. They soon opened two more wells near there, and he also piped natural gas in from Fairfield and Perry Counties by 1896. His glass factory became like a small city in itself with separate facilities for making clay blocks, boxes, bottle molds, blacksmithing, warehouses, and sand crushing. By 1900, it employed 865 workers who produced 40-50 tons of bottles per day. By 1904, Everett purchased glass factories in Missouri and Illinois to add to his conglomerate.
By 1906, Everett owned 50 gas wells in Licking and Knox Counties. His orchards in Toboso contained 25,000 trees on a 400 acre farm managed by Herbert A. Albyn. Then he struck oil on his leased land at Black Hand Gorge. He bought and sold wells in other states. Between his business travels and frequent vacations to Europe, he spent less and less time in Newark. In 1909, his daughter, Mary, married in Italy and remained there, and Everett began listing his home address as Washington, D. C.
Everett’s daughter, Amy, had spent some time in a movement to found a city hospital in Newark, so in 1912 Everett transferred title of his Newark home on Buena Vista Street to the hospital. He also donated American Bottle Company stock to provide income for the hospital’s maintenance. He deeded 20 acres on Everett Avenue to the Newark Board of Education for a playground that became Everett Park.
He built a new, elaborate mansion in Washington, D.C. in a style similar to the White House, which was purchased in 1936 by the Republic of Turkey to use as its Embassy. During the construction of this mansion, he also purchased 500 acres in Bennington, Vermont, where he built a three-story mansion with 27 rooms to use as his summer home at a cost of $2 million. Meanwhile, his wife died in 1917. He remarried three years later to Grace Burnap, and the couple had two daughters of their own.
Following Everett’s death on April 26, 1929, his will was contested by the three daughters of his first marriage in a lengthy and emotional court battle. They won the bulk of the estate, with his second wife given the Vermont mansion. She sold it to the Order of Holy Cross in 1952 for only $65,000. In 1974 it became St. Joseph College. That later became Southern Vermont College, which is still a quaint but thriving college today.[1] [2]
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