Vigo County, Indiana - Chapter 39: Chauncey Rose, 1891

THE helpful friend of true education is the benefactor of his race whose work ranks with that of the great discoverers of new truths and useful inventions. The true education - the dif¬ fusion of real knowledge - is the supreme power in lifting up every civilization. Nothing really great is accomplished in this world without the combined labors of men, whose efforts all tend in the one direction. One generation may suggest that which to the in¬ ceptive generation succeeding may evolve the beginning of an idea, that will slowly grow and ripen in the long succeeding generations to the full, and the human race is thus advanced along the high¬ way and the new humanity finds itself with a new thought or inven¬ tion and believes that the new birth is wholly of their own creation, and remain forever ignorant of the forgotten men, who not only started the idea on its way to full growth, but who have added and added from generation to generation to it and made possible the fruits that the favored peoples are enjoying.

In all biographical history, then, the world's truly great men must be carefully culled from the merely notable men, and the truly great will pass the competitive examination in triumph, while much of the so-called history will be re-written and new balance sheets struck between true greatness and the world of sham. The laurel crown must go to those whose work has been the permanent o-ood of mankind. All that is not permanent in results is of little value, and must be so rated by the true historian. The founder of a gov¬ ernment, in the rapid mutations of nations, nlay live to see'the results of his labors pass away. This is true of systems of religion.

wounds are healed and every trace obliterated, and in the short space of a century it has generally come to be a matter of fact, that it is immaterial on which side the eagles of victory perched upon the waving banners in the hour of battle.

Pestilence and famine have swept from the earth their millions of people, but here too are only temporary effects. The hideous gaps are filled, and where once was decay and rotting silence there comes again songs and laughter, marriage and births, hopes and successes, triumphs aud failures. During the past nineteen hun¬ dred years, every succeeding generation, even those of the five hundred years of the dark and dismal ages, has flattered itself that until it came the whole world was barbarian, but "now the perfect civilization is here." We patronizingly pity the ignorance of our fathers, and at the same time, perhaps, shape every movement in this life, and even our preparation for the great future, by the au¬ thority of precedent that has been handed down from the gray dawn of the morning of tradition. Until our illustrious sires founded the United States government, no one had dreamed of the possibility of the separation of State and church, thereby bettering infinitely both church and State. But ignorance and craft are tenacious of authority. The church clung to the school, and when the church and State finally separated, to some extent the State and school became united, and where the State once said it was directly inter¬ ested in the morals of the people, it now says it is quite as deeply concerned in the diffusion of knowledge.

When education stands alone who knows but results, the same as in the case of the church, may prove not only surprising, but both blessed and gratiying.

The great institutions of learning that have come to this, and will go to succeeding generations from the benefactions of Chauncey Rose, are in the judgment of some of our school men, destined to mark an era in the history of education. And in a careful prepar¬ atory study of this remarkable man's life, and the disposition of his large estate, both before and after his death, justified the conclusion that here is a biography, which, when properly told, is worthy of the closest investigation of both learned divines and the wisest of statesmen. To the average mind it is esteemed enough to simply enumerate this man's princely benefactions - to say that he is the Pea¬ body of the west - who gave millions to the cause of education, to charity and to the sick, maimed, to the unfortunate and the poor. The largeness of the sums is the central point of attraction, with no deeper thought of the far more important fact of the wisdom that guided all these gifts to the permanent good of mankind - the purely practical reaching after effects that in time will be felt around the world. He could have given his vast wealth to the State or to the church, to found a great school or university of learning as an enduring monument to himself. But he would do far more than this easy way of perpetuating his name. He talked to men, and thought out the subject in its entirety, and when it finally evolved the completed idea of the polytechnic school, then it was he won the enduring crown in the long line of the world's greatest benefactors. In the immensity - the number of millions given to education - there have been perhaps two men who have exceeded Mr. Rose in the amounts thus appropriated, but it is the manner, the conditions and the ultimate aims and results that may follow his bequest in the line that must for all time distinguish his be¬ neficences from all others. The character of education, the system itself, that he worked out in his mind, this is really more im¬ portant than the amount. This portion of his bequest was not to charity, but purely to the cause of true education. To all these others - the charitable side - he had and did give most munificently, and while these in their aggregate exceed the amount devoted to the schools, yet it is plain that it was to the institution - to educa¬ tion - that he really anticipated the important and permanent ef¬ fects.

The Rose Polytechnic Institute is his fitting and immortal mon¬ ument. There is the school, separated alike from the domination of church or State, there it stands the exponent of the true and practical training of the rising generation, where the hand, the eye and the brain are co-educated. In the recitation rooms, in the shops, in the fields and with the stars, the bright youths of the country may go without money and without price, and arm them¬ selves from head to'foot to meet the struggles for life that await all of us. The whole man, physically, morally and mentally, is trained and developed. This is the mother house. It is the em¬ bodied thought of Chauncey Rose that bears within itself the seeds of its own immortal life. When he has been dead a thousand years, the great historians who then will tell of the movements of the human mind, the great march of civilization, will turn to this man as the central figure of the incomparable panorama.

From this side let the light fall upon the great work of this man, and something of him and of his labors in behalf of mankind will begin to dawn upon your mind. He would do good to his fel¬ low-men - a good to which there would come no after taste of bitter or doubt. He would injure neither the church, school nor State by the old fashion of trying to mingle them together - apparently set¬ ting them to work in mutual aid, when, in fact, the struggle would merge into one of serious conflict and final ruin.

His vast fortune was devoted to the good of his fellow-men. The bulk of it to the relief of immediate distress and to the welfare of the unfortunate, such as the Rose Orphans' Home, that is one of the most prominent eleemosynary institutions of Indiana, the News¬ boys' Home in New York, or the many other charities wherein his most intimate friends were as the left hand that knoweth not what the right hand doeth. Of his millions thus given he founded the Polytechnic, and endowed it with altogether but little over half a million of dollars, a tithe of his estate perhaps, but there is little doubt that he fully realized that it was really far greater than all in lasting and ever growing benefits to the race. He understood the great fact well; that it is not in the amount of the charity, but in the mode of its bestowal that is the essence of its value.

In this view of the subject, now that he, the last of his imme¬ diate family, is gone, why need we hesitate in declaring the fact that, as a benefactor, Cliauncey Hose was a pre-eminent American, if not the most distinctive character in history.

He was never married, and had lived to be the last of a large family. He left only lateral kin. There is, then, no reason why the biographer should over or under-estimate his life and character through a mistaken regard for the feelings of the living.

Cliauncey Rose was born at Wethersfield, Conn., December 24, 1794, and died August 13, 1877. He was a son of John Rose, a farmer and an influential and prominent citizen, a man of moderate means, and of a quiet and evenly poised life. In the family of John Rose were seven sons aud one daughter, Mrs. Israel Williams, esteemed by all as a noble and true woman. Three sons, Roswell, William and Samuel, died early. George and John Rose were strong, virile men, and had, while young men, acquired considerable property; neither one married. Henry, the youngest son, came to Terre Haute and was recognized as a valuable acquisition to the business men of the place, but lost his health, returned to his old home and died childless. Cliauncey had survived his brothers and sister, all of whom died without issue.

He grew to manhood in the family home, and in the common schools acquired the fundamentals of a sound English education. In the records of the Old Settlers Society of Vigo county, at a meeting held October 5, 1875, in Terre Haute, he was unable to be present, and sent a written statement, which was read and placed upon the records. In this he informs us that he came in the fall of 1817 to the Wabash valley, and traveled through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama, looking for a desira¬ ble place to locate; he spent several days at Terre Haute, then consisting of two log cabins, but the natural surroundings decided him, and he returned to his home, and the next year (1818) came and located in Terre Haute, where he spent his long, useful and honorable life, excepting five years, from 1819 to 1824, during which he was milling and merchandising at Roseville, now in Parke county. In 1824 he opened a store in Terre Haute, and soon became one of the town's leading, popular merchants. When he came and located he brought with him $2,000. This was more than the average start in life of the pioneers of that time. The fiA e yeais lie spent in Roseville were years of hard and untiring labor; chopping timber, driving oxen, and an old lady, who went to Roseville with her husband to help build Mr. Rose's mill, infoimed me that she has seen him working at his mill-dam time after time in water waist deep. His strong physical system was taxed to its utmost.

His financial successes were great, but so was his industry. His f 01 tune was not clutched as the miser does his gold - not struggled for simply for itself alone, that he might hoard and count itT over and over. His industry and well-known integrity would have given him foitune, but these were guided by an intelligence, by an under¬ standing of the future, that led to the most fortunate investments.

The difference between Mr. Rose and the average man is illus¬ trated in his building of the Terre Haute house. This great host¬ elry was completed in 1840, and instead of erecting it on First, Second or Third streets, then the supposed central portion of the city, yet but a struggling village at best, he built " away out in the prairie." The village quidnuncs smiled, but never was. there a more palpable case of " the last laugh is the best laugh." His stiong mind anticipated the future, and he built accordingly. This ciicumstance may illustrate his whole life, and not only that, but his final disposition of the vast estate that his thrift and foresight had given him. ^

. 4 distinguishing mark of the man's character was his public spirit and liberality. That he always responded liberally to every worthy application to him - nay, that in his old age he had liis agents to hunt out want, and that he fed the hungry and clothed the naked by stealth, the recipients being in utter ignorance of the source of the bounty - is but a mere nothing in this remarkable man's career. Perhaps no man ever lived who more dreaded all publicity in regard to his acts, and no doubt he contrived to carry with him to his grave the secret of most of his charities.

Fiom Ghauncey Rose, the benefactor, let us turn a moment to the other side of his character - as a business man. Here are lessons of importance to the oncoming generations. It is not say¬ ing too much, in a material point of view, when it is asserted that the most important day in the history of Terre Haute was that of his coming here to remain a citizen. Without question he is en¬ titled to the place of father to the great public improvements, espe¬ cially the railroads and the vast industries that they have brought. Almost alone he was the means of the inception and final building of the old Terre Haute & Richmond Railroad. When it came to his mind a practical thing, he had exhausted the possibilities of the Wabash & Eiie Canal, and he knew that the age was ripe for a change from the canal boat to the railroad car. When you seat yourself in one of the modern elegant coaches, and in the royal train go flying away to the capital, you may easily realize that you are riding on one of the embodied ideas of the late Cliauncey Rose. In the railroads, in the factories, as well as in all the magnificence of the beautiful city, the foremost man, without the saying (and it is not to the discredit of the other strong and helpful public-spirited men), was Chauncey Rose. The Terre Haute & Indianapolis rail¬ road built to Richmond in 1851-52, the Evansville & Terre Haute road, resulting in the Chicago extension, are enterprises of supreme importance to Terre Haute, that owe him so much. When he had retired from business life he carried on his farm. Here he was a valuable instructor to the farmers in the community; even here he has left valuable and lasting lessons.

Mr. Rose endowed sundry charitable institutions of Charleston, S. C. His friends learned of this through others. None knew why his attention was given to this particular city. All that was ever known in explanation was that his two brothers, John and Henry, had lived in that city. His provision for the New York News Boys' Home was learned of after his death by his friends in Terre Haute. He had provided another New York institution, one to succor the crippled and ruptured. His bounty built and endowed the New York Home for the Aged and Poor. It is, in other words, estimated, by those who know best, that he gave to New York institutions over a million of dollars.

He established and endowed the " Ladies' Aid Society " of Terre Haute. He provided for the valuable library of the State Normal Institute of Terre Haute, and secretly educated every year, paying the bills of a large number of students. He gave largely to Providence Hospital, and to the support of Wabash College, Providence Hospital was changed after the receipt of his donation to an orphans' home.

He provided in his will for the maintenance in Terre Haute of a dispensary, where medicine is furnished to the poor and free advice to the sick. This is the " Rose Dispensary," endowed with $100,000.

It is impossible to enumerate even his entire list of large boun¬ ties. It is only those where the act itself carried its own notoriety that we can speak of with any certainty. The poor widows and orphans everywhere, the most of them ignorant of the source, were the constant recipients of his bounty. When he could give by hundreds of thousands in secret, we can have no hope of writing a balance sheet, and in dollars and cents estimate the great ben¬ efactor's like-work. Let us say it was altogether five millions more

Mr. Rose was a great strong man, but his entire power was expanded as the helpful friend of his race. That is he wanted to help men to help themselves. Every one of his long, faithful servants, those beginning in his employ even in the humblest capac¬ ity, in the course of the years became wealthy. But if you will investigate these cases you will find that their wealth came to them comparatively slow. In no case of the many did he ever make the horrible mistake of oppressing them through the years and then, dying suddenly, thrust upon them fortune they could not intelli¬ gently use, and that often has hurt and seldom benefited. He had trained and educated them ; largesses came and they were prepared for it, without shock, without surprise, without even knowing when it came and hardly from whence.

The application of this idea to the faithful servant was the cen¬ tralizing idea of the millions that he gave to the permanent good of mankind. He shrank from the cheap notoriety of the parvenu who would advertise himself, though the money he lavished would be but a blight upon whomsoever it was showered.