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Chapter 9
Henry Flagler Purchases the Hotel Ormond
Henry Morrison Flagler played a very
important role in Florida and Ormond’s
history as he built his Gilded Age
Empire along the eastern shores of
early Florida. Henry Flagler became a
“Captain of Industry” beginning with his
successes at Standard Oil Company
and later as he built his fabulous hotels
and railroads down Florida’s east coast.
Henry Morrison Flagler was born in
Hopewell, New York on January 2,
1830, the son of a struggling
Presbyterian minister. Morrison was the name of his mother’s first
husband (Hugh Morrison) who had died. Henry’s mother married
David Harkness (second marriage) and the Harkness family played a
helpful role in Henry’s life for many years.
Henry left school after the eighth grade to go work for the Harkness
family in Ohio. To begin his new life, he found work on a barge
traveling the newly opened Erie Canal to Lake Erie where he traveled
overland to the small Harkness store in Republic, Ohio. There he
began work with his half-brother, Dan Harkness.
Penniless, Flagler worked for five years, saving enough money in the
mercantile business to move to Bellevue, Ohio, and buy out a partner
in one of the Harkness operations. The company expanded into the
grain and distillery businesses, and the latter was sold after making
considerable money. One of the grain brokers he shipped grain to
was John D. Rockefeller in Cleveland, Ohio. Flagler became a partner
in the newly organized D. M. Harkness and Company, again with his
half-brother, Dan Harkness, in 1852.
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