Harlow Niles Higinbotham / A memoir with brief autobiography and extracts from speeches and letters

Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
HARLOW NILES HIGINBOTHAM
Written and Edited
by Harriet Monroe
CHICAGO
1920
Harlow Niles Higinbotham, represented, to a singular degree, the best citizenship of the second and third half-centuries of the Republic. Born on an Illinois farm October tenth, 1838; educated in his native state; serving as a volunteer soldier through the Civil War; employed by a small dry-goods house and working for it loyally and with perfect integrity until it had become one of the greatest merchandising firms in the world, and he one of its most active partners; responding with ardor to every public call, whether it came from a newsboys’ and bootblacks’ club or from the World’s Columbian Exposition; retiring from business at sixty or more, and giving his later years, with beautiful devotion, to his family and his favorite charities and public works; and dying at eighty in full career and with faculties unimpaired; such a life epitomizes the strength and character of the nation during its robust and adventurous formative period.
The story of his earlier years may be outlined in Mr. Higinbotham’s own words; for a rough manuscript, autobiographical but written in the third person, was found among his papers after his sudden death. It begins as follows:
“Harlow Niles Higinbotham was born on a farm near Joliet, Illinois, October tenth, 1838. His father was Henry Dumont Higinbotham, who was born on January tenth, 1806, and died in 1865. His mother was Rebecca Wheeler Higinbotham. Both were born in Oneida County, New York. They moved to a farm in the Township of Joliet, Illinois, in 1834. The Higinbotham family came originally from Holland, removing thence to England, thence to the Barbados Islands and from there to the United States.
“The farm, upon which Henry Dumont Higinbotham settled, was made up of lands purchased from the Government by him and not previously under cultivation. It is still in possession of the family, enlarged by purchases and inheritance from the late Mrs. Harlow N. Higinbotham’s estate; her son, Harlow Davison Higinbotham, being the present owner and resident. For years a beautiful feature of it has been the carnation greenhouses—for the subject of this memoir made that flower his special hobby, and propagated many new varieties.