For more than fifteen years he was the largest stockholder in the company; it was not strange therefore, that middle life found Ezra Cornell a millionnaire. This was better than making pottery in the little town of De Ruyter. It had taken work, however, to make this fortune. While others sauntered and enjoyed life at leisure, he was working early and late, away from his family most of the time for twelve years.
In 1857, when fifty years of age, he purchased three hundred acres near Ithaca, planted orchards, bought fine cattle and horses, and moved his family thither. He was made president of the County Agricultural Society, and in 1862 was chosen to represent the State Agricultural Society at the International Exposition in London. Taking his wife with him, they travelled in Great Britain and on the Continent, enjoying a few months of recreation, for the first time since, when a youth, thirty years before, he had walked into Ithaca.
During the war he gave money and sympathy freely, being often at the front, in hospitals, and on battle-fields, caring for the wounded and their families, and aiding those whom the war had left maimed or impoverished. For six years he served acceptably in the State Legislature. Self-reliant, calm, unselfish, simple in dress and manner, he was, alike the companion of distinguished scholars, and the advocate of the people.
The great question now before his mind was how to spend his fortune most wisely. He recalled the days when he cleared four acres of timber land, that he might have three months of schooling. He had regretted all his life his lack of a college education. He determined therefore to build "an institution where any person can find instruction in any study." Preparatory to this he built Cornell Library, costing sixty-one thousand dollars. A workman, losing one of his horses by accident in the construction of the edifice, was called upon by the philanthropist, who, after inquiring the value of the animal, drew a check and handed it to the man, remarking, with a kind smile, "I presume I can better than you afford to lose the horse." A man with money enough to build libraries does not always remember a laborer!
Mr. Cornell's first gift toward his university was two hundred acres of his cherished farm, and five hundred thousand dollars in money. The institution was formally opened in 1868, Hon. Andrew D. White, a distinguished graduate of Yale and of the University of Berlin, being chosen president. Soon over four hundred students gathered from over twenty-seven States. Mr. Cornell's gifts afterward, including his saving the Land Grant Fund from depreciation, amounted to over three million dollars. A wonderful present from a self-made mechanic! Other men have followed his illustrious example. Henry W. Sage has given three hundred thousand dollars for the building of Sage College for women, and the extensive conservatories of the Botanical Department. Hiram Sibley, of Rochester, has given fifty thousand dollars for the College of Mechanic Arts, and John McGraw, one hundred thousand for the library and museum. Cornell University is now one of the most liberally endowed institutions in the country, and has already sent out over one thousand graduates.
Mr. Cornell did everything to enrich and develop his own town. He brought manufactories of glass and iron into her midst, held the presidency of the First National Bank for a dozen years, made her as far as possible a railroad centre, and gave generously to her churches of whatever denomination. The first question asked in any project was, "Have you seen Ezra Cornell? He will take hold of the work; and if he is for you, no one will be against you, and success is assured, if success be possible."
Dec. 9, 1874, at the age of sixty-seven, scarcely able to stand, he arose from his bed and was dressed that he might attend to some unfinished business. Shortly after noon, it was finished by an unseen hand. His body was carried to Library Hall, and there, the Cornell Cadets standing as guard of honor, thousands looked upon the renowned giver. The day of the funeral, public and private buildings were draped, shops were closed, and the streets filled by a saddened throng. The casket was borne into the cemetery between lines of students, who owed to his generosity their royal opportunities for scholarship. Various societies in various cities passed resolutions of respect and honor for the dead.
Froude, the English historian, well said of him, "There is something I admire even more than the university, and that is the quiet, unpretending man by whom the university was founded. We have had such men in old times, and there are men in England who make great fortunes and who make claim to great munificence, but who manifest their greatness in buying great estates and building castles for the founding of peerages to be handed down from father to son. Mr. Cornell has sought for immortality, and the perpetuity of his name among the people of a free nation. There stands his great university, built upon a rock, built of stone, as solid as a rock, to endure while the American nation endures. When the herald's parchment shall have crumbled into dust, and the antiquarians are searching among the tombstones for the records of these departed families, Mr. Cornell's name will be still fresh and green through generation after generation."
Overlooking Ithaca and Cayuga Lake stands his home, a beautiful Gothic villa in stone, finished a year after his death. His motto, the motto of his life, is carved over the principal entrance, "True and Firm."