January 2011

FREDERICK T. GATES and JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER THE MEMOIRS OF Frederick T. Gates A postscript by Allan Nevins

Frederick Taylor Gates was a Baptist minister when John D. Rockefeller in 1891 assigned him the job of giving away the world’s greatest fortune. For over twenty years he was one of Rockefeller’s closest associates, in business as well as philanthropy, and the architect of the Rockefeller Foundation.

In the early 1920’s he wrote the story of his life, purely for the eyes of his children and their descendants. A MERICAN H ERITAGE is indebted to his son, Russell C. Gates, for permission to reproduce on the following pages the sections dealing with his work for Mr. Rockefeller.

The year 1955 marks the centennial of one of the greatest landmarks in our American heritage of education for all the people. A century ago, the Michigan State College and the Pennsylvania State University were founded as the first of a group of uniquely new and evolutionary institutions of higher learning. These twin birthdays have been recognized by the issuance of a special commemorative U.S. postage stamp, dedicated to the two institutions and to the land-grant college idea as conceived in 1862 by Act of Congress.

Several years ago the Indiana University family voted to collect fines from professors who parked overtime on the campus. The money raised was turned over to the University library to buy additions to its special collections. Among the first purchases made, for the University’s War of 1812 Collection, was the manuscript journal which served as the basis for the story which is printed here.

Charles Willson Peale taught all his family to paint—brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, nephews and nieces, even a few promising in-laws—so that two generations of Peales busily recorded themselves and each other in portraits and miniatures. Finally, one of his descendants through his daughter Sophonisba, Charles Coleman Sellers, having sorted out all the family papers, has written a charming twovolume life of Charles Willson Peale (The American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1947). It is impossible to write anything about the Peales which is not in large part an appreciation of Mr. Sellers’ biography, and we acknowledge with thanks his active assistance with this presentation.