Harold Fowler McCormick, Sr.

Harold Fowler McCormick, Sr.

McCormick was Chairman of the Board of International Harvester Company

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Fowler_McCormick
• https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/120216706/harold-fowler-mccormick

Biography

He was born on May 2, 1872, the sixth child of Cyrus McCormick, inventor and manufacturer of the mechanical reaper; and Nancy Fowler McCormick. He graduated from Princeton University in 1895. On November 26, 1895 he married Edith Rockefeller, daughter of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, in Chicago, Illinois.

In 1909, along with John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Frederick Taylor Gates, he became the third inaugural trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. He became chairman of the board of International Harvester Company in 1935, replacing his older brother Cyrus Hall McCormick II. He was also a trustee of the Rockefeller-created University of Chicago.

After divorcing Edith, McCormick married opera singer Ganna Walska. During the transition period between these two women, McCormick sought to fortify himself by undergoing an operation by Serge Voronoff, a surgeon who specialized in transplanting animal glands into aging men with impotency. McCormick divorced Ganna in 1931.

He died on October 16, 1941.

Children with Edith Rockefeller

1. John Rockefeller McCormick (1896–1901)
2. Editha McCormick (1897–1898)
3. Harold Fowler McCormick, Jr. (1898–1973)
4. Muriel McCormick Hubbard (1903–1959)
5. Mathilde McCormick Oser (1906–1947)

Legacy

Orson Welles claimed that McCormick's lavish promotion of his second wife's opera career—despite her renown as a terrible singer—was a direct influence on the screenplay for Citizen Kane, wherein the titular character does much the same for his second wife. (Samuel Insull, Thomas Edison's private secretary and later president of a utilities holding empire that included Commonwealth Edison, built what is now the Lyric Opera in Chicago for his mistress and was another influence, along with actresses Hope Hampton and Marion Davies.)

THE GROTON AVERY CLAN, Vol. I, by Elroy McKendree Avery and Catherine Hitchcock (Tilden) Avery, Cleveland, 1912. p. 587