Historical records matching James Wallace Pinchot
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About James Wallace Pinchot
Taken from his official United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service biography:
James Pinchot made a fortune first importing, then later manufacturing, fine Victorian wall papers. Friends described him as gentle, intelligent and distinguished, with a keen interest in public affairs. He held strong notions about right and wrong in public life and loved the arts.
Counted among his friends were the esteemed actor Edwin Booth (brother of John Wilkes) and artists like Sanford Gifford and Eastman Johnson. Poets, philosophers, generals and politicians--William Cullen Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Launt Thompson, William T. Sherman, Charles P. Stone, James Roosevelt, the elder Theodore Roosevelt and John Jay--rounded out the list. His friendships with Richard Morris Hunt and Frederick Law Olmsted thrived in a mutual interest to improve the quality of urban and domestic life.
James belonged to a number of important New York organizations, including the Century Association, the Union League Club, the Players Club, the Grolier Society, and the New York Chamber of Commerce. The Cosmos and Metropolitan Clubs in Washington, D.C. held his memberships as well. These not only nurtured his artistic and intellectual pursuits, but were the engines of power that ran New York and much of the nation in the l9th century.
Into these organizations, and after their college graduations, James brought his sons, Gifford and Amos . The boys soon struck up acquaintances with Theodore Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, Elihu Root, Henry L. Stimson and others -- all inducted by their fathers and all eventually to play major roles in national politics.
James' popularity and contacts made him a natural choice to lobby in Washington for legislation to accept the Statue of Liberty. As a member of the Executive Committee, he helped push through the design and construction of its pedestal on Liberty Island. With others, James founded and was a principal benefactor of both the National Academy of Design and the American Museum of Natural History. He reputedly helped organize the first Model Tenement Associations in the United States to improve living conditions for New York City's poor.
His abhorrence of wastefulness made him a mainstay of the American Forestry Association, which sought as early as 1875 to halt the reckless destruction of natural resources by employing conservative management. With his wife, Mary, he endowed the Yale School of Forestry and established at Milford the first forest experiment station in the nation to encourage the reforestation of denuded lands.
To the town of Milford he donated his former house for a library, the use of Forest Hall for meetings (built for the Yale School of Forestry), land for a cemetery and a design for it prepared at his expense by the Olmsted Brothers in 1906.
James Pinchot's means of gaining wealth were once described as having created no slums, fouled no rivers, corrupted no politicians, wasted no valuable resources and enslaved no workers. His philosophy embraced the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, which defined social good as "the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people."
The Pinchot children adopted the same attitude. With fathers like James Pinchot, it's little wonder the Progressives, a political party which Gifford and Amos helped found, bore no love for "the malefactors of great wealth," as Theodore Roosevelt branded those who pursued private profit at the expense of public good.
One of the chief inheritances Gifford and Amos received from their father was the sense of struggle between right and wrong in the world, that they were among the select few chosen to defend the masses from the corrupt. Their weapons, provided mostly by their parents and relatives, were education, trained wit, contacts and the financial freedom to become crusaders.
- Race: White
- Ethnicity: American
- Race: White
- Updated from District of Columbia Deaths and Burials, 1840-1964 by SmartCopy: Oct 23 2014, 4:32:43 UTC
GreyTowers web site indicates he was buried in Milford Cemetery. http://greytowers.org/pdf/GT_PinchotPlot.pdf
Several biographies exist, including:
http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/IND43743540/PDF
http://www.fs.fed.us/gt/local-links/historical-info/james-mary/jame... Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Aug 23 2019, 0:30:38 UTC
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James Wallace Pinchot's Timeline
| 1831 |
March 15, 1831
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Pennsylvania or France, Pennsylvania, United States
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| 1865 |
August 11, 1865
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Simsbury, Hartford, Connecticut, United States
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| 1868 |
1868
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New York, New York County (Manhattan), New York, USA
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| 1873 |
December 6, 1873
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Paris, Paris, Île-de-France, France
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| 1908 |
January 6, 1908
Age 76
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District Of Columbia, District of Columbia, United States
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| ???? |
Milford Cemetery, Milford, Pike County, Pennsylvania, USA, Milford, Pike County, Pennsylvania, United States
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