John "George" MacBeth Glessner

John George Macbeth Glessner was the founder of International Harvester Corporation. A Chicago industrialist, he kept a summer estate in the White Mountains of New Hampshire (Bethlehem, NH, where he is buried), which is still maintained today by the Society for Protection of New Hampshire Forest, as the Rocks Estate.

Glessner House

John George Macbeth Glessner, the oldest child and only surviving son of John and Frances Glessner, was born October 2, 1871, just a week before the Great Chicago Fire raged a block from John Glessner’s office but left the family’s house on Park Avenue untouched. Three years later, Frances gave birth to their second son, John Francis. When the baby died at eight months old, George asked that the name John be attached to the front of his own name.

An early case of hay fever left George in delicate health. The family’s doctor advised the Glessners to spend the summer hay fever season away from Chicago, someplace where George would be free from it. In 1884, John Glessner began building an estate in New Hampshire, on land he had purchased the previous year. The Rocks became a wonderland for George and the Glessners’ summer home; the family spent nearly five months of the year there.

George’s hay fever also resulted in a series of tutors at home. He was, by all accounts, a precocious learner. In 1884, George printed a collection of poems and photographs in a volume entitled The Little Joker. He also loved tinkering with anything mechanical. George installed a telegraph in the houses of six nearby friends so that they could communicate with each, as well as a fire signal repeater so that he would be notified of the excitement of any area fire.

Photography was George’s lifelong passion. He owned at least three different cameras and developed many of his photos in his chemical laboratory in the basement of Glessner House. Within the first year that the family lived on Prairie Avenue (1887-88), George extensively documented the house and its contents. He kept meticulous records with detailed labels on each photograph and negative, and his photographs were used during the restoration of the house.

After graduating from Harvard in 1893, George joined his father at Warder, Bushnell and Glessner, first as a purchasing agent and, later, as an assistant manager. He married Alice Hamlin in June 1898. The couple had four children: Elizabeth (1899), Frances (1900), John (1902), and Emily (1904). In 1902, with the organization of International Harvester, George was named utility manager of the company. He would come to play a major role in the management of The Rocks, the Glessner’s New Hampshire estate, which employed over seventy people. In 1916 George and Alice eventually settled permanently on The Rocks property in a new home they built named The Ledge. In New Hampshire, George got involved in politics, representing the town of Bethlehem in the state legislature for four terms, between 1913 and 1927. At the same time, he oversaw the operations of the Bethlehem Electric Company and the Lisbon Light and Power Company.

In December 1928, George contracted influenza while he and Alice were visiting their daughter Frances in Paris. His health improved but appendicitis and pneumonia soon followed. He died in January 1929.

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