Businessman
Henry Edwin Sever rose from a penniless farm boy to become the millionaire owner and President of the Riverside Publishing Company whose headquarters were located in Chicago, Illinois. He accumulated a fortune which later was willed, in part, to the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in the amount of $1.3 million dollars for the construction and endowment of the Sever Institute of Technology for engineering sciences at the graduate level.
He was born on a farm near Hurdland in Knox County, Missouri. He was a graduate of Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in Kirksville, Missouri and accepted a position as principal of public schools at Kahoka, Missouri. In the summer months, he was a salesman for John Clark Ridpath's "History of the World" which was popular with the general public. He excelled as a sales agent in Missouri then for the entire United States. He later relocated to St. Louis, Missouri after his marriage and became President of the Riverside Publishing Company which relocated to Chicago in 1896.
Ridpath died in 1900 and Mr. Sever bought the rights to the nine volume world history set and a fifteen-volume history of the United States which was to be as equally popular which attributed to his fortune. Mr. Sever and his wife both died in 1941.
In addition to personal and family bequests, Mr. Sever also made allowances for a public library in Kahoka, Missouri; one to Knox County, Missouri, his birthplace, for a forest preserve and game refuge with large lakes, one being located at Hurdland, Missouri and another at Newark, Missouri. They are both appropriately named "Sever Lake". Certainly, his largest contribution was to Washington University. The cornerstone for the Sever Institute of Technology was laid in 1948 and became occupied by its first students in 1950.
Son of Joel E. and Elizabeth (Shaver) Sever. Husband of May E. (Murphes)Sever. According to Illinois records, May Sever is buried at Oakwood Cemetery, Cook County, Chicago, Ill.
Henry Edwin Sever rose from a penniless farm boy to become the millionaire owner and President of the Riverside Publishing Company whose headquarters were located in Chicago, Illinois. He accumulated a fortune which later was willed, in part, to the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in the amount of $1.3 million dollars for the construction and endowment of the Sever Institute of Technology for engineering sciences at the graduate level.
He was born on a farm near Hurdland in Knox County, Missouri. He was a graduate of Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in Kirksville, Missouri and accepted a position as principal of public schools at Kahoka, Missouri. In the summer months, he was a salesman for John Clark Ridpath's "History of the World" which was popular with the general public. He excelled as a sales agent in Missouri then for the entire United States. He later relocated to St. Louis, Missouri after his marriage and became President of the Riverside Publishing Company which relocated to Chicago in 1896.
Ridpath died in 1900 and Mr. Sever bought the rights to the nine volume world history set and a fifteen-volume history of the United States which was to be as equally popular which attributed to his fortune. Mr. Sever and his wife both died in 1941.
In addition to personal and family bequests, Mr. Sever also made allowances for a public library in Kahoka, Missouri; one to Knox County, Missouri, his birthplace, for a forest preserve and game refuge with large lakes, one being located at Hurdland, Missouri and another at Newark, Missouri. They are both appropriately named "Sever Lake". Certainly, his largest contribution was to Washington University. The cornerstone for the Sever Institute of Technology was laid in 1948 and became occupied by its first students in 1950.
Son of Joel E. and Elizabeth (Shaver) Sever. Husband of May E. (Murphes)Sever. According to Illinois records, May Sever is buried at Oakwood Cemetery, Cook County, Chicago, Ill.
Businessman
Henry Edwin Sever rose from a penniless farm boy to become the millionaire owner and President of the Riverside Publishing Company whose headquarters were located in Chicago, Illinois. He accumulated a fortune which later was willed, in part, to the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in the amount of $1.3 million dollars for the construction and endowment of the Sever Institute of Technology for engineering sciences at the graduate level.
He was born on a farm near Hurdland in Knox County, Missouri. He was a graduate of Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in Kirksville, Missouri and accepted a position as principal of public schools at Kahoka, Missouri. In the summer months, he was a salesman for John Clark Ridpath's "History of the World" which was popular with the general public. He excelled as a sales agent in Missouri then for the entire United States. He later relocated to St. Louis, Missouri after his marriage and became President of the Riverside Publishing Company which relocated to Chicago in 1896.
Ridpath died in 1900 and Mr. Sever bought the rights to the nine volume world history set and a fifteen-volume history of the United States which was to be as equally popular which attributed to his fortune. Mr. Sever and his wife both died in 1941.
In addition to personal and family bequests, Mr. Sever also made allowances for a public library in Kahoka, Missouri; one to Knox County, Missouri, his birthplace, for a forest preserve and game refuge with large lakes, one being located at Hurdland, Missouri and another at Newark, Missouri. They are both appropriately named "Sever Lake". Certainly, his largest contribution was to Washington University. The cornerstone for the Sever Institute of Technology was laid in 1948 and became occupied by its first students in 1950.
Son of Joel E. and Elizabeth (Shaver) Sever. Husband of May E. (Murphes)Sever. According to Illinois records, May Sever is buried at Oakwood Cemetery, Cook County, Chicago, Ill.
Henry Edwin Sever rose from a penniless farm boy to become the millionaire owner and President of the Riverside Publishing Company whose headquarters were located in Chicago, Illinois. He accumulated a fortune which later was willed, in part, to the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri in the amount of $1.3 million dollars for the construction and endowment of the Sever Institute of Technology for engineering sciences at the graduate level.
He was born on a farm near Hurdland in Knox County, Missouri. He was a graduate of Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in Kirksville, Missouri and accepted a position as principal of public schools at Kahoka, Missouri. In the summer months, he was a salesman for John Clark Ridpath's "History of the World" which was popular with the general public. He excelled as a sales agent in Missouri then for the entire United States. He later relocated to St. Louis, Missouri after his marriage and became President of the Riverside Publishing Company which relocated to Chicago in 1896.
Ridpath died in 1900 and Mr. Sever bought the rights to the nine volume world history set and a fifteen-volume history of the United States which was to be as equally popular which attributed to his fortune. Mr. Sever and his wife both died in 1941.
In addition to personal and family bequests, Mr. Sever also made allowances for a public library in Kahoka, Missouri; one to Knox County, Missouri, his birthplace, for a forest preserve and game refuge with large lakes, one being located at Hurdland, Missouri and another at Newark, Missouri. They are both appropriately named "Sever Lake". Certainly, his largest contribution was to Washington University. The cornerstone for the Sever Institute of Technology was laid in 1948 and became occupied by its first students in 1950.
Son of Joel E. and Elizabeth (Shaver) Sever. Husband of May E. (Murphes)Sever. According to Illinois records, May Sever is buried at Oakwood Cemetery, Cook County, Chicago, Ill.
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