Chauncey Rose
Chauncey Rose[1] was born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, to Scottish immigrants on December 24, 1794.
Two of his brothers, George and John, went on to successful business careers in Charleston, South Carolina,and New York City, respectively.
Rose was educated in the common schools of his Connecticut district, and at the age of 23 headed west to the states of Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama to find a suitable place to enter into business.
As his revenue grew, Rose expanded into other investment realms in nearby Terre Haute in Vigo County, which was developing into the commerce center of the region.
Rose was instrumental in getting the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers under Major Cornelius A. Ogden, supervisors of the construction the Cumberland Road, to relocate their headquarters from Indianapolis to Terre Haute.
Rose then constructed a fine hotel east of the village, called The Prairie House, so that Ogden and other West Point graduates associated the Corps of Engineers would have a superb residence.
In 1865 Chauncey Rose decided to have an artesian well drilled in the court of Terre Haute House.
[5] Following a six-year stretch overseeing milling operations in Parke County, Rose moved back to Terre Haute to expand his businesses and became quite successful.
His profits were in turn reinvested in real estate, and he amassed an even larger fortune, some of which he subsequently invested in railroads.
His real estate was in Vigo and Sullivan Counties mostly coal lands and city lots in the Chauncy Rose addition in Terre Haute.
The Terre Haute & Richmond Railroad had been chartered by the Indiana state legislature on January 26, 1847.
[9] It was to construct a railroad across Indiana from Terre Haute to Richmond through Indianapolis roughly following the route of the National Road.
[20] The section from Vincennes to Terre Haute, 58 miles built under WD Griswold and Chauncey Rose, was opened to through traffic on November 23, 1853[21] and completed in 1854.
It built north to connect with the Terre Haute & Alton at Wood River, IL.
In 1866 and 1867, the Bee Line offered to buy the TH&I, but Rose preferred the Indiana Central.
In 1857, Illinois finally agreed to charter the Vandalia Line but construction was delayed by the Panic of 1857 and the Civil War.
The entire line was operated by the Terre Haute & Indianapolis under lease until 1905, when the two companies were merged into the Vandalia Railroad part of the Pennsylvania Main Line, Pittsburgh to St. Louis[35] In 1976, both the New York Central and the Pennsylvania were taken into Conrail.
Both had fewer curves than the lines built by Rose and associates in the early days of railroading.
As part of the merger agreement, it sold the Evansville line to the Louisville & Nashville in 1969.
After a railroad earned its construction cost and a reasonable return, the state could regulate its tolls.
[38] Upon the death of his brother John, Chauncey learned that he was the sole heir to an estate worth $1,600,000.
Chauncey distributed his brother’s money, totaling $1,500,000 to various charities, mostly in the New York area.
Rose was equally generous with his money in Terre Haute, where his philanthropic activities were reported in an 1875 New York Times article to have exceeded $2,000,000 in currency of that day.
Among his numerous benefactors were the Providence Hospital, the Free Dispensary and the Rose Orphan Asylum, to whom he endowed enough money to ensure it would remain permanent.
The cornerstone for the college was laid on September 11, 1875, but it did not begin operations until March 5, 1883, long after Rose's death.
Rose organized it as the Terre Haute School of Industrial Sciences with an initial endowment of $500,000, so that “this institution has a productive capital, exclusive of buildings”.
Other name ties resulting from posthumous commemorative changes by his grateful recipients.
