While at Standard, he founded another company, mining sulfur, and because it held the patent on the Frasch process it too monopolized a profitable industry.

He was a church elder and in 1904 the vice moderator of its General Assembly; he paid for chapels in Cleveland, as well as missions, colleges, and hospitals in Asia.

[14] His son-in-law wrote "While his philanthropies were very broad and he responded to appeals of every sort, he seems to have been dominated by one fundamental idea,—the building up of the Christian church.

"[15] The year after he joined the Commercial National Bank, a friend from his church introduced Severance to the Norwalk belle Fannie Buckingham Benedict (1839–1874).

[5] In 1894, he married the equally rich Florence Severance (1857–1895), the only surviving daughter of Standard Oil millionaires Stephen and his second wife, Anna Harkness.