Stephen V. Harkness invests heavily with his…
1866 CE
Harkness will become its second largest shareholder; the company's success will make him enormously wealthy.
Born in Fayette, New York, Stephen is the son of Dr. David Harkness and his first wife who died in 1820.
His father had relocated to the Western Reserve region of Northeast Ohio, settling in Milan, where he had remarried to Elizabeth Caldwell Morrison.
David Harkness had died in 1825 and his widow later returned to Seneca County, New York where she remarried to the Reverend Isaac Flagler, a Presbyterian minister in Milton, New York with whom she had a son, Henry Flagler.
David Harkness had a younger brother, Lamon Harkness, who was also a doctor but who became a successful businessman in Bellevue, Ohio.
Stephen Harkness had moved to Bellevue, Ohio at age twenty-one after finishing his apprenticeship as a harnessmaker.
He had worked for a time in harnessmaking but in 1855 had set up a distillery in Monroeville, Ohio that was a success.
Within a few years, he had organized a bank and in 1864 had formed a partnership with Wmilliam Halsey Doan to provide crude oil to refineries; this had made him a rich man.
Harkness sells his Monroeville businesses in 1866 and moves to Millionaires Row in Cleveland.
He organizes The Euclid Avenue National Bank and is president of Belt Mining Company.
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