Business
Dr. David M. Harkness had a younger brother, Dr. Lamon G. Harkness, who was also a doctor but who became a successful businessman in Bellevue, Ohio. At age twenty-one, after finishing his apprenticeship as a harnessmaker, Stephen Harkness moved to Bellevue, Ohio with his uncle Lamon. Stephen worked for a time in harnessmaking but in 1855 he set up a distillery in Monroeville, Ohio that was a success. In 1864 Stephen formed a partnership with Wm. Halsey Doan to provide crude oil to refineries and that made him a rich man.
In 1866 he sold his Monroeville businesses and moved to Millionaires Row in Cleveland. He organized a bank, The Euclid Avenue National Bank and was president of Belt Mining Company. There, he also invested heavily with Henry Flagler and JD Rockefeller in Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler, the firm that became Standard Oil. Harkness became its second largest shareholder; the company's success made him enormously wealthy. Although Stephen Harkness was a silent partner, he was a member of Standard Oil's Board of Directors until his death in 1888.
Stephen was active in the development of Cleveland, Ohio. He collaborated with Charles Brush and JD Rockefeller to build the Cleveland Arcade one of the first enclosed shopping malls in the United States, modeled after the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Italy.
Read more about this topic: Stephen V. Harkness
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