The Thing and the Big Boss

2007-07-19T18:26:00.000-04:00

A post-mortem article on Edward Robinson Squibb, M. D. in the American Journal of Pharmacy from September 1901 lists his two sons as assuming command of the pharmaceutical business he founded in 1858. The company name was changed to E.R. Squibb and Sons. While it is not uncommon for sons to succeed in their father's work, this was not to be the case for Charles.

Charles Fellows Squibb (hereafter C.F.) was born on June 16, 1858 to Edward Robinson Squibb and Caroline Cook Squibb a few months before his father started his pharmaceutical company. C.F. graduated from Harvard in 1881. He married Margaret Dodge, and together they had seven children. At the end of the nineteenth century, they moved from Brooklyn to Bernardsville, NJ where they lived a lavish life for a period of about fifteen years. This was possible only because of his father's industry. The known events of C.F.'s life are deeply rooted in his father's story.

Edward Robinson Squibb (hereafter E.R.) was born
on July 5th, 1819 in Wilmington, Delaware, although he
claimed the 4th as his birth date. His parents, James Robinson and Catharine Harrison Squibb, had five children, three girls and two boys. In 1831, the girls died within days of each other, as a result of an unnamed disease. E.R.'s mother died the following year. He was thirteen years old. Five years later, his father had a stroke and needed to be cared for like a child. From then on, E.R. was raised by his two Quaker grandmothers, Sarah Laycock Bonsal and Mary Hamilton Squibb, in Philadelphia. He attended Jefferson Medical College, graduated in 1845, and practiced medicine until he joined the Navy in 1847 as Assistant Surgeon. During his ten years in the Navy, E.R. experienced repeatedly the poor
quality of the medicines available then. When the Navy formed a pharmaceutical laboratory to manufacture its' most needed drugs, E.R. was made the assistant director. It was here he began his life's work to create pure pharmaceuticals. His first success was the discovery of a distillation method to create ether of a consistent strength and
less combustibilty.

Sarah Laycock Bonsal and Mary Hamilton Squibb
E.R. Squibb's grandmothers

In 1852, the same year as the death of his father and his grandmother Squibb, E.R. married Caroline Lownds Cook. His journal notes her beauty and her ready laugh as well as her keen interest in clothing and jewels. "When she visited Dr. Squibb's quarters - properly chaperoned ...she admired the wrong works of art, did not show great enthusiasm over the Bohemian glass, and made facetious remarks"(80). (Doctor Squibb - A Rugged Idealist by Leonard G. Blochman, Simon and Scuster, NY 1958) However, E.R. was smitten. He had written earlier that "no man's character can be foretold or judged of fairly until it has been subjected to the modifying influence of the woman he marries." Their first son, Edward H., was born on September 30, 1853.

E.R. resigned from the Navy on December 1, 1857 and moved to Louisville, Kentucky where his second son, C. F., was born the following year. By September, he had returned to Brooklyn and opened his own laboratory on Furman Street. This was the official beginning of E.R. Squibb & Sons. On Christmas Eve of the same year, a young assistant caused a volatile ether fire in the laboratory. In an effort to save his journals, Squibb crossed the flames and caught fire himself. He fought for his life for weeks but gradually recovered. His face was badly scarred and his eyelids permanently turned back. Although he did not lose his sight, he had to wear special protective glasses and tape his eyes shut in order to sleep. Later, one of his hands was amputated, according to his own specification. Despite this setback, E.R. was undeterred and borrowed the resources to rebuild his laboratory by the end of 1859.

The business succeeded because the pharmaceuticals he produced were of a superior quality. When the Civil War began in 1861, Squibb was in production around the clock, and eventually built a larger facility on Doughty Street in Brooklyn. He published his findings and never patented any formulas. He believed scientific information should be public, not secret. His third child, Mary, experienced this principle in action. E.R. had opened his laboratory to Dr. Merck, a competitor, and shared all his procedures, including a detailed description with drawings of his ether distillation process. Two years later, he went to visit the Merck laboratory in Germany. He was shown only two rooms, while others were clearly closed to his inspection. Afterwards, Mary asked him if he regretted exposing his work so thoroughly to Dr. Merck.
"No, daughter," E.R. replied, "that's not the right spirit to have about information which belongs to the world. If thee feels that way thee is just like Dr. Merck. He has probably set up an ether apparatus like ours and didn't want me to see it. I hope he is making better ether with it than he has been doing heretofore"(659). (The Journal of Edward Robinson Squibb, M.D., private printing, 1930)
E.R. published many articles on his work. Digital copies of two of them are now available courtesy of Google: Advice upon epidemic cholera and Disinfectants.

I n 1863, E.R. bought land on Columbia Street in Brooklyn Heights and oversaw the building of his first real home during 1864, the year his
daughter, Mary King, was born. E. R. lived in No. 152 and raised his family there. In 1883, he paid $46,000 to have two more houses built for his sons, Edward and Charles. The backyards of these homes faced the promendade with an exquisite view of Manhattan. Only No. 152 remains. The other two structures were demolished when the IRT was built.

E.R. took an active role in the education and the ethical upbringing of his children. Although he did not enjoy the task, he was a strict disciplinarian and would whip them if they did not live up to his standards, especially for lying. Thirty years later C.F. recalled, "In his office there used to be two brown iron hospital beds on which he, and I think my brother, occasionally slept. In one bookcase on top of the books was a rawhide with which he used to castigate me (I never remember my brother being punished). His navy training taught him the value of corporal punishment. I never could see it. He laid on ten cracks like a boatswain but always with tears in his eyes which hurt me as bad as the rawhide" (177). (DS - LGB)

A clear impression of C.F as the lesser son builds through glimpses into E.R.'s journal.

For Christmas in 1868, E.R. gave the boys memorandum books with the hope "it may tend to make Charles more careful and systematic, for he is very heedless though not intentionally bad" (215). (DS-lgb)

Two years later, C.F. earned a serious whipping for a collection of lies he told to the school principal.

By 1871, E.R. thought the children had all improved, but C.F. "still bids fair to be a generous good fellow liked by all but of no great use to himself or anybody else, with just enough weight to keep out of absolute vice" (244-245). (DS - lgb)

C.F. joined his brother at Harvard in 1877. They tried rooming together, but by the second semester, his brother complained that C.F. was "disturbed in his studies by the girls in the house, not through any fault of theirs but by his own inclination" (260-261). (DS -lgb).

C. F. graduated in 1881, although his father felt, "he has not worked up to his ability, and I feared he might not get through. He has not been either lazy, idle, or dissolute but simply too full of other occupations" (262). (DS - lgb)

E.R. questioned educating C.F. at Harvard. He thought "C.F. had acquired a set of tastes and habits gentlemanly enough in themselves, but had acquired no appetite for any work that would ever enable him to gratify them" (288). (DS - lgb)

Now that the boys had finished college, they were hired by their father to work in the laboratory at $10.00 per week. E.R. became The Big Boss, but his health was beginning to fail. He gave power of attorney to his son, Ed, and sailed for Europe with his daughter and Margie Dodge, C.F.'s fiance, in 1885. When he returned in 1886, he was distressed to see the changes that had been made in the houses he built for his sons, by C.F.'s picky taste especially. In 1890, E.R. made a second trip to Europe. He was advised to go abroad again and did in 1897. On October 25, 1900, E.R. Squibb died at home from a coronary occlusion.

In 1887, C.F. married Margie Dodge. They honeymooned at the West Point Hotel, where his father and bride has also gone after their wedding. Margie had four children during the time they lived in Brooklyn: Robinson, Margaret, Catherine, and John.

C.F. believed his father thought he and his brother were not capable of managing the business. He was right. His brother followed the example set by his father, but C.F. had different ideas which his father and his brother disagreed with. C.F. recommended they incorporate to generate support for the family through stocks. E.R. did not want to divide the ownership of the company. C.F.'s idea to replace the horse-drawn wagon delivery with a Manhattan showroom had ballooned out of proportion. One employee became thirteen while The Big Boss was away. During E.R.'s last trip abroad, C.F. sold his Brooklyn townhouse to his brother and moved to Bernardsville, New Jersey.

Bernardsville was a small rural village dedicated to agriculture. Like many towns in New Jersey, it was a location of significance during the Revolutionary War. After the Civil War, wealthy New York families began to build their summer mansions on Bernardsville Mountain, and in 1890 a railroad spur was extended from Summit through Bernardsville to Peapack-Gladstone. This made it possible to commute to New York City via the Hoboken ferry! This photograph showing the center of Bernardsville was taken in 1898. A flag pole still marks the intersection of five roads, and the stone hotel in the distance is currently being restored.

This house C.F. named Welwood. It was orginally built in 1765, one of the earliest homes in Bernardsville. Although already over 130 years old when purchased by Squibb in 1899, such provenance did not stop him from making lavish changes. With the help of architect, William Post, they added another house and a half to the existing structure complete with columns, a balcony, and a porte cochere. It seems safe to assume Squibb liked to live large. Perhaps,
his father was right about his extravagant tastes. In Bernardsville, he and Margie added three more children to their family: Elizabeth, Paul, and Isabel.

In addition to a grand house with lots of acreage and out buildings, C.F. purchased a number of polo ponies and set about learning to jump. He insisted his children do the same. He wanted to maintain the lifestyle of the landed gentry in Somerset Hills and riding to the hounds was one of their most prized sports.

On the left: C.F. struggles to jump his horse.

On the right: his three oldest children engaged in the same pursuit.

I wonder if this is why he earned the name
of "The Thing" from insisting his children to do as he wanted them to do. Was he more like his old man than he might ever admit?

With E.R.'s death, his sons had to run the business, but first they needed to agree how to proceed. C. F. had many newfangled ideas about improving sales, including advertisements which his father considered a sin. His brother wished to continue as his father always had. They both recognized that they could not effectively manage the business with their differing views. Three years later they sold the business as part of an expansion plan, and C.F. was no longer involved. They bought him out.

C.F. tried to set up a distillery in Jersey City which failed. He pursued medical experiments on a very small scale, using alum to cure wounds. I remember a series of pictures of a sway-backed carriage horse with a great gaping wound along his spine. In each picture we see improvement until the gash is healed. His extravagant lifestyle ate through his money quickly. Within 13 years he was forced to sell Welwood and move his family into a smaller farmhouse down the road. Not long thereafter, he went to France to start a small chemical company. He lived there through World War II, and never returned to the United States, until his second daughter, Catherine, brought his remains home.

At least, I think he never returned. None of his children, including my grandmother, Catherine as well as Aunt Marg, Uncle John and Uncle Paul, ever talked about The Thing. While researching through piles of photographs and letters, I came across a small photo of C.F. taken in the 30's in an instant photo booth. A few minutes later, I found a whole strip of similar photos of his wife, Margie, tucked into an envelope. These may have been taken in different places and at different times. But perhaps they were together for a visit or exchanged them by mail. I intend to find out.

Thing and The Big Boss

The Thing and the Big Boss