Thomas Barbour Bryan
Thomas Barbour Bryan was an American businessman, lawyer, and politician.
Born in Virginia, a member of the prestigious Barbour family on his mother's side, Bryan largely made a name for himself in Chicago, Illinois. Bryan was involved in many ventures in the city, such as the creation of Graceland Cemetery, and was active in the city's politics, having twice been nominated for mayor. Bryan was a strong unionist during the American Civil War. He was instrumental in Chicago being awarded the World's Columbian Exposition, and was involved in the 1893 exposition's organization and operation.
Bryan also played a key role in the development of the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, Illinois, where he resided much of his life. He is often referred to as "The Father of Elmhurst".
In addition to his involvement in Chicago politics, Bryan spent a brief period as a commissioner of the District of Columbia.
Early life, education, and family
Bryan was born in Alexandria, Virginia, on December 22, 1828. His father was Daniel Bryan, and his mother was Mary Thomas Barbour Bryan. Bryan's father was a poet and a lawyer, abolitionist, and statesman who served from 1821 to 1853 as Alexandria's postmaster, and who, from 1818 through 1820 served in the Senate of Virginia.A member of the esteemed Barbour family through his mother, Bryan's maternal uncles were James Barbour and Philip P. Barbour. His maternal grandfather was Thomas Barbour. His nephews through his sister Mariana Thomas Lathrop and her husband included Bryan Lathrop, Barbour Lathrop, and Florence Lathrop Field Page. Bryan would later go form a personal and business relationship with Bryan Lathrop. Through his sister Mary Caroline and her husband Andrew Wylie Jr., one of his nephews was Horace Wylie.
Sources disagree as to whether Bryan's paternal great-uncle was Daniel Boone, as it is unclear whether his father was Boone's nephew. If he is Boone's great-nephew, his paternal grandfather would have been William Bryan and his maternal grandmother had been Mary Boone Bryan.
Bryan was educated at Virginia's top preparatory schools. For four years, Bryan held a clerkship with the post office that his father oversaw. The clerkship paid $300 annually, which Bryan saved up before leaving to attend Harvard University. Bryan graduated from Harvard Law School in 1848. While attending Harvard, he lived in nearby Boston at the house of a German woman who taught him the German language. He would, soon after graduating, publish grammar meant to help Germans learn to read, write, and speak the English language. This grammar received praise from German press and from professors.
Adult life and career
Early career
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Bryan practiced law in Cincinnati until 1852. At one point in his legal career, he was attorney for the estate of deceased president William Henry Harrison.In 1850, in a wedding ceremony held in Newport, Kentucky, Bryan married Jennie "Jane" Byrd Page who became Mrs. Jennie Byrd Bryan. His wife was related, by marriage, to the prominent Page and Lee families of Virginia. She was the daughter of an episcopal clergyman.
Move to Illinois
In 1852, Bryan and his wife moved to Chicago, where he had acquired broad real estate interests. He was also involved in the construction of railroads. Over the next half-century, Bryan would be a booster in the growth of the city. Bryan also established a reputation for himself as a gifted orator.Bryan and his wife Jennie had three children, two of whom would live to adulthood. The son they lost as a child, Daniel Page Bryan, who died on April 12, 1855, at the age of five. Their adult son was Charles Page Bryan, born in 1855, who would have a career as a lawyer, politician, and diplomat. Their daughter, born in 1857, was also named Jennie Byrd Bryan. She would become an artist and philanthropist, and would, in 1913, marry John Barton Payne, adopting his surname.
Bryan's initial residence in Chicago was at 103 Michigan Avenue, near Madison Street. This was, at the time, a fashionable neighborhood. Here, he was neighbors with many prominent Chicagoans, including Matthew Laflin. Shortly after living here, he built a house at the northwest corner of Wabash Avenue and Jackson Street.
Sometime between 1856 and 1859, Bryan settled in Cottage Hill, Illinois, building a 1,000-acre estate there named "Byrd's Nest". While he awaited the completion of this residence, he and his family lived in Cottage Hill's Hill Cottage Tavern, where he befriended the artist George Peter Alexander Healy. Healy would be a lifelong friend, and in 1857 bought the Hill Cottage from Barbour to serve as a residence for his own family, making them neighbors.
Once completed, the Byrd's Nest estate included a 21-room manor, a separate garden house, and a man-made lake. Living there, he would commute daily to Chicago on the Chicago and North Western Railway. In the 1860 United States census, Bryan was recorded to be the wealthiest person in DuPage County, with a net worth said to exceed $325,000. In 1864, he would sell 26 acres of his land to his brother-in-law Jedediah Hyde Lathrop, who built his own estate named "Huntington" on the site.
Bryan would ultimately play an important role in the development of the town of Cottage Hill/Elmhurst. He is often referred to as "The Father of Elmhurst". In 1860, Bryan converted the bowling alley in his Byrd's Nest residence's basement into a chapel space where he invited local residents to hold services. He did so in response to news that a former church building in the city of Chicago was being converted into bowling alley. The chapel was one of the community's first church spaces, and it proved popular enough that he was motivated five years later to erect a separate building on his estate housing a new chapel. The 1865 Byrd's Nest chapel stood where the intersection of Cottage Hill Avenue and St. Charles Road is today. It was demolished in 1914, but its former congregation is a precursor to the town's Church of Our Savior which continues to exist. In 1869, Bryan assembled a number of Cottage Hill residents and proposed the idea of renaming the community to "Elmhurst", a name reflective of the German heritage of many town residents and the many elm trees that Bryan had planted across the community over the course of the preceding ten years. This proposal was successful. That same year, Bryan and his wife Jennie sold 30 acres of their land in Elmhurst to the German Evangelical Synod of the Northwest for $10,000. In 1871, the Synod established the Elmhurst Pro-seminary on the property, a seminary which would eventually become Elmhurst University.
In 1860, Bryan established Chicago's Graceland Cemetery in partnership with William Butler Ogden, Sidney Sawyer, Edwin H. Sheldon, and George Peter Alexander Healy. He had been motivated to establish a new cemetery after being disappointed by the "neglected and actually repulsive condition" of Chicago's City Cemetery when his son Daniel was buried there. He sought to create a "rural burying ground, more remote from and worthy of the city
1860 also saw the opening of Bryan Hall, a music hall which Bryan constructed in Chicago on Clark Street across from the city's courthouse. With a capacity of between 500 and 600 people, it was reported to be the largest hall of its kind in the metropolitan area at the time of its opening. It would remain the city's primary venue until the opening of Crosby's Opera House.
Mayoral campaigns and activism during the Civil War
Bryan was, twice, reluctantly a nominee for mayor of Chicago. In 1861, Bryan was the People's Ticket nominee for mayor of Chicago. He lost the election to Republican Julian Sidney Rumsey by a sizable margin. Bryan had been drafted for mayor by a number of acquaintances to run on what the being dubbed "The People's Ticket". Unaware at the time that he'd be running in opposition to the Republican Party, Bryan reluctantly accepted. He was reported to, ultimately, have seemed somewhat relieved by his ultimate defeat in the polls. He did not desire to be mayor of the city, nor did he want to cause disarray or fractures in the Republican Party at the time that the Civil War was beginning. Bryan was the National Union nominee for the office in 1863, losing by an incredibly narrow margin to incumbent mayor Francis Cornwall Sherman. He originally planned to contest the result over allegations of election fraud by the Democrats, but ultimately did not, not being concerned enough with the results, having been a reluctant candidate to begin with. In his first campaign speech of his 1863 effort, Bryan remarked that while he had not sought nomination, he would accept it in consideration of the cause of union amid the American Civil War, declaring agreement with the platform of the ticket he was nominated on,A strong unionist, during the Civil War, Bryan funded a company of the 105th Infantry Regiment of Illinois Volunteers in the Civil War, named the "Bryan's Blues". He was a member of the Union Defense Committee. He was also president of the Northwestern Sanitary Fair, an event held in 1865 along the Chicago lakefront which raised more than $300,000 for Union soldiers. Interestingly, his wife had incidentally been in the company of Confederate Army general Robert E. Lee, a relative of hers by marriage, just days before the breakout of the Civil War.