William Deering

William Deering (April 25, 1826 – December 9, 1913) was a U.S. business man and philanthropist.

Deering was born in South Paris, Maine; he inherited a woolen mill in Maine, but made his fortune in later life with the Deering Harvester Company.

After retiring and moving to Plano, Illinois to manage a mill for Elijah Gammon, an old friend, Deering bought the company and moved it to Chicago in 1880 to be closer to his home in Evanston. The company pioneered with a harvesting reaper incorporating an automatic twine binder, invented by John Appleby of Beloit, Wisconsin.cite news
url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,755859,00.html
title=Northwestern Harvest
date=February 24 1936
publisher=TIME magazine
accessdate=2007-07-27] Deering was also responsible for building a modern twine factory to supply farmers with sufficient length and quality of twine to work with the binders, a move followed by most competitors. [cite news
url=http://www.howellfarm.org/calendar/wheat/binder_2.htm
title="Shaking Off the Shackles of Manual Toil" - The Story of the Binder
date=Autumn 2001/Winter 2002
publisher=The Furrow (The Friends of Howell Living History Farm)
accessdate=2007-07-27]

The Deering company and the reorganized Plano Harvester Company, which had moved to Pullman, competed aggressively with each other and the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, but in 1902, under his son's direction, all three companies merged with two others to form the International Harvester Company. [cite web
url=http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/29.html
title=Agricultural Machine Industry
work=Encyclopedia of Chicago
publisher=Chicago Historical Society
accessdate=2007-07-27]

He financially supported several institutions of Chicago, the Northwestern University, the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, and the Wesley Hospital among them. He gave Northwestern over $1 million over the years, and served on the university's board for 38 years, including 10 years (1895-1905) as president of the board; he declined an offer to rename the school "Deering University".cite news
url=http://www.northwestern.edu/magazine/northwestern/spring2001/charting_long_feature.htm
title=Charting the Way
author=Kent Cubbage
date=Spring 2001
publisher=Northwestern Magazine
accessdate=2007-07-27]

Deering died in Coconut Grove. He was the father of Charles Deering and James Deering.

References

External links

* [http://www.library.northwestern.edu/archives/findingaids/Deering_papers.pdf William Deering Family Papers, Northwestern University Archives, Evanston, Illinois]