William Osborn McDowell

William O. McDowell (1845 - 1927), a financeer and businessman, was also a founder and member of numerous patriotic and international organizations, and a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913. His business ventures included railroads, mining and land speculation. He reorganized the Montclair Railroad (N.J.), the New York, Ontario and Western Railroad of New Jersey, and the Midland Railroad of New Jersey, and consolidated many others. He was president of the San Antonio Silver Mining Company of Nevada, the Patent Company of Newark and New York, the Coal and Iron Exchange and the Greenwood Lake Improvement Company.

He was a founder of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, the Sons of the American Revolution, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Order of the American Eagle. He raised money to complete the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, lobbied for the establishment of a national university in Washington, D.C., and initiated the Columbian Liberty Bell project, which sent a replica of the Liberty Bell on tour throughout the U.S. He founded the Cuban American League of the U.S., which supported Cuban independence, and the Pan Republic Congress, which strove for the standardization of international weights and measures, customs regulations, and the resolution of international disputes. His interest in international affairs led him to become a leader in the universal peace movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, founding the Human Freedom League, and the League of Peace, a forerunner of the United Nations.

McDowell was the founder of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). The founding of the SAR was, and still is, a matter of controversy. The SAR had its origins in McDowell's efforts to found the New Jersey Society of the Sons of the Revolution (SR) in 1889. The SR was organized in New York in December 1883 and required that any societies founded in other states would be subordinate to the New York Society. A key philosophical difference between the two organizations was that the SR saw itself as an elite social organization whereas McDowell wanted the organization to become a mass movement with broad and generous membership requirements. As McDowell was unwilling to accept the subordination of the New Jersey society to the New York Society the result was that McDowell founded the SAR on April 30th, 1889. Almost one year later, on April 19th, 1890, the three existing societies of the SR (New York, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia) founded of the General Society of the Sons of the Revolution.

McDowell was also instrumental in the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in 1890. This again led to a schism in 1891 when Flora Adams Darling (Vice Regent of the DAR) resigned from the DAR to form the Daughters of the Revolution (DR) which would not accept collateral descendants as members. Mrs. Darling's actions were prompted by McDowell's ambition to exploit the SAR and DAR as organizations on which to build a presidential campaign.

Also, William O. McDowell’s wife, Josephine Timanus McDowell (1850-1921), and their children, Pauline T. Akins (b. 1874), Nora McDowell Culver (d. 1944), Rachel Kollock McDowell (1880-1949), Malcolm McDowell (1880-1920), William Timanus McDowell, Ezra Osborne McDowell (1886-1979) and Eulilee McDowell Cook. Rachel was a reporter for The Newark Evening News (1902), religious news editor of the New York Herald (1908), and became the first religious news editor of the New York Times in 1920, where she remained in that position until 1948. She lectured on religion across the country and on radio, and wrote a weekly article for The Presbyterian. She was also founder of the Pure Language League for newspaper writers, to discourage the use of blasphemous and profane language.