Samuel Ryder

Samuel Ryder (24 March 1858 - 2 January 1936) was an English entrepreneur and golf enthusiast. He originated the idea of selling garden seeds in "penny packets" and built a very successful business on the concept. After funding an international golf competition in 1926, he sponsored the Ryder Cup, donating a gold trophy for the first biennial golf championship between the best of professional golfers in the United States and the United Kingdom in 1927.

Early life

Ryder was born at Walton-le-Dale near Preston, Lancashire. He was the fourth of the eight children of Samuel Ryder (1823/4–1904), a gardener, and Elizabeth (née Martin) (1822/3–1904), a dressmaker. He had three elder and two younger sisters, and two younger brothers. He trained as a teacher at Owen's College in Manchester (now Manchester University) but did not graduate due to ill health.

Ryder first worked at a shipping firm in Manchester, and then for his father, whose business has expanded to include a Nursery, florist, and seed merchant. Friction with his father led Ryder to move south to London to join a rival seed merchant.

He married Helen Mary (nee Barnard), known as Nellie, on 20 November 1890. Their two daughters, Marjorie and Joan, were born in 1893 and 1895.

Business and civic career

In the 1890s, Ryder started to sell packets of seeds through the post, priced at one penny each. Other seed merchants also made postal sales, but their packets were much more expensive. He started selling from his home in St Albans, which had good mainline railway connections. He kept his stock in the garden shed of his terraced house on Folly Lane, and was assisted by his wife and daughter. The packets would be posted each Friday so that his customers, working men, would receive them for their time off on Saturday afternoons. The business grew rapidly and Ryder became wealthy. Eventually, the business moved to a large packaging workshop on Holywell Hill, employing around 100 staff. He established a separate herb business, Heath and Heather, with his brother James in 1922. In 1924, the company moved to a former hat factory, which had a floor area of some 24,000 square feet.

He was a committed Christian. He had been a Sunday school teacher in Sale in his youth, and became president of the Mid-Hertfordshire Sunday School Union in 1911. He joined the Independent Chapel in Spicer Street in 1895, the only Congregational Church in St Albans at that time. He assisted the minister, Rev. William Carson, to persuade the church deacons to build a new and larger Congregational church building - Trinity - on the corner of Beaconsfield Road and Victoria Street. When the new church opened on 8 October 1903, there was a civic procession and service at the church. Despite this, there was a significant divide between the Anglicans (Church of England) and the Non-conformists, which was accentuated in St Albans - adherents of each denomination would not trade with the other. Ryder was a Deacon at Trinity Congregational Church (now Trinity United Reformed Church) until he resigned in 1922.

He was elected to the St Albans town council in 1903, as a Liberal. He was Mayor of St Albans in 1905, and remained a councillor until 1916. When elected Mayor in 1905, he surprised his fellow councillors by a tough and uncomplimentary assessment of the lack of achievement of the Council.

Golf

Ryder enjoyed cricket in his early life, but seems to have played little sport in adult life until he was 50 years old. After a period of ill health in 1908, Ryder's friend Frank Walker, preacher at Trinity Congregational Church, suggested that Ryder take up golf as a way to get more fresh air. He became an enthusiastic amateur, quickly securing a single-figure handicap and joining the Verulam Club, where he served on the greens committee for 20 years. He made large donations to the club, and became captain in 1911. He was also captain of the Stratford-on-Avon golf club in 1929 and 1930.

His companies sponsored golf tournaments, including an international match held at Wentworth in June 1926, before The Open that year, between a team representing the United State and another representing Britain and Ireland. Ryder suggested that the competition should become a regular event, and he donated a £250 gold trophy, the Ryder Cup, which was first contested in Worcester, Massachusetts, in June 1927. Ryder attended the matches at Moortown and Southport in 1929 and 1933, presenting the trophy to the winning British captains.

Later life

Ryder suffered from poor health in later life, and spent some time in South Africa and with his elder daughter Marjorie in Rhodesia, where she had emigrated. He died at the Langham Hotel in Portland Place, London, the family's traditional Christmas holiday residence. After a funeral at Trinity Congregational Church in St Albans, he was buried in Hatfield Road Cemetery. His younger daughter Joan took over the management of his companies after his death.

References

* cite news
author=
title=Sam Ryder's Cup
date=1999-09-13
work=BBC News
url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sport/golf/422650.stm
accessdate=2008-08-09. "BBC News", September 13, 1999. Accessed February 19, 2007.
* [http://www.golf-online.biz/info94.asp Samuel Ryder] . Golf Online. Accessed February 19, 2007.
* [http://www.trinitystalbans.org.uk/history.html History of Trinity URC, St Albans]
* [http://www.spicerstreet.org.uk/historyic.html History of the Independent Chapel, Spicer Street, St Albans]
* Wray Vamplew, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/58847 Ryder, Samuel (1858–1936)] , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition, Oxford University Press, October 2007; accessed 17 September 2008.