William Bateman Leeds was known as the “Tin Plate King” for his domination of the tin plate industry in late 19th-century America. He began as a florist in Richmond, Indiana, but by the time he died in 1908 he had amassed an estate worth an estimated $40 million dollars (the equivalent to almost a billion dollars today). His son Rudolph changed the course of my family’s history.
William B. Leeds was born in Richmond in 1861. His mother, Hannah Ann (Starr) Leeds, was the daughter of Charles W. Starr, one of Richmond’s early business leaders. Hannah’s brothers were also highly successful as leaders of the Starr Piano Company and other business ventures in Richmond.
William first tried his hand in the floral business. Then Henry Miller, a General Superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, convinced William to join the railroad business in 1883. That same year he married Jeanette Gaar, the daughter of John M. Gaar.
William’s marriage to Jeanette Gaar changed his fortunes forever. Jeanette’s father was one of the owners of Gaar, Scott and Company. Gaar-Scott made tractors and farm implements that were shipped all over the world. When her father died in 1890, Jeanette inherited a good deal of money.
William took the inheritance money and formed a partnership with Daniel Reid to buy a modest tin-plating firm in Richmond. Leeds and Reid quickly began organizing the tin-plate industry. The American tin business had always been overshadowed by Europe, but the McKinley Tariff of 1890 gave American companies an edge and Leeds and Reid took advantage of it.
In 1894, William resigned his position with the Pennsylvania Railroad to focus all his energy on the tin-plate business. Four years later, Leeds and Reid with two more partners formed the American Tin Plate Company, headquartered in Chicago. Although it struggled briefly, eventually this company became hugely successful. It became the largest tin-plate conglomerate in the country; in the age of trusts and monopolies it was one of the biggest.
William divorced Jeanette in August of 1900. It was reported that William paid Jeanette $1,000,000 to secure the divorce–the largest sum ever paid to obtain a divorce in the United States at the time. Within days, William remarried to a younger woman.
William was still the Chairman of the Board of American Tin Plate when it was purchased by U.S. Steel for about $40,000,000 in 1901. William and his partners took the proceeds of this sale and invested them in the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad Company. William became its president.
In 1904, William resigned as president of the railroad. He continued to serve on many corporate boards and have his hands in many businesses. His health, however, began a swift decline. Over the next four years he suffered several strokes, culminating in his death in Paris in 1908 at the age of forty-seven.
William was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. John Russell Pope, the architect of the Jefferson Memorial, designed the Leeds mausoleum. It sat on a 9,452 square foot lot; the tomb itself was 30 feet by 30 feet and was crafted of Tennessee (pink) marble. The inner sarcophagus was of Italian Carrara marble; the lid alone weighed more than 3,000 pounds.
Jeanette Gaar Leeds didn’t want to lose her son. At the end of her seventeen-year marriage to William B. Leeds she was left with $1,000,000 and a teen-aged son named Rudolph.
Jeanette lived in Richmond, Indiana and she wanted her son to live there too. She knew that he would be tempted by the high-flying lifestyle of his father. And if he were to inherit enormous sums of money upon his father’s death, there was little doubt he would leave Richmond for New York or Chicago or his father’s 263-foot yacht.
In 1906–before the death of William–Jeanette took a step to keep Rudolph in Richmond. She bought him a newspaper.
The Richmond Palladium was an old paper; its first edition dated to January 1, 1831. The paper had passed through many different owners in the 75 years before Jeanette Leeds purchased it. It had even changed hands a few times in the previous five years.
When Mrs. Leeds bought the Palladium in 1906, no one could imagine that Rudolph Leeds would be associated with the paper for over 50 years. Rudolph had no academic or practical training in journalism, but he had a passion for politics and the news. His tenure at the head of the Palladium was the longest in the paper’s history.
Mrs. Leeds quickly realized Rudolph needed help managing the paper. She turned to a young man she knew from the Second National Bank in Richmond–a teller who took good care of her in an age when personal service in banking really mattered. That teller was my great grandfather, Edward H. Harris, Sr.
Rudolph Leeds and my great grandfather worked well together, from his hiring in 1910 to his death twenty-seven years later. Through hard work and mergers with smaller papers, they built a newspaper that made a difference. They influenced not only the Richmond community, but the newspaper industry as a whole.
When my great grandfather died in 1937, his son got involved in the newspaper. Then when Mr. Leeds died in 1964, my grandfather became the publisher of the Palladium-Item. When my grandfather died in 1969, my uncle became the publisher until the paper was sold to Gannett in 1976. Even then, my father continued to work at the Palladium-Item until 1981.
My family spent 71 years–most of the twentieth century–in the newspaper business. All because my great grandfather made an impression on Mrs. Leeds and she made a decision to hire him. Through the friendship and partnership of Rudolph G. Leeds, my family’s history was changed forever.