Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 November 1900 — Founded by a Foundling. [ARTICLE]

Founded by a Foundling.

Very curious and romantic are the circumstances under which certain flourishing city enterprises have been founded. For instance, there stands in the heart of Cheapside a noble pile of buildings, occupied by a firm whose name Is a household word throughout the kingdom. The founder of that business was mysteriously dropped on the doorstep of a city church and sent by the authorities to the Foundling Hospital, where he was named after the church in question. He was afterward intrusted to a respectable woman, who undertook to bring him up with her own family. : Soon after this inquirlc I were made at the Foundling Hospital about the boy by a young and beautiful lady, whose name and rank—she was evidently of aristocratic origin—remained shrouded in mystery. A solicitor was ultimately instructed to pay the boy’s foster-mother a certain sum monthly. This continued until he arrived at the age of about 14, when he was taken away, put to a good school and finally started in life. Plucky and pushing, he developed his business until it became one of the finest of its class in the city. He died a wealthy man, without having penetrated the mystery of his birth. —London M. A. P.