Horatio Hollis Hunnewell (1810-1902)

He was born at Watertown, Massachusetts, and was a first cousin of Adeline, the wife of Samuel Welles, to whom he owed his start in life. He was educated at Watertown and in 1825 at the age of fifteen went to Paris, France, in the employ of the famous American banking house, Welles & Co. Ten years later on Christmas Eve, 1835, he was married there to Isabella Welles, daughter of one of the senior partners, John Welles, and a niece of the bank's founder, Samuel Welles. In the same year, he was admitted as a partner in the bank and he remained in Paris until 1839 when - much to the upset of both him and his wife - a financial crisis necessitated his return to America, representing the bank in Boston where he became the owner of considerable real estate.

In 1860, he founded the mercantile firm of H.H. Hunnewell & Sons and quickly "drifted" into building railroads in the west, notably in Kansas. He was President of the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Gulf Railroad, and the Kansas City, Lawrence & Southern Railroad. He was Vice-President of the Michigan Central Railroad and was a director of the Illinois Central Railroad from 1862 to 1871; the Hannibal & St. Joseph; the St. Joseph & Council Bluffs; the Chicago, Dubuque, Minnesota; the Wisconsin Valley; the Old Colony; the Chicago & West Michigan; and, the Detroit, Lansing & Northern Railroad. At the time of his death he was worth "several millions of dollars" and he was a director of 12-railroads, several financial institutions in Boston, and numerous mining and real estate companies.

In 1860, he built his winter home at 126 Beacon Street in Boston. His wife inherited land at Natick, Massachusetts, where her grandfather (Samuel Welles) had started buying up land in the 1760s. Hunnewell added to their existing property until he had amassed an estate of 600-acres that he named "Wellesley" in honor of his wife's family. In 1852, he built a magnificent mansion there (see images - still occupied by his descendants today) on the shore of Lake Waban for use as his summer home as well as further mansions for seven of his eight children - now known as the Hunnewell Estates Historic District. In 1881, the town of West Needham officially changed its name to Wellesley, for the Hunnewell estate.

According to an old resident of Wellesley, "when leaving here for his winter home (in Boston), Hunnewell would go to our old town clerk, Solomon Flagg, and say to him, 'be sure to not allow anyone to suffer during cold weather. Send them whatever they need and I will pay the bill.' Hunnewell and Flagg were the only ones that knew whose was the helping hand." A passionate horticulturalist, he funded the conifer collection at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston and paid for the construction of the arboretum's administration building, the Hunnewell Building. He built the Eliot dormitory and endowed the Chair of Botany at Wellesley College and in Wellesley itself he built the Town Hall and the Free Library as well gifting the town 10-acres of adjoining parkland. He is credited for introducing (and popularizing) rhododendrons to the States and - with Nathaniel Thayer - for introducing "Real Tennis" to the States following a trip to England in 1876. The topiary garden that he laid out on his estate at Wellesley was also the first of its kind in America.