Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-02-07
WILL ADOPT 1000
CHILDREN IN TIME
Charles Page, Millionaire, De-
votes Fortune TO Widows
and Orphans.
BOYHOOD PROMISE TO
HIS WIDOWED MOTHER
Endows City for orphange and
Widows Cottages-Does Not
Know Own Wealth.


girls he is preparing TO care for 100
poor widows.
For the care of the seventy chill
dren he has built a large home on a
wooded hill. 1t is crowded to its ca
pacity with boys and girls. He is
getting ready to build this winter an
other home that will house 200 chill
dren, and when that is finished he
will begin building more homes I'M
til he has accommodations for 1000.
He has already built eight houses
for poor widows, has four more IN
der construction and will have 100
built this winter. Each house will
have two rooms, furnished with free
gas for heating and cooking. free wa
ter, free electric light and a garden
plot.
The seventy boys and girls have
an eighty-acre park for playground,
a lake of fourteen acres for swim
ming and boating, a wading pool for
the smaller ones. lawn swings and all
sorts of contrivances for their amuse-
ment a hospital a geological gar
den, a kindergarten and a grade
school, and q $4,000 high school, IN
which they will finish their educa-
ton when they are old enough to at
tend it,
III duQltiDl u lilAS MI. dGt has
the plans drawn and will build this
winter a hospital that will be in
charge of some of the greatest sur
& geons and specialists in this country.
Those who are able to pay will do so;
but any person in America who is too
poor to pay may come to this hospi-
tai and be operated upon by the
greatest surgeons in the world. and
nursed back TO health free of any
cost whatever
To maintain these institutions and
keep them going forever Mr.. Page
has created q great endowment fund,
the foundation of which is nearly all
of his vast holdings of real estate,
gas lands, oil wells, railroads and
other properties, aggregatfng several
million dollars in value.
And who is this man Page who has
more adopted children than any other
man in the world?
Forty-five years ago. when Charles
Page was a boy of ten. his father
died, leaving a widow and seven chill
dren His father had been in the
teaming business in Stevens Point,
Wis. He was sick for year before
be died and in that year his teams
were sold to pay doctors and buy
medicine
The widow. with the house fun of
small children, had hard time Of it.
One day while she was doing the
washing for a neighboring family,
and had stopped a minute TO rest,
the boy who is now a millionaire
stood before her and watched the
tears running down her cheeks.
You just wait, mama, till l get to
be big man, and rich. and you
won't have to wash any more, nor
any other woman won't, either. I'll
take care of all the poor widows and
orphans" the little fellow said.
Edward Page, brother of Charles,
says he remembers well that Incl
dent, and of how his mother grabbed
Charles in her arms and Rugged him
70 her and wept all the more.
Down to His Last Cent.
When he had grown big enough
Charles became a messenger boy for
the Wisconsin Central Railway. and
then he became a brakeman, and later
on a railroad fireman. Every dollar
he earned above expenses in those
days went To his widowed mother and
her fatherless children.
Charles drifted West to the Pacific
coast, worked in the gold mines in
Idaho. was hungry many time and
penniless for weeks.
He drifted eastward to the oil fields
of Colorado and seven years ago came
to Chandler, Okla. with 5000 in cash.
which he soon lost in the oil fields
near Chandler
Then oil was discovered in the IA
nous Glen Pool field, south of Tulsa,
and Page went to a spot near there
with $4,000 he raised by mortgaging
a piece of property i'm Colorado.
If the we'll he had bought should
turn out to be a dry hole he would
be broke again But one day. when
he had about made up his mind that
there was no oil there. he struck the
oil sand
He knew that a few feet more of
drilling would reach oil and he
stopped the work. told his workmen
that it WAS undoubtedly a dry hole"
and paid them off and let them go.
500 Day.
The next day Page went alone to
the derrick. set the machinery going
and drilled down through a few feet
of oil sand. when suddenly the rich
oil came gushing out. He pulled out
his drill, plugged the well sn the
oil would not flow and apparently
abandoned it.
The next few weeks he spent in
getting oil leases on the land sur
rounding his well in all directions.
and when he had secured these he
went back to his well, unplugged it,
and invited every one to come and
see it.
1t was a wonderful well. 1t flowed
1000 barrels Of oil dav and every
barrel of it worth thirty-five cents
in cash at the well, an income of
$500 a DAY for Page. minus one-eiehth
of the product. which went to the
owner of the land as his share.
He drilled other wells on the land
he had leased and they were good