522                                                               AMERICA'S    SUCCESSFUL   MEN.

to a prominent position in the financial world. Mr. Bostwick having opened a branch
house in Cleveland, in which city oil refining was then mainly carried on, placed his
young assistant in charge of it, and during Mr. Pouch's stay of five years in Cleveland,
he made the business the largest of its class there. In 1871, he returned to Brook¬
lyn and identified himself with The Standard Oil Co., as a shareholder and active man¬
ager, and has since been at the head of the crude oil export department. He is now
president of The American Dock & Trust Co. ^ which with a capital of $1,000,000 was
organized to build warehouses for the storage of cotton and to loan money on cotton.
It has been exceedingly successful and handles about one third of the cotton stored in
this port. He was one of the chief promoters of The Brooklyn Elevated Railroad and
treasurer of the construction company, and followed that enterprise by purchasing
large parcels of real estate in the i8th and 25th Wards and other parts of Brooklyn.
He has since sold much of this property to advantage. He has been a director of The
Hamilton Trust Co., and is a member of the Union League club of Brooklyn and
notable for his purchase of the Graves mansion and its conversion into an art gallery.
CHARLES PRATT, merchant, born in Wilbraham, Mass., Oct. 2, 1830, died at his
office. No. 26 Broadway, New York, May 4, 1891. He was one of the ten children of
a hard working cabinet maker. At the age of ten, the lad found work on a farm near
Boston and spent three years in this employment, attending school in winter. After a
year in Boston as clerk to a grocer, he learned the trade of a machinist and earned
money enough to secure a year of schooling at the Wilbraham Academy. At the age
of nineteen, he entered the office of a firm dealing in paints and oils in Boston and then
began a remarkably successful career. In 1850, he came to New York and secured
employment with Schenck & Downing, merchants of oil, paint and glass. He worked
hard, saved his money, and in three years joined C. T. Raynolds and Frederick W.
Devoe in buying his employer's business. For ten years, the firm of Raynolds, Devoe
& Pratt were active and growing merchants. In 1864 Mr. Devoe withdrew, and in 1867
the business was divided, Mr. Raynolds going on with paints and Mr. Pratt taking the
oil business under the name of Charles Pratt & Co., and becoming a refiner of petro¬
leum. He built a large factory at Greenpoint on Long Island and the name of Pratt's
Astral Oil soon became well known as a trade mark. When a general consolidation of
oil refining and producing led to the creation of The Standard Oil Co., Mr. Pratt was
admitted to the trust on favorable terms. From that time forward, he was a leading
spirit in The Standard Oil Co., and was its vice president at his death. Mr. Pratt in¬
vested his surplus income in real estate, street railroads, Western lands, banks and
other successful enterprises. The name of Mr. Pratt has been permanently enrolled in
the annals of Brooklyn by his gifts to education. For the sake of his own children,
he fostered an existing school, caused its incorporation as the Adelphi Academy, and
after 1879, was president of the board. Through his generosity, the school building at
Lafayette avenue and St. James Place was doubled in size in 1880, and in 1886, he
donated the means for putting up a handsome new building at Clifton and St. James
Places, connected with the older part of the school. His gifts to the institution amounted
to over $250,000. In 1889, he founded the Pratt Industrial Institute on Ryerson street,
near Adelphi Academy, to provide both manual training and a high school education
and afford instruction in trades and useful arts to apprentices, clerks and others, who
are employed during the day.    Mr. Pratt expended over $3,000,000 upon this enter-