Чарльз Пратт: Мұнай өнеркәсібінің және білім берушінің өмірі мен қызметі

American businessman and philanthropist

Charles Pratt (October 2, 1830 – May 4, 1891) was an American businessman. Pratt was a pioneer of the U. S. petroleum industry, and he established his kerosene refinery Astral Oil Works in Brooklyn, New York. He then lived with his growing family in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. He recruited Henry H. Rogers into his business, forming Charles Pratt and Company in 1867. Seven years later, Pratt and Rogers agreed to join John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. An advocate of education, Pratt founded and endowed the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, now a renowned art college. He and his children built country estates in Glen Cove, New York, which became known as the Gold Coast in the 1920s on the North Shore of Long Island. In 1916, Standard Oil had a steamship tanker, the first of its class, built at Newport News, Virginia, and it was named in honor of Pratt.

Charles Pratt was born in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, US, as one of eleven children. He was the son of Elizabeth Stone and Asa Pratt, a carpenter. He spent three winters as a student at Wesleyan Academy, Wilbraham (now Wilbraham & Monson Academy).

As a young man, Pratt joined a company in nearby Boston, Massachusetts, that specialized in paints and whale oil products. In 1850 or 1851, he moved to New York City, where he worked for a similar company. Pratt realized that whale oil could be replaced by petroleum ("natural oil") distillates to light lamps. He became a pioneer of the petroleum industry as new wells were established during the 1860s in western Pennsylvania.

Charles Pratt is credited with recognizing the growing need for trained industrial workers in a changing economy. In 1886, he founded and endowed the Pratt Institute, which opened in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn in 1887. Originally a technical institute, it has become a renowned art, design and architectural college. In 1910, Pratt also endowed the construction of the Pratt School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was an organizing member of the Emmanuel Baptist Church, a prominent and extant congregation near Pratt Institute worshiping in the 1887 edifice supported by Pratt and today known as perhaps the finest extant 19th Century church interior in New York City.

After his death, Charles Pratt's six sons and two daughters later built their own family estates in Glen Cove. As of 2004, most of the extant Pratt family Gold Coast Mansions are still in use:

Welwyn, originally the estate of Harold I. Pratt, is owned by and operated as the Welwyn Preserve, a Nassau County park; the house is now adapted as the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. The Braes, initially owned by Herbert L. Pratt, is now used as the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. The Manor, built for John Teele Pratt, is now the Glen Cove Mansion Hotel & Conference Center. Poplar Hill, the Frederic B. Pratt residence, is now the Glengariff Healthcare Center, housing both Glengariff (a long term nursing care facility) and the Pratt Pavilion for Nursing and Rehabilitation (a state of the art, short term, sub acute rehabilitation center). Killenworth, originally the home of George Dupont Pratt, has been (since the mid 20th century) the country retreat for the Russian delegation to the United Nations.

With so many Pratt family members in Glen Cove, they had a cemetery built for themselves on their property. Known as "Pratt Cemetery", behind ornate gates and up a winding drive stands a pink granite Romanesque mausoleum designed by William Tubby, as well as a crypt and a tower connected by a "bridge of sighs". Charles Pratt is interred in a sarcophagus here, as are seven out of his eight children, and many of his grandchildren.

The town of Pratt, West Virginia (previously known as Clinton) was renamed Pratt in 1905, after the owner of the Charles Pratt Coal Company.

In March 1916, Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company launched the S. S. Charles Pratt, a tanker of 8,807 tons with a capacity of of oil. It became the first ship of the Pratt class, and was joined by the S. S. H. H. Rogers in May 1916. After 1939, both ships were operated by Panama Transport Co., a subsidiary of Standard Oil of New Jersey. At the beginning of World War II, on December 21, 1940, the S. S. Charles Pratt was torpedoed and sunk by a German U boat in the Atlantic Ocean 220 mile (354 km) off the coast of Africa while en route from Aruba to Freetown, Sierra Leone. Of the American crew of 42, only two men died.