Charles Hull Ewing
National Cyclopedia of American Biography
EWING, Charles Hull, business executive, was born at Randolph, Cattaraugus co., N.Y., July 11, 1868, son of Robert Finley and Aurelia (Culver) Ewing, of early colonial ancestry. In the paternal line were Samuel Finley (q.v.), his great-uncle, president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton university) and Samuel Finley B. Morse (q.v.), inventor of the electric telegraph. His mother was a sister of Helen Culver (q.v.), the Chicago philanthropist. His father was chief engineer in the construction of several of the early American railroads and was recommended to the Chilean government as the best locating engineer in the United States. Mr. Ewing obtained his academic education at Oberlin (Ohio) college and at Yale university, being graduated A.B. at the latter in 1893. During another year he studied at the Northwestern university law school, after which he spent two years as manager of the Moorhead (Miss.) Stave Co. For thirty years he was chief assistant to Miss Helen Culver in the management of her business interests and, as such, also manager of the Helen Culver Fund, which built and endowed the Hull biological laboratories of the University of Chicago. From 1903 to 1935 Mr. Ewing was engaged in the real estate and investment business, controlling valuable property holdings in Illinois and Florida, and being interested in several substantial developments in the latter state. He was also secretary and treasurer of the Southern Gypsum Co., Inc., of North Holston, Va., the first company to develop and manufacture gypsum products in the southeastern states, and a director of the Beaver Products Company of Virginia, Inc., which controls the Southern Gypsum Co. The products of that company are widely used in the South, for fertilizing purposes, as constituents of Portland cement and for hard wall plaster, plaster board and partition blocks. Mr. Ewing is also a director of the First National and State banks of Lake Forest, Ill. He has been a trustee of the Hull-House Association since 1920, and is a life member of the Geographic Society of Chicago (president, 1924-26 and 1928-29), during his administration establishing the society's endowment fund. He is also a life member of the Art Institute of Chicago, Field museum of natural history and the Press Club of Chicago, and a member of the Historical Society of Chicago, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Delta Phi, Elihu Club of Yale university, the City, Oberlin Men's, University and Yale clubs of Chicago, the Onwentsia, Knollwood and Winter clubs of Lake Forest, Ill. Bradenton (Fla.) Golf and Country Club, Palma Sola (Fla.) Country Club and Sarasota Country and Yale clubs at Sarasota, Fla. He was married at Minnetonka, Minn., Oct. 8, 1906, to Mary Sleight, daughter of Dr. Thomas Heywood Everts, of Minneapolis, Minn., and dean of women at the State University of Iowa, and they have two children: Katherine Everts , and Helen Culver Ewing, wife of James Henry Breasted. Jr.
