Charles Ranlett Flint (1850 - 1934)

I reluctantly ended my blog over a year ago because I felt that I had run out of stories to tell.  However, I said that I might occasionally think of something and publish an occasional post in the future…

Recently someone asked me about the Scribner-Flint connection, and I decided that it might be fun to tell you about Charles Ranlett Flint who was a cousin of my grandfather, Henry D Scribner.

Charles Ranlett Flint was not actually related to my family by blood, but by marriage.  Charles was the son of Benjamin Chapman Flint and his first wife, Sarah Tobie.  Benjamin later married Frances Ellen Scribner, an older sister of my great grandfather, Capt David Alba Scribner.   

My great grandfather, Capt David A Scribner, sailed ships for the Flint family for Chapman & Flint Shipping and in later years for Flint & Co.  David A Scribner’s older sister, Frances, married Benjamin Flint as his second wife in 1856.  Both the Scribner & the Flint families were originally from Maine.  Benjamin Flint was 22 years older than Frances Ellen Scribner and he already had a young son, Charles Ranlett Flint, when he married Frances.  Benjamin was a successful businessman involved in ship ownership, shipbuilding, and merchant businesses. 

Both of these Scribner and Flint families lived in Brooklyn and were very close.  My grandfather, Henry D Scribner, was a first cousin to Wallace Benjamin Flint, the son of Frances Ellen Scribner & Benjamin Flint.  And Charles Ranlett Flint was Wallace Flint’s older half-brother.  Charles was 13 years older than Wallace; and Wallace was 17 years older than my grandfather Henry; so while these two Flint sons were cousins to my grandfather, there was a broad age difference among them. 

Charles Flint graduated from Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1868 when he was 18 years old.  He spent the next 10 years working in his family’s international shipping business.  Then from 1876 to 1879, he served as consul general to Nicaragua and Costa Rica for the United States. 

Charles had a talent for putting together business deals and became a well-regarded industrialist.  Charles Ranlett Flint is often lauded as the “Father of Trust”, and he is best known as a financier who was adept at facilitating the merger of several small specialized but similar businesses into one larger business that was both stronger and better able to handle the broad demands of growing economies.  During his career, he was instrumental in over 20 such consolidations and mergers.

In 1892, Flint oversaw the consolidation of several rubber companies into a new company, U.S. Rubber.  He also put together a fleet of naval vessels for the Brazilian navy.  Then in 1899, he helped consolidate the chewing gum companies of Adams Chewing Gum, Chiclets, Dentyne and Beemans to form the larger American Chicle company.  And later he managed the consolidation of eight New England woolen mills into the American Woolen Company. 

Charles Ranlett Flint is best known for his work in 1911 to merge four companies – the Tabulating Machine Company, International Time Recording Company, Computing Scale Company of America, and the Bundy Manufacturing Company – to form a new company to be called the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R).  In 1914, Flint hired Thomas Watson as the general Manager of C-T-R overseeing about 1,300 employees.  Watson was later promoted to president where he began expanding operations internationally.  In 1924, C-T-R was renamed as International Business Machines (IBM).  Charles R Flint was on the IBM board of directors until he retired at the age of 81.

Charles was also deeply involved with the Wright brothers in the marketing and sale of the first airplanes.  He managed the Wright brothers’ interests in Europe for many years and attended many of the Wright expositions to showcase the flying machines.  An obituary in Time magazine noted that Charles negotiated the Wright brothers’ first sales of airplanes overseas.

Died. Charles Ranlett Flint, 84, retired industrial promoter, international agent, sportsman; of arteriosclerosis, after two years' illness; in Washington. Son of a New England clipper fleet owner, he fitted out warships for Brazilian revolutionists; sold torpedo boats and submarines to Russia, a cruiser to Japan; negotiated the Wright Brothers' first sales of airplanes abroad. He gathered a fortune reputed to be $100,000,000, had a hand in forming so many U. S. corporations that newspapers christened him "Father of Trusts."

Time magazine; Milestones, Monday, Feb. 26, 1934.

 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,747065,00.html#ixzz16GrCn6aE 

Charles Ranlett Flint was worldly and had a long and dynamic business career.  He married twice during his life, but never had any children.  He lived large and had a love of hunting, fishing, sailing and aviation.  He was one of the founders of the Automobile Club of America. His love of yachting led to participation in America’s Cup races, and he even held a world water speed record at one time. 

Charles Ranlett Flint died in 1934.  One biography says that “Although his income was large he apparently never accumulated a large fortune.”

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– Jane Scribner McCrary

28 May 2025