Franz Martin Drexel

Franz Martin Drexel (1792-1863) grew up in Dornbirn, in the Vorarlberg region (next to Switzerland) of the Austrian Empire. His father was a merchant and innkeeper and could afford to send his son to school in Italy, where he learned French and Italian. Napoleon’s invasions of Austria in 1805 and 1809 ruined his father and forced Franz Martin to return to Austria. He followed his heart and trained as a painter.

With Napoleon defeating Austria, Franz Martin managed to avoid conscription by escaping to Switzerland. After the defeat of Napoleon he returned to Dornbirn in 1814, a penniless painter, travelling around Austria and Switzerland before emigrating to the United States in 1817. His biographer Isabella Sangaline quotes him as arguing: “I resolved to go [to the U.S.] too and see the World or at least a portion of it, I reasoned to myself since [my] native place having but 500 inhabitants would never afford me employ professionally, and being obliged to be from home it would be of no [difference] whether it was One Hundred or Ten Thousand miles off. – If I did not do well [I] would return after six months, but if on the contrary Six years, but by no means stay.”

The 25-year old Franz Martin arrived in Philadelphia in 1817 and anglicized his name to Francis Martin. He remained devoted to his roots and carried with him a watercolor portrait of Andreas Hofer, the Tyrolean leader of the rebellion against Napoleon, and a twenty Kreuzer pewter coin. He learned English within a year and became a U.S. citizen. His career as a painter took off and he exhibited nine paintings and two drawings in the annual Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts exhibition in 1818. He built a solid career as a portrait painter and art teacher and started a family. He married Catherine Hooker and had six children with her. After his brother-in-law spread libelous rumors about him, he left Philadelphia and tried his fortune as a painter in Latin America.

He returned to Philadelphia in 1837, resumed painting and tried his hand as a brewer, and then moved into finance. He opened a brokerage house in Louisville, Kentucky. Being fluent in several languages and an expert in foreign currencies (from his travels in Europe), he opened a banking house in Philadelphia in 1838. Sangaline makes the pointy that during his earlier travels in Europe and Latin America he had been learning about business and currency exchange rates all the time. So, quite unusually, his career as a journeyman painter prepared him for his later success in finance.

He trained his three sons, who had received a good education in Philadelphia, in the art of finance. “Drexel & Co.” traded in currencies, dealt in securities, and began loaning money to the emerging railroad business. They also sold government war bonds (during the Mexican War in 1847). Francis Martin moved to San Francisco (1849-1856) during the gold rush and struck it rich as a banker with his West Coast branch. His three sons now ran the bank and its branches and invested in local real estate and mining businesses in Pennsylvania. Francis Martin spent his time as a philanthropist. He died at the age of 71, being run over by a train.

His son Anthony Joseph founded the Institute of Art, Science and Industry in 1891, teaching workers of all races, genders, classes, ages and religions. It became Drexel University and now has 38 of Francis Martin’s paintings in its collections. What never happened during Francis Martin’s lifetime, in the 1940s and 1976, the Drexel Collection hosted solo exhibitions on his art. In the 21st century, Drexel University has established a thriving relationship with the City of Dornbirn, still home to Drexels. Students such as Sangaline from Drexel University come to Dornbirn for internships in places like the city archives, where they can research the early history of the founders of their university.

Drexel’s granddaughter Katherine Drexel became a nun and financed 60 schools in African-American ghettos and Native-American reservations with her inheritance. She also founded Xavier University in New Orleans in 1924, today a noted institution for educating African-Americans for careers in medicine and pharmacy. In 2000, the Vatican canonized her – now Saint Katherine.

Video: Building Drexel: Celebrating 125 Years, via Drexel University/ YouTube