Who Would Have Adopted the Boy

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Henry R. Luce, TIME Magazine Publisher

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Nettie McCormick, International Harvester Heiress

By Megan McKinney

Nettie McCormick had inherited ten million turn-of-the-century dollars from her late husband, International Harvester founder Cyrus Hall Mcormick. She was a powerful social figure, and her immense philanthropy—particularly toward religious causes—was well known.

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Henry Winters Luce, father of Henry R. Luce

In 1906, Mrs. McCormick was visited by Henry Winters Luce, an American missionary to China, who was touring the country to raise missionary funds. With him was his wife Elisabeth and the first three of their four children.

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The future TIME Magazine Publisher

Nettie was captivated by the Luce family, particularly the eldest child, eight-year-old Henry, Jr. She wanted him to stay with her, to be raised in her immense house, and she even asked to adopt him. Although the offer was declined, Nettie McCormick would continue to be a significant influence in the life of the founder and publisher of TIME, LIFE and other great 20th century American magazines.

The great picture magazine of 20th century America

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Henry Luce as a young man

Nettie established a trust fund to augment the family’s meager missionary income and paid for a comfortable house for them in China. She was also more than generous in the lavish gifts and money she sent to young Henry, who was a scholarship student at Hotchkiss School.

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Hotchkiss School

She helped fund his Yale education, where he was not on scholarship, as well as a year at Oxford, for which he had not been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.

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Yale University

In fact, Henry Luce’s relationship with Nettie McCormick elevated his formative years from a poor boy’s strictly nose-pressed-against-the-window experience to at least the appearance of being the financial counterpart of his peers.

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Nettie’s McCormick’s Rush Street house where Henry spent his school holidays.

Throughout his boarding school days and later at Yale, Henry spent his holidays with Nettie, and was entertained by her friends, where he was increasingly caught up in the seasonal round of debutante parties, dinners, dances, celebrations and other festivities in their houses and at their clubs. In short, Nettie McCormick and her fairy godmother attention to a missionary’s son intensified the attraction to wealth and the very rich that would be notably evident in of one of 20th century America’s most influential men.