Frederick H. Rindge
Frederick Hastings Rindge (1857–1905) was an American business magnate, patriarch of the Rindge family, real estate developer, philanthropist, and writer, of Los Angeles, California. He was a major benefactor to his home town of Cambridge, Massachusetts and a founder of present-day Malibu, California. Frederick Rindge was also the only surviving son of banking and shipping tycoon Samuel B. Rindge and Mrs. Clarissa Harrington Rindge. Frederick and his wife, Rhoda, came to be informally known as the King and Queen of Malibu, and with an estimated net worth in the millions of dollars, the family was considered one of the wealthiest in the US. Early life Rindge was born in Cambridge on December 21, 1857, the only surviving son among the six children of Samuel B. Rindge (1820–1883) and Clarissa Harrington (December 8, 1822 – January 4, 1885). His siblings, including a brother named Henry and a sister named Mary, all died of scarlet fever, also known as rheumatic fever. He grew up in the "Rindge mansion", still standing at the corner of Dana and Harvard Streets in Cambridge, but spent vast swathes of his childhood very ill, condemned to bed with swollen joints, body spasms, a wildly irregular heartbeat, and other ailments. Bible stories were of some solace to him, with "tales of men defeating long odds because God was on their side" rooting him in faith and religion from a young age. Education and travels Rindge entered Harvard College in 1875, joining the Art Club, Glee Club, and Hasty Pudding Club, and rising to the top of his class as an inductee of the Institute of 1770, "one of the most important social honors on campus" whose purpose was "to identify the one hundred members of each class most fit to join society, all by a process of cascading elections." His appointment opened the door for him to join the A.D. Club, "one of the oldest and most exclusive final clubs on campus" in which he met and became close friends with Theodore Roosevelt, whose conquer of his own health ailments inspired Rindge, leading to his realization that "he, too, was strong enough to travel the world and seek out the experiences that would give him the sense of making up for lost time." Rindge's travels began with a journey across the Atlantic on the SS Baltic. He then traversed England, France, and Germany, among his many stops. Upon returning to America and Harvard, he soon fell ill again and was forced to drop out of school, moving back in with his family. He was so severely ill that his doctor suggested he might find a better chance of survival if he sought out a warmer climate than Massachusetts could offer, which led him to St. Augustine, Florida. As he was again on the upswing of recuperation, he explored the town, then quite remote, and even partook of some amateur excavation of long-abandoned native Timucua villages. Later, in Colorado, he would spend a brief period as a sheep rancher.