CHARLES LENOX

Harvard Entrepreneur and Cambridge Financier

Charles Lenox (1781-1852), the son of a Revolutionary War veteran, was born in Newton, Massachusetts. By 1811 he was living in Cambridge with his wife, Cinthia (also known as Seney or Aseneth) Rogers. Lenox worked at Harvard: he sold pies in the Yard, cleaned students’ boots and rooms, and traded in used furniture, clothes, and cigar butts. He also ran a profitable side business: before banks were authorized to issue personal loans, borrowers went to individual lenders, and around Harvard Square Charles Lenox was such an individual. His probate inventory includes IOUs signed by Cambridge merchants, builders, and even a former mayor. Essentially, he was the bank for most of Cambridge’s white entrepreneurial class, professors, and Harvard students.

By 1823 Lenox had enough money to buy a handsome wood-frame house on South Street close to Harvard Square. When Susan, the couple’s only surviving child, died in 1837, Lenox had an expensive headstone erected for her in the Old Burying Ground. This is the only marked plot there owned by a Black family.

Lenox likely helped fund the abolitionist activities of his sister Nancy and her husband, John Remond, whose children—including Charles Lenox Remond and Sarah Parker Remond—became internationally known civil rights activists. At his death, Lenox’s substantial estate was divided between his widow, Martha Dickerson, married only a year (Cinthia passed in 1839), the Remonds, and other relatives. But the main beneficiaries of his financial activities were surely Cambridge and its burgeoning business community.