Entrepreneur. He was an American businessman, who developed the nation's oldest mail-order catalogue, and the successful business made him a fortune. In 1872 he founded the Chicago-based Montgomery Ward & Company. As a young traveling salesman, he had the idea of offering to small towns a way to have a larger variety of items to purchase at lower prices. His competitor was Sears, Roebuck and Company. After moving from New Jersey to Michigan, he attended local schools until age 14. He was an apprentice for a trade before having jobs in a barrow factory, stacking bricks and being a shoemaker. He entered the retail business as a salesman in a shoe store. After seriously learning the business, he became the manager of the store within three years. At the end of the American Civil War in 1865, he relocated to Chicago, becoming a traveling salesman for a lamp company, Case and Sobin, before starting with the leading dry-goods company, Field Palmer & Leiter and two years later, Wills, Greg & Company. He attempted a mail-order service using the train system for the deliveries, but the Great Chicago Fire ended his business in ashes in 1871. Becoming partners with his brother-in-law, George Robinson Thorne, gave him the monetary funding. In 1872, he married Elizabeth Cobb and his wife's older sister, Ellen Cobb, was Thorn's wife. In August of 1872, he issued a single-page catalogue with about 150 items. Continuing with his business endeavors, he began to use the free rural mail service to deliver products ordered from his catalogue. In 1875 his catalogue, listed 163 items with a first-time offer of a money-back guarantee of customer satisfaction. Within a few years, he had ten thousand items printed in a 250-page catalogue. His annual sales reached $1,000,000 in 1888 and by his death, $40,000,000. Although he remained the president of his company, in 1886 he turned the management of the company over to Thorn and his five sons. He had conflict with Sears, who passed him in sales in 1902, and with the shopkeepers, who could not offer the customers the variety at Ward's prices. Built in 1899 as the tallest building in Chicago, the Montgomery Ward Tower became a tourist attraction after the turn of the century. Even after part of the Tower was removed, the building was made a National Historic Landmark in 1978, and with a historically-correct restoration in 2001, the prime real estate downtown building became condominiums in the 21st century. He was a pioneer in conservation. After retirement, his long-time goal was to preserve, using thousands of dollars of his own money, Chicago's natural assets, such as the lakefront and the area called Grant Park. Legally fighting the city of Chicago for the use of lakefront property for seven years, from 1890 to 1897, his case reached the Illinois Supreme Court, with the ruling that the city of Chicago had accepted the land with the dedication and therefore held the land in trust as public grounds and were bound to enforce its restrictions. During the seven years, Illinois Central Railroad had laid railroad tracks on the property and the Art Institute was built in 1891; both stayed but the land could not be sold to developers. In 1902 the city was going to permit the National Guard to construct an armory and parade grounds in the park, Ward successfully sued the city a second time to prevent the proposed construction. In 1985 the 113-year-old mail order business ended. The first Montgomery Ward retail store open in 1926, but with many successful competitors, the last store closed in 2001. In 2004, Montgomery Ward rallied with an on-line business. After his death, his wife received 2/3 of his estate and the remaining 1/3 was divided between his two daughters. In December of 1923, his widow gifted $4 million for the construction of the Montgomery Ward Memorial Building to house Northwestern University's medical and dental schools and another $4 million later for an endowment for faculty salaries, research and scholarships. The first academic skyscraper, the 19-story building, honoring Montgomery Ward, opened in 1927.