Mystery donation’s benefactor found

By: Michelle Anstett
Editor-in-chief

The Internet holds the keys to many mysteries which, a few years ago, may never have been solved. However, thanks to the advances in technology and searching power, a Monmouth College mystery was solved sometime in December, revealing the key to a mystery bequest made to the college last spring.

Richard Steck, who died at the age of 88 in February 2006 in Stuart, Fla., made it known in his will that the undistributed funds from his estate were to be split between Monmouth and Wheaton colleges, initiating the beginning of a campus-wide search for connection of this man to the college.

Steck, a retired accountant from Buffalo, N.Y., made an addendum to his original will stipulating that half the funds remaining from his estate, after donations were made to several charities and money was given to remaining family members, go to both colleges, but no indication was given as to why those funds were being donated. Jeff Rankin, director of college communications, said the college received a letter sometime last spring from the bank where Steck’s will was being handled, stating that the college was named in his will as a benefactor, but the amount of the gift was, at that time, unknown.

The mystery was put by the wayside at that point, until November or December, when the college received the check for $415,000 from Steck’s estate. The development office, in trying to determine why the college was receiving all this money from someone’s estate, looked through past records, but could find no mention of a Steck in anything.

After a faculty meeting in which the mystery was mentioned and no one could come up with answers, Rankin decided to take on the project of finding Steck’s connection to Monmouth College, as he considers himself to be an “historian at heart.”

“I knew there had to be some kind of connection for that kind of bequest,” Rankin said. So, he started his search with the 1951 alumni directory, considered the most authoritative listing of alumni from the college’s first graduating class in 1858 up to the class of 1951. In looking through that directory, Rankin found a listing for “Mrs. Charles Steck” in the index, which noted that she was known as Jennie Ward Kinsman while she attended Monmouth College. However, that was as far as he was able to look, as he did not know what other resources were available to aid his search.

Rankin then turned to William Urban, Lee L. Morgan Professor of History and International Studies, to assist him in finding more information with the tools of a historian. Urban agreed, using the new Ancestry Library database, available on the Hewes Library website.

The database, acquired this past summer for the college’s use by J. Richard Sayre, the library’s director, allows anyone interested to search for the genealogy of family members. Urban plans to use this database in three of his history classes, including the course he is currently teaching on family history, in which students research their family history throughout the course of a semester.

Using the database, Urban and Rankin began by typing in Steck’s name, that he was born in the United States and an approximate birth year of 1910. That search gave them a list of men named Richard Steck, all of whom were born and died in various places around the country. They searched through the list to find any references to Jennie Ward Kinsman or Monmouth College.

In looking at the 1920 census, Rankin and Urban discovered a listing for a Richard Steck, whose father was Charles and whose mother was listed as Jennie W. From there, they looked through marriage records to find the full identity of “Jennie W.” and then cross-referenced their findings with the Monmouth College records.

The search revealed that Steck’s connection to Monmouth College was through his mother, who graduated in 1907. A Latin major, Kinsman enrolled in Monmouth in 1903, participating in many campus activities while she was here. Originally from Winterset, Iowa, Kinsman was president of the A.B.L. literary society, president of the junior class of 1905-06 and a member of the student newspaper and Y.W.C.A boards. She also played basketball during her collegiate career. Upon graduation, Kinsman received a position teaching Latin and English at the Collegiate Institute in Geneseo, Ill.

She met Charles Calvin Steck of Wheaton, Ill., shortly after beginning her teaching career, and the two married on Sept. 8, 1909. They moved to Chicago, where Charles received his master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1911. He was soon named to the mathematics faculty of New Hampshire State College, and he was named head of the department in 1917. Later that year, the couple welcomed their second and third children, twin boys Kenneth and Richard.

In 1919, the Steck family moved to North Rochester, N.H., where Charles had taken a job with the Spaulding Fibre Co. He later moved up in the company, obtaining the positions of president, general manager and director of the company. The family next moved to Orchard Park, N.Y. Jennie later died in this city, at the age of 70 in 1954.

Richard, being the sole heir of his parents’ money as a result of the death of his other two siblings, made provisions in his will to benefit not only organizations which were important to himself, but also those which were important to his parents.

Urban, who often solicits the help of Rankin for his other projects, stated that he participated in this search for a couple of reasons. The first is that Rankin has helped him with a lot of his projects, so he felt the need to help Rankin with one of his. In addition, Urban stated that he wanted to find out the benefactor’s identity out of “curiosity.”

That amount of money is such a wonderful gift to the Monmouth College community, Urban said, adding, “it’s nice to find someone to thank for it.”