Levi Addison Ault
Canadian-born businessman/bureaucrat
Levi Addison Ault (November 1851 – February 1930) was a Canadian-born American businessman and bureaucrat whose career was closely associated with the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he earned the nickname "Father of Cincinnati's Parks".
Biography
Born in Mille Roches, Province of Canada, to a successful fabric manufacturer, Ault moved to Wisconsin in his teens, where he worked as a bookkeeper. In 1876, he moved to Cincinnati and took a job as a lampblack salesman.
Two years later, Ault and his business partner Frank Wiborg incorporated Ault & Wiborg, an ink manufacturer that became the world's top producer and supplier of inks and lithograph supplies. In 1928, Ault sold his share in the company for $14 million
($262,500,000 today)
.
In the mid-1920s, Ault was offered an ambassadorship by U.S. President Warren G. Harding, but he declined.
Ault was also an avid naturalist, whose passion for parks led him to join Cincinnati's parks board. He served as chair of the board from 1908 to 1926, and donated 204 acres (825,000 m2) of land to the city to create Ault Park. Twenty acres (21,000 m2) not donated by Ault himself were later added to this park as well.
He also donated a family property on Sheek's Island to the township of Cornwall, which also became known as Ault Park.
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This entry incorporates text from “Levi Addison Ault” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.