Robert Sanderson McCormick

Robert Sanderson McCormick (July 26, 1849 – April 16, 1919) was an American diplomat. Born in rural Virginia, he was part of the extended McCormick family that became influential in Chicago. Early life McCormick was born July 26, 1849, on the family plantation known as Walnut Grove in Rockbridge County, Virginia. His father was William Sanderson McCormick (1815–1865) and his mother was Mary Ann (née Grigsby) McCormick (1828–1878), whose family owned the Hickory Hill plantation. When Robert was an infant, his family moved to Chicago to join the McCormick family agricultural machinery business, which became known as International Harvester. He attended prep school at the University of Chicago and went to college at the University of Virginia. Career McCormick formed a partnership with his paternal cousin Hugh Leander Adams, which they named McCormick & Adams, to invest in a grain elevator at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1876. In the continuing national economic troubles in the aftermath of the panic of 1873, the enterprise failed.