Cassie Chadwick

Help was destined to come from the most unlikely of circumstances.  A con artist calling herself "Cassie Chadwick" had been defrauding banks in the Cleveland area, passing herself off as the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie and forging his signature on the notes she used as security. Chadwick procured loans for several hundred thousand dollars to finance her lavish life in Cleveland. Oberlin's own Citizen's National Bank loaned Chadwick $240,000, four times the bank's actual capital. When the news of her scheme broke in 1904, there was a run on the bank by anxious depositors, and the bank failed as a result. Many Oberlin students lost their savings, as did the college Y.M.C.A. and many residents of the town.

One Oberlin College student described his penniless situation to an Elyria, Ohio clergyman named William Cadmus.  Cadmus wrote to Andrew Carnegie with the news. Feeling sorry for the students, Carnegie anonymously donated $15,000 to cover student and some town residents losses.  As a result, In early 1905, College President Henry Churchill King called on Andrew Carnegie in New York City to personally thank him for his generousity towards the students. At that meeting, it was Carnegie himself who raised the earlier issue of the College Library. Subsequent to this meeting, King received a letter from Carnegie's secretary Bertram, dated January 20, 1905, indicating that Mr. Carnegie "will be glad to pay for the erection of a Library for Oberlin College, to the extent of One Hundred and Twenty-five Thousand Dollars."  The College was also required to raise funds, however it had confidently engaged an architectural firm by February 18, 1905.