Charles and Florence Murray Wallace in the garden of their home in Westfield, New Jersey, 1947

In 1913, nearly thirty thousand Americans were dying each year from typhoid fever - most as a consequence of drinking contaminated water.  Within a decade, the death rate from typhoid was only 2,000 a year - a 93 percent reduction.  The hundreds of thousands who, in that short time span, avoided contracting the disease owed their lives to Charles F. Wallace, the inventor of an automatic chlorinating device used by municipal utilities to purify water.

Wallace and his life-long friend and business partner, Martin F. Tiernan, founded Wallace & Tiernan Company in 1911.  The two young men - not yet thirty years old - used their combined savings of $1,800 to set up a machine shop in which Wallace constructed equipment that Tiernan would sell.  They broke new ground in 1913 by developing a machine that would automatically pipe chlorine gas into a Boonton, New Jersey stream that was polluting the Jersey City water supply.  Wallace's first invention was so successful that within a few years the Wallace & Tiernan device was being used to purify half the world's drinking water supply.

In addition to the chlorinator, Wallace invented pressure-sensitive instruments and telemetering systems as well as timing devices used in marine beacons, foghorns and other aids to navigation.  He also developed a process widely used in the baking industry for bleaching and aging flour.  In all, Charles Wallace was granted more than eighty patents during his career.

After forty years of working together, Tiernan reflected on their friendship and experience as business partners in a letter written to Wallace in 1952:

"Just think, you and I with so little money, no business experience, complete ignorance of the pitfalls that any business can have, to say nothing of the hazards that a new venture can meet, yet we have not only succeeded in a financial way but have built a business of worldwide honorable reputation and have done and are doing a real service for the good of our fellow man."

"It would seem that God himself was watching over us at all times and I do really believe He has rewarded us for the way we live and our love of truth and honesty and our attitude to our employees and our families."

In 1914, Wallace married Florence Murray.  The two lived together in Westfield, New Jersey, for 50 years raising a family of three daughters, Jane Wallace Thorne, Barbara Wallace Cornwall and Elizabeth Wallace Sharts.  In 1933, the Wallaces created The Eljabar Foundation as a mechanism for returning to those in need some of the rewards of a successful business career.  "The Wallace family has had a tradition of sharing what they have with others less fortunate," says Joseph C. Cornwall, Chairman Emeritus of The Fund for New Jersey and the Wallaces' son-in-law.  Mrs. Wallace came from a Quaker background, and Mr. Wallace's grandfather was a Presbyterian minister.

The formation of the Florence Murray Wallace Fund in 1958 was an attempt to conserve dollars for true philanthropic work.  The daughters were the nominal founders and managers of the trust that was to become The Fund for New Jersey, but it was heavily funded from the start by Mr. Wallace.  In one year, he gave 50,000 shares of company stock to the trust, which was worth more than his annual income at the time.

One principle that Mr. Wallace had was that it was more meaningful to make several large gifts rather than many small ones.  New Jersey seemed to be a manageable geographic area to make such gifts.  At the time The Fund for New Jersey was first organized, that there was great need for giving in New Jersey.  The Fund's focus on New Jersey was, therefore, an outgrowth of the community giving pattern started by the Wallaces in Westfield.

Charles Wallace believed that only those living can understand and appreciate the needs of the time.  So he left the future philanthropic decisions of the trust to future generations.  His belief has provided the flexibility that allows trustees of The Fund for New Jersey today to issue grants directly addressing today's problems.

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