Charles Stewart Mott

Charles Stewart Mott was an American industrialist, businessman and philanthropist whose wheel and axle manufacturing company became one of the founding businesses absorbed into General Motors, making him one of its earliest major shareholders and a co-owner of the automaker through its formative decades. He served as the 50th and 55th mayor of Flint, Michigan, the city that grew into General Motors' industrial headquarters largely on the strength of the automotive investment Mott himself had helped bring there. He is remembered as the figure most responsible for founding the Flint Senior College, which became the University of Michigan-Flint, having initiated the idea and pledged 1 million dollars toward the project. Later in life he devoted much of his General Motors fortune to philanthropy through the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Mott was born on June 2, 1875 and died on February 18, 1973 at the age of 97, his career linking the industrial founding of the automobile business directly to the civic development of the city it was built in.