Charles E. Merrill

Charles E. Merrill, the son of physician Dr. Charles Morton Merrill and Octavia (Wilson) Merrill, was born in Green Cove Springs, Florida, where he spent his early childhood. In 1898 the family briefly moved to Knoxville, Tennessee but within the year returned to Florida to settle in Jacksonville. In 1901 his parents decided to send him to the college preparatory academy operated by John B. Stetson University (now known as Stetson University). Merrill studied there from 1901 until 1903 and then in 1903 for the final year of high school was transferred to Worcester Academy. After two years at Amherst College, Merrill spent time at the University of Michigan Law School from 1906 to 1907; worked at Patchogue-Plymouth Mills from 1907 to 1909; at George H. Burr & Co., New York City, from 1909 to 1913; then established Charles E. Merrill & Co.

Merrill was a well-known bon vivant. Married three times, Merrill was nicknamed "Good Time Charlie" by his friends and was described in 1998 by Time magazine as a "short, self-absorbed, prideful, flamboyant fellow" who "made the gossip pages as regularly as the financial pages". Merrill was known for his many extramarital affairs, which he referred to as "recharging my batteries".

In 1926, he purchased the James L. Breese House at Southampton in Suffolk County, New York, a 30-acre estate also known as "The Orchard". Designed in part by Stanford White with original landscaping by Frederick Law Olmsted, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 after being divided into 29 luxury condominiums (with its ballroom and first-floor reception areas left intact).

In the 1920s, Merrill also owned a Greenwich Village townhouse at 18 West 11th Street which was exploded by dynamite on March 6, 1970 by careless Weather Underground terrorists.

All three of Merrill's children were wealthy from unbreakable trusts made early in childhood. Merrill was the father of educator and philanthropist Charles E. Merrill Jr. (1920–2017), author and founder of the Thomas Jefferson School (St. Louis, Missouri), Commonwealth School, and former chairman of the board of trustees of Morehouse College; San Francisco philanthropist Doris Merrill Magowan (1914–2001); and poet James Merrill (1926–1995), who created the Ingram Merrill Foundation to support writers and the arts. In the early 1950s, Merrill's three children renounced any further inheritance from their father's estate in exchange for $100 "as full quittance"; as a result, 95% of Charles Merrill's $25 million estate (he had already donated "The Orchard" to Amherst, which had in turn sold it) would benefit hospitals, churches, and educational causes.

Merrill's grandson, Peter Magowan, was President and CEO of Safeway Inc. and also the former managing general partner of the San Francisco Giants.