Thomas John Watson, Sr.

Thomas J. Watson was born in Campbell, New York, in the state's Southern Tier region, the fifth child and only son of Thomas and Jane Fulton White Watson. His four older siblings were Jennie, Effie, Loua, and Emma. His father farmed and owned a modest lumber business located near Painted Post, a few miles west of Corning. Thomas worked on the family farm in East Campbell and attended the District School Number Five in the late 1870s. As Watson entered his teen years he attended Addison Academy in nearby Addison.

Having given up his first job—teaching—after just one day, Watson took a year's course in accounting and business at the Miller School of Commerce in Elmira, New York. He left the school in 1891, taking a job at $6 a week as bookkeeper for Clarence Risley's Market in Painted Post. One year later he joined a traveling salesman, George Cornwell, peddling organs and pianos around the farms for William Bronson's local hardware store. When Cornwell left, Watson continued alone, earning $10 per week. After two years of this life, he realized he would be earning $70 per week if he were on a commission. His indignation on making this discovery was such that he quit and moved from his familiar surroundings to the relative metropolis of Buffalo.

Watson then spent a very brief period selling sewing machines for Wheeler and Wilson. According to his son Thomas J. Watson Jr.'s autobiography:

One day my dad went into a roadside saloon to celebrate a sale and had too much to drink. When the bar closed, he found that his entire rig—horse, buggy, and samples—had been stolen. Wheeler and Wilson fired him and dunned him for the lost property. Word got around, of course, and it took Dad more than a year to find another steady job. Watson would later enforce strict rules at IBM against alcohol consumption, even off the job. According to Tom Jr.: This anecdote never made it into IBM lore, which is too bad, because it would have helped explain Father to the tens of thousands of people who had to follow his rules.

Watson's next job was peddling shares of the Buffalo Building and Loan Company for a huckster named C. B. Barron, a showman renowned for his disreputable conduct, which Watson deplored. Barron absconded with the commission and the loan funds. Next Watson opened a butcher shop in Buffalo, which soon failed, leaving Watson with no money, no investment, and no job.

Watson married Jeanette Kittredge, from a prominent Dayton, Ohio, railroad family, on April 17, 1913. They had two sons and two daughters.

Thomas Watson Jr. succeeded his father as IBM chairman and later served as ambassador to the Soviet Union under Jimmy Carter

Jeanette Watson Irwin married businessman John N. Irwin II, later ambassador to France

Helen Watson Buckner became an important philanthropist in New York City

Arthur K. Watson served as president of IBM World Trade Corporation and later, as ambassador to France

As a Democrat (after his criminal indictment by the Taft Administration), Watson was an ardent supporter of Roosevelt. He was one of the most prominent businessmen in the Democratic Party. He was considered Roosevelt's strongest supporter in the business community.

Watson served as a powerful trustee of Columbia University from June 6, 1933, until his death. He engineered the selection of Dwight D. Eisenhower as its president and played the central role in convincing Eisenhower to become president of the university. Additionally, he served as a trustee of Lafayette College and is the namesake of Watson Hall, a campus residence hall.

In 1936 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that IBM, together with Remington Rand, should cease its practice of requiring its customers to buy their punch cards from it alone. The ruling made little difference because IBM was the only effective supplier to the market, and profits continued undiminished.

In 1937, Watson was awarded the Order of the German Eagle by Adolf Hitler. Watson was also president of the International Chamber of Commerce in 1937; the medal was awarded while the ICC was meeting in Germany that year.

In 1939, he received an honorary degree in Doctor of Commercial Science from Oglethorpe University.

In the 1940s, Watson was on the national executive board of the Boy Scouts of America and served for a time as an international Scout commissioner. E. Urner Goodman recounts that the elderly Watson attended an international Scout commissioners' meeting in Switzerland, where the IBM founder asked not to be put on a pedestal. Before the conference was over, Goodman relates, Watson "... sat by that campfire, in Scout uniform, 'chewing the fat' like the rest of the boys". He received the Silver Buffalo Award in 1944. His son, Thomas Jr., later served as national president of the Boy Scouts from 1964 to 1968. He was also inducted into the Steuben County, New York Hall of Fame. Throughout his life Watson continued to own and enjoy the family farm on which he was born. In 1955 he and his wife gave it, along with one million dollars, to the Methodist Church for use as a retreat and conference center, to be named Watson Homestead in memory of his parents. Watson Homestead became independent of the church in 1995, and continues as a conference and retreat center. The one-room school that Watson attended as a child is still on the grounds.

Watson was chairman of the Elmira College centennial committee in 1955 and donated Watson Hall, primarily a music and mathematics academic building.

Watson was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1960) and the American Philosophical Society (1984). For the last 16 years of his life, he was an elder of the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City.

The Thomas J. Watson Sr. Center For Information Technology at Brown University is named after him.

He was posthumously inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1990.