Chicago, and to Boston, Brooklyn, Midwood, Flatbush and Staten Island. In the years just after 1900, the company spent more than $4 million for building sites in Brooklyn that were sold on small partial payments. When Brooklyn became part of New York City and Model T Fords started crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, William had jumped at the opportunity. Together with the explosion in population in Brooklyn following NYC subway extensions, the wisdom of his choice of territory was proven. He bought up farm after farm and organized multiple companies, comprising over 20,000 building lots. By 1905 Wood, Harmon & Co. had offices in 40 cities east of the Mississippi River and was acclaimed as the largest real estate operation in the world. The business relationship with his brother and uncle concluded in 1907 but William continued on in the position of chairman of the board of the Harmon Real Estate Corporation. Harmon, just 38 years old, had become a wealthy man. He had remarried in 1890 to Catherine Griffiths of Boston. They would rear three children, living most of the time in New York City. His generosity and well-developed philanthropic plan allowed him to distribute his monies for many public needs. If a financial shortcoming came to his attention, a mysterious check would find its way to the source of that need. For many years checks signed by "Jedediah Tingle" would arrive from New York City. Many wondered, of course, who the benefactor might be. "Jedediah Tingle" once announced that he was "carrying on a mission to bring smiles and tender thoughts to the great in heart in high and low places, to comfort and cheer those who do exceptional things or suffer." William retired at the age of 60 from active work in his real estate business in New York and devoted the rest of his life to the solution of social issues. He never forgot his birthplace in Ohio. In 1911 he had written to a friend, "I have a very deep conviction that one owes something tangible to the place of his nativity." He gave more to his hometown of Lebanon than to any other destination. Harmon bought books for Lebanon's new library that had been built on Main Street by another philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. Next to the library, he constructed Harmon Hall, a community recreational facility. The building has housed the Warren County Historical Society Museum since 1961. In 1922 he established the Harmon Foundation which funded parks, including playgrounds and recreational fields, in 34 states across the nation, most of them in small towns like Lebanon's Harmon Park. That park, opened in 1912, comprises 88 acres and has a public golf course that is still called "The Augusta of the North". The Foundation provided scholarships for Boy Scouts, a pension fund for nurses and other health care workers, rural clinics, and a child development fund. William Harmon was one of many white Americans intrigued by the flowering of African-American art and literature in the 1920s. In 1926 the Harmon Foundation began recognizing African-American achievements in music, visual arts, literature, industry, education, race relations, and science. A Harlem Renaissance program awarded cash prizes in each of these seven categories. In 1928 the Harmon Foundation sponsored the first exhibition of works created exclusively by African-American artists, and three years later the exhibit began touring the country. In 1915 William organized and endowed the Harmon Civic Trust for ongoing community improvement projects. The Trust still exists today. In 1925 he gave $50,000 to the Religious Motion Picture Foundation to provide "productions of high character to add to the interest of church services." William Elmer Harmon passed in 1928 at the age of 66 in his summer home in Southport, Connecticut, after several years of failing health. His official residence at the time was 120 East 75th Street in New York City. His wife died in 1948. They are both buried at the Moravian Cemetery on Staten Island, New York. Soon after his death, The New York Times announced that the mysterious benefactor of lore was none other than the real estate developer William Harmon, aka Jedediah Tingle, who had cleverly distributed monetary gifts under the name of his maternal great-grandfather.