E. Henry Wemme

Who was E. Henry Wemme?

E. Henry Wemme was a wealthy businessman in Portland, in the U.S. state of Oregon. He was an active business investor during the pioneering era of automobiles and aviation.

A farmer's son born in the village of Crostau, Kingdom of Saxony, Germany as Ernest Heinrich Wemme, he had only a grade-school education. Facing enrollment in the German army, he immigrated to the United States at 18 years of age, not intending to stay. He later said he "went broke and couldn't get away."

According to an account published in 1932 by August Wemme, his brother, Henry Wemme began his career in Portland in 1883, "with a spool of thread and a needle or two as capital."

One of his ventures was as a supplier of tents and other supplies to those joining the Klondike Gold Rush. Wemme purchased canvas and cotton, having more material "than all the rest of the dealers on the coast put together", just as the boom to Alaska came to an end. Fortunately for Wemme, the large payments for excess materials occurred just as the USS Maine was sunk, starting the Spanish–American War. Wemme was given an order for 32,000 tents, plus "an open order for hospital tents, telling me to make all I could." Instead of going bankrupt, Wemme used up his large surplus of materials and made a substantial profit.