"It is intended to use this Fund to the end that some hopeful contribution may be made to the preservation, restoration, and development of individual liberty through investigation, research, and educational activity.”
—Pierre F. Goodrich
Pierre F. Goodrich, an Indianapolis businessman and lawyer, founded Liberty Fund in 1960. Upon his death in 1973, Mr. Goodrich left a portion of his estate to the Foundation for the purpose of exploring the many dimensions of liberty.
Mr. Goodrich, a man of extensive intellectual interests, reflected deeply upon the human condition. He read widely in the Great Books of both the Western and Eastern traditions.
Mr. Goodrich observed that human beings are far from perfect and have only a partial understanding of their own nature. Institutions, in turn, are fraught with imperfections. He was particularly concerned that intellectual hubris leads to pretensions of certainty about the nature of the world and to preposterous and dangerous “solutions.” This abuse of reason leads to restrictive institutional arrangements that concentrate political and economic power. Such concentrations invariably erode liberty and moral values.
The responsible course of action in an imperfect world, Mr. Goodrich believed, consists of making choices that favor liberty from among the imperfect options available. A commitment to liberty in all its dimensions offers the best chance to fragment and decentralize power and to release individual, creative initiative. A free society can maintain and enhance individual liberty and excellence, a genuine concern for others, a framework for social order, and economic well-being.
Mr. Goodrich believed that education in a free society requires a dialogue centered around the great ideas of civilization. He saw learning as an ongoing process of discovery, not limited to traditional institutional settings or specific ages. Education is, in his view, the lifelong responsibility of each individual. Liberty Fund carries out this conviction by promoting the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals through full and open discussion.
Enid Goodrich of Indianapolis received a resident nursing degree from St. Vincent Hospital and a bachelor’s degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She married Pierre Goodrich in Chicago in 1941.
Mrs. Goodrich’s commitment to intellectual pursuits and to the social and artistic life of her community showed in her longtime membership in the Indianapolis Propylaeum, a women’s literary and social club, as well as in her lasting associations with the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, Conner Prairie Interactive History Park, and the Midwest Eye Institute. For her contribution of financial support, time, and hard work, the Indiana Chapter of the National Society of Fund Raising Executives gave Mrs. Goodrich the Individual Philanthropist of the Year award in 1994. That same year, Indiana Governor Evan Bayh named her a Sagamore of the Wabash. This award is a tribute to those who have rendered distinguished service to the state.
Mrs. Goodrich worked alongside her husband to create the Liberty Fund Basic Memorandum, the document that still inspires and directs Liberty Fund’s activities. She was designated a Founder Member for Life of the Board of Directors and served as the organization’s Vice Chairman, a position she held until her death in 1996. She was also a Founding Member and Director of Thirty Five Twenty, Inc., now known as the Pierre F. and Enid Goodrich Foundation, and a Member of the Board of Trustees of the Winchester Foundation. Both organizations maintain close ties to Liberty Fund.
Pierre Frist Goodrich is born to future Indiana Governor James P. Goodrich and Cora Frist Goodrich in Winchester, Indiana
Pierre F. Goodrich’s kindergarten class, Winchester, Indiana, 1899-1900. Pierre’s cousin John is also in the back row. Photograph, Courtesy, Perce G. and Ann Goodrich family, Circa 1900.
The Goodrich family of Winchester, Indiana, in 1905 when Pierre was eleven years old. Pierre is standing in the back row, fifth from the left, next to his father, James, (in bow tie), future Governor of Indiana. Pierre’s mother, Cora, is sitting, second from right. Photograph, Courtesy, Perce G. and Ann Goodrich family.
Pierre F. Goodrich’s high school graduation picture, Winchester High School, 1912 , Photograph, Courtesy of the Perce G. and Ann Goodrich family
Pierre F. Goodrich, called “Frisky” by his Phi Gamma Delta brothers, is lumped together in an informal fraternity picture. The entire fraternity was comprised of only about twenty young “Little Giants.” Photograph, Courtesy, Robert T. Ramsey Archives, Wabash College, Circa 1915.
After his first year of law school at Harvard, Pierre Goodrich enlisted in the U.S. Army in June 1917, serving during World War I in the Army’s Quartermaster Corp. located in Jeffersonville, Indiana. He served until January 1919 when he was honorably discharged as a Captain. Pierre returned to Harvard Law School where he graduated in May 1920 with an LL.B degree.
Pierre Goodrich’s graduating class at Harvard Law School, May 1920. The law school faculty included Roscoe Pound, who was also dean of the law school from 1916 to 1936. Goodrich, beginning in the 1940s, would become a close personal friend of Pound’s. Pierre would go on to financially support Pound’s academic work in the 1950s and early 1960s.The above photograph also includes Felix Frankfurter, Pierre’s public utilities’ law professor, who became a prominent Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Photograph, Courtesy, Archives, Harvard Law School.
This photograph is of the original grain elevator that the five Goodrich brothers built, including Pierre Goodrich’s father James, and operated in Winchester, Indiana, beginning in 1898. It was located beside the Indianapolis and Bellefontaine Railroad, known as the “Bee Line.” The brothers’ material grandfather, Edward Edger, had built a grain elevator on this exact site in 1861. Photograph, Courtesy, Randolph County Historical Society, Inc. (Circa 1920)
The 1927 graduating class of St. Vincent Hospital School of Nursing, Indianapolis. Enid Smith, later Enid Goodrich, is standing in the front row, third from left. Enid had previously graduated from Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1921. Courtesy, Ascension St. Vincent Hospital Archives.
This photograph of Pierre F. Goodrich was included in the 1929 Indianapolis Directory of businesses and companies. Pierre was thirty-five years old at the time. Even by this early age he was considered one of the state’s top attorneys and businessmen, being a director of several companies, including Patoka Coal, Peoples Loan & Trust Company, the Eastern Indiana Telephone Company, The Investors Telephone Company, and Aetna Trust Savings and Company. Photograph, in the public domain.
At the turn of the Twentieth Century, agriculture was the major local economic activity in small towns and villages that dotted the Midwest. In 1930, thirty percent of Americans still lived on six million farms in the country. Agriculture would be the foundational business that resulted in the Goodrich brothers transitioning into becoming investors and operators in natural gas, coal, banks, telephone and other companies. Advertisement is taken from the Winchester, Indiana, town directory, 1920s.
Pierre F. Goodrich, left, chairman of the board, examines one of the Ayrshire Collieries Corporation’s many coal operations, circa 1945. Photograph, Perce G. and Ann Goodrich family
Pierre and Enid Goodrich, first row, Mont Pelerin Society meeting, 1950s. Photograph, Courtesy, Mont Pelerin Society, Hoover Institution, Stanford, California.
Wabash College’s 1951 graduation ceremonies. Dr. Y. P. Mei received an honorary doctorate from Frank Sparks, president of Wabash College, while Pierre F. Goodrich looks on. A professor of philosophy at Wabash during the 1950–51 school year, Mei was on leave from Yancheng University in Peking. Goodrich first met Dr. Mei through their mutual connection with the China Institute of America on whose board of directors Pierre served from 1948 to 1965. Photograph, Robert T. Ramsay, Jr., Archival Center, Wabash College.
Pierre F. Goodrich attended the 35th year reunion of his graduating class at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on May 7, 1955. It was during this reunion that Goodrich also visited with his former professor and mentor Roscoe Pound. Goodrich’s financial support of Pound enable the great legal scholar to complete his five-volume magnum opus Jurisprudence. Photograph, Courtesy, Harvard Law School.
Directors of Ayrshire Collieries visit the company’s Sun Spot Mine, located near Centenary, Indiana, in Vermillion County. The mine operated from 1927 to 1959. Left to right: J. Dwight Peterson, Irwin Reiss, Normal Kalb (President), Pierre F. Goodrich (Chairman), Albert Campbell (partially hidden), James B.F. Melville, Harold D. Wright, and E.S. Pearce. Photograph, Courtesy, Ayrshire Collieries Corporation. Circa 1958
Surrounded by boxes of unpacked books, Pierre F. Goodrich contemplates his vision for the Goodrich Seminar Room and ponders his many questions that have yet to be explored. Photograph, Courtesy, Robert T. Ramsey Archives,Wabash College. 1959
The dedication of the Lilly Library containing the Goodrich Seminar Room at Wabash College, April 11, 1959. Left to right: Byron K. Trippet, president of Wabash College, Ivan L. Wiles, Norman E. Treves, Eli Lilly, and Pierre F. Goodrich, trustees. Photograph, Robert T. Ramsay, Jr., Archival Center, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indiana.
Directors of the Ayrshire Collieries Corporation, Pierre Goodrich, Chairman of the Board, is seated at the head of the table. Circa 1960.
Liberty Fund directors, circa 1990. Sitting, left to right: Roseda Decker, William Hill (Chairman, President & CEO), and Enid Goodrich, Vice Chairman. Standing, left to right: Richard Ware, Donald Welch, Ralph Husted, Irvin Reiss, and Alan Russell. Liberty Fund photograph
Enid Goodrich receives a gift from Liberty Fund in recognition of her long-time service to the organization. Circa 1992.
For more than 60 years, Liberty Fund has been a meaningful part of many lives. See what they have to say.
Liberty Fund’s conference program began with a series of conferences directed by founder Pierre Goodrich during the 1960s and early 1970s. These conferences set the direction for our programs, keeping central themes of liberty at the core and expanding into diverse but related areas.
Our conference program explores a wide array of topics, including law, religion, history, literature, science, political theory, the arts, and journalism. In 2004, we expanded the scope and format of our conferences to include work with co-sponsoring institutions. In response to a global pandemic, Liberty Fund hosted its first virtual conference in 2020. We continue to look for new ways of exploring the ideal of liberty while maintaining the programs and values for which Liberty Fund was established.
Since Liberty Fund’s first publication in 1973, we have published over 400 titles for scholars, students, and general readers that explore the ideal of liberty across many disciplines, including economics, political thought, American history, law, and education.
Our books are edited and translated by world-renowned scholars who bring to the task the expertise these works deserve. Readers are supported in their own explorations of these primary texts by introductions, forewords, annotations, bibliographies, and other supplementary material. Our books are designed and manufactured according to the highest standards of book production—the first printings of all Liberty Fund books, both hardcover and paperback, are printed on acid-free paper and bound with sewn signatures, making them invaluable, lasting additions to any library.
Beginning in 1999 with the Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib), a site dedicated to advancing the study of economics, markets, and liberty, Liberty Fund has responded to the growing demand for online resources. In 2004, the Online Library of Liberty (OLL) was developed to offer free access to an extensive library of scholarly works and supporting material concerning individual liberty. Law & Liberty, a site focused on the classical liberal tradition of law and how it shapes a society of free and responsible individuals, was launched in 2012. Finally in 2017, Liberty Fund received a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to create AdamSmithWorks, a site dedicated to Smith’s works and to educational materials relevant to Smith.
John Kekes
Research Professor of Philosophy, Union College
Paul Seaton
Associate Professor of Philosophy, St. Mary's Seminary and University
Henry Clark
Senior Lecturer and Program Director, Political Economy Project, Dartmouth College
James Otteson
Professor of Economics, Wake Forest University
The cuneiform inscription that serves as Liberty Fund’s logo and as a design element in our books is the earliest known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi) or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.
According to Samuel Noah Kramer in From the Tablets of Sumer (1956), Lagash was the site of the first recorded social reform movement. Once considered a relatively free society of farmers, cattle breeders, boatmen, fishermen, merchants, and craftsmen, the Lagashites found that a change in political power had stripped them of their political and economic freedoms and subjected them to heavy taxation and exploitation by wealthy officials.
Sumerian historians believe that at this low point in Lagash’s history, Urukagina became the leader of the Sumerian city-state of Girsu/Lagash and led a popular movement that resulted in the reform of the oppressive legal and governmental structure of Sumeria.
Although Urukagina’s reforms were short-lived, the oppressive conditions in the city before the reforms were recorded in cuneiform on several clay cones and an oval-shaped plaque excavated by the French in 1878. On the tablets is found the first written reference to the concept of liberty (amagi or amargi, literally, “return to the mother”), used in reference to the process of reform. The phrase “return to the mother” reflects Sumerian matrilineal family practices. To be returned to the line of your mother was to be set free of all obligations of labor, debt, or taxes and to be restored to your liberty.
Today, the amagi is a key element of the Liberty Fund logo and can be found throughout our building and inside the front and back covers of our books. We believe in preserving this ancient cuneiform to ensure its meaning is never lost.
We find that the amagi sparks curiosity and starts discussions about its origin. We are honored to share the story of the Sumerians who believed in communicating the importance of liberty.
