Murray Lincoln

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Murray Danforth Lincoln (April 18, 1892 – November 7, 1966) was an American business leader and a key figure in the cooperative movement. He served as CEO of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company from 1939 to 1964. Lincoln grew up on a farm in Raynham, Massachusetts, and earned a Bachelor of Science from Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1914, where he belonged to Lambda Chi Alpha.

Early in his career, he was executive vice president of the Ohio Farm Bureau and helped start Farm Bureau Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (now Nationwide). He became president of the company in 1939 and led it until his retirement in 1964.

Lincoln also worked on national service and international affairs. In 1960 he led a task force on Food for Peace for President-elect John F. Kennedy; its 1961 report urged expanding U.S. aid and providing at least $3 billion worth of surplus food to poorer nations. He was named to the Peace Corps advisory council in 1961 and served on U.S. and U.N. committees related to the United Nations.

He helped found CARE, serving as its president from 1945 to 1957, then as CARE’s first chairman from 1957 until his death in 1966. He died after a two-year illness in Columbus, Ohio, on November 7, 1966. The Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center at the University of Massachusetts was named in his honor in 1970.