John B. Lyon was member #1976 of the Chicago Board of Trade, and traded, for most of his career, under the firm name Lyon & Company at the head office at 12 Sherman Street in Chicago. The firm was large enough to have multiple offices in the US and beyond.
Front side of document fragment:
John B. Lyon, was a member of the Chicago Board of Trade for forty-six years, joining immediately after arriving in Chicago, and had participated in more "deals" in wheat and corn and had handled larger amounts of corn as a shipper than any other grain man in the West. Although of late years poor health had limited his activities, his last trades were closed out only on the day pre- ceding his death. Between 1860 and 1879 the name of J. B. Lyon stood for immense deals in wheat and corn, straightforward honesty and great wealth. In August of 1872, following the short wheat crop of 1871, Mr. Lyon ran a "corner," in the course of which the price soared to $1.62. The Lyon holding was estimated at 25,000,000 bushels, and stocks of wheat in Chicago were only 6,000,000 bushels. The deal failed, however, owing to the rushing of new crop wheat to market and the passing of a large amount of damp wheat as No. 2 spring for delivery. When Mr. Lyon saw what was coming, he sold out and the deal is said to have cost him $800,000. Pre- ceding this deal Mr. Lyon had run several successful corners in corn in the middle '60s, in which he shipped the bulk of the crop to Buffalo for three successive years, and had the making of prices practically his own way. It was his custom to charter all the boats available on the lakes and move corn east so deliveries could not be made. In 1860 he ran a wheat deal for Angus Smith of Milwaukee, in which heavy profits were realized. Mr. Lyon handled so much corn in the '70s that the trade always was watching for a corner. In 1879 he shipped 50,000,000 bushels of corn. Mr. Lyon formed a number of partnerships, but the firm name generally was J. B. Lyon & Co. until he entered business with John Lester, when the style was Lyon & Lester. Earlier he was connected at different times with G. J. Boyne, now with Armour & Co., W. Meddows and J. Swartz. For more than twenty years he conducted, in connection with his grain operations, an immense sugar plantation at Patterson, La. He owned the town of Bellefontain, Miss. At Ocean Springs, Miss., he had at the time of his death fifteen miles of oyster beds, and the entire Hollinger Island, off Mobile. His holdings of pine lands in the South and of real estate in and adjacent to Chicago were also large.
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