New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: James M. McGovern

 

James McGovern held a seat at the NYSE throughout the 1898 tax period.

James "Jimmie" McGovern "in caricature".

It appears that James McGovern was commonly called "Jimmie".

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Charles M. Schott

 

Charles M. Schott Jr. appears to have used an undated circular cancel throughout the 1898 tax period.

Mr. Schott must have been a sportsman.  His page in The Stock Exchange in Caricature features an angler, though it not clear if it is Mr. Schott.

A gudgeon is a small fish commonly used for bait.

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Frederick T. Adams

 

F. T. ADAMS & CO.

NOV

4

1901

*

Frederick T. Adams ran his own firm as a member of the New York Stock Exchange.  Like many other wealthy brokers, he seemed to pass much of his free time at his yacht club and on his own yachts.  Adams' yacht club, The Atlantic Yacht Club, was so significant that it had write-up in The New York Times in 1898, with a brief bio of Adams and his involvement:

The Commodore of the club this year is Frederick T. Adams, and the flagship is the famous schooner Sachem.  Commodore Adams has been a member of the club for several years, and has worked hard to make it successful.  For three years he was Vice Commodore, and for two out of those three years was Acting Commodore while George J. Gould was in Europe.  When the new clubhouse was proposed, Commodore Adams entered heart and soul in the new undertaking, and it was largely through his efforts that the scheme was carried out so successfully.  Commodore Adams is a member of the Stock Exchange, a Governor of the New York Club, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, of the New York Athletic Club, and of several other yacht clubs.

Frederick T. Adams, from The Stock Exchange in Caricature, 1904:

From The New York Times, September 18, 1898:

Adams is the gentleman with the cap at the center left of the page

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: James M. Leopold

James M. Leopold in The Stock Exchange in Caricature, 1904

 

Mr. Leopold must have been known as a pinochle player.  

Mr. Leopold wasn't much of a driver.

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Henry Block

 

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Harry Content

 

Mr. Content appears to have appreciated the early automobile:

From the Stock Exchange in Caricature, 1904:

From The New York Times Obit for Mr. Content, August 14, 1941:

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Robert Doremus

 

Robert Doremus from The Stock Exchange in Caricature, 1904

DeCoppet & Doremus used handstamps, initial punch, and initial perfin cancels.  The firm often dealt in odd lot trades (fractions of 100 or multiples of 100 shares), as referred to in the poem above.  As such they frequently used the battleship revenue stamps in addition to the dollar value documentary stamps.

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Harry L. Horton

 

Harry L. Horton, from The Stock Exchange in Caricature, 1904:

Mr. Horton must have been well known for telling stories, even if he was only talking to himself.

From the website of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Athens & Sheshequin:

Harry L. Horton, Millionaire New York Banker

December 14, 2020Written by Katie Replogle

Throughout their respective histories, the Athens and Sheshequin Universalist Societies have received donations from people who were, as far as I can tell, never members of either congregation.  Most of these non-member donors were local residents, but in 1895 one donation came from a wealthy and prominent New York City financier.

In 1893 the trustees of the Sheshequin Universalist Society resolved to install an iron fence around the cemetery.  Donations were solicited, and about $150 was collected from fifteen people over the next year or two.  One of the donors was “H. L. Horton,” who gave $25.

Although the Hortons were the most numerous family in Sheshequin at this time, only a few of them were recorded as members of the Universalist Society, and “H. L. Horton” was not one of those few.  Ever curious about these non-member donors, I searched the 1900 census of Sheshequin and found four Horton men whose first names started with “H.”  But, after several hours of digging through on-line archives, I was ready to admit defeat.  None of these men seemed likely to be the donor.

Then it struck me: $25 was a lot of money in 1895, equivalent to about $750 today.  “H. L. Horton” was no ordinary donor.  I remembered Harry L. Horton, the Sheshequin native whom the local newspapers referred to as the “millionaire New York banker.” He could easily have given $25 in 1895.

Harry Lawrence Horton was born in Sheshequin in 1832 to William B. Horton and Melinda Blackman (a daughter of 1833 member Franklin Blackman).  Harry’s three sisters, Elizabeth Horton Kinney, Amazilla Horton Kinney, and Mary Horton Shores, were all members of the church in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Harry left Sheshequin at the age of 21 and spent about eleven years in business in Milwaukee, WI, before moving to New York City in 1865.  There he founded H. L. Horton & Co., a brokerage and banking firm, with offices on Broadway in lower Manhattan.  Later he set up offices in London and Paris.  Horton was a member of the New York Stock Exchange.

Harry L. Horton’s business and social life connected him with many prominent and wealthy people.  His daughter Blanche married Edward Francis Hutton, the founder of the E. F. Hutton brokerage firm.  In 1895 Horton hosted a dinner for the Duke of Marlborough and local businessmen.  In 1914 he was photographed with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

But Harry retained an attachment to his home town and his rural roots.  He was active in the Bradford County Society of New York City (yes, there was such a thing!).  The 200 (all male) members were Bradford County natives who lived and worked in New York City.  Every year they held a dinner at a posh New York hotel, where they joked about life in Bradford county and sang humorous songs.  At one of these events, Horton, who was the president of the society at the time, led the group in “the battle song of Bradford county, the chorus and all the verses of which run:

“We’ll take him down

“To the old frog pond

“And sou-wow-wowse him in!”

Harry Horton also visited family and friends in Bradford county periodically.  Local newspapers noted that he was here in 1897, 1901, and 1912.  He may have also visited in 1895, when he donated toward the cemetery fence.  In that year he also gave a “fine bell” to the Methodist Episcopal church in Black (Sheshequin township), “near which place he spent his boyhood days.”

Harry Horton died at his home in Manhattan on Dec. 17, 1915.  To the surprise of many, his estate was valued at “only” $300,000 (about $7.5 million in 2020 dollars), not the millions he was thought to have had.

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Walter S. Gurnee

 

While it appears below that Walter S. Gurnee Jr. was fond of wine and cigars and the trappings of wealth, his father, Walter S. Gurnee Sr., was the far more distinguished and accomplished of the two, having amassed a fortune from scratch and become Mayor of Chicago.  Walter Sr. was also a founding member of the Chicago Board of Trade.  It is clear where the money and connections came from to establish Jr. with a seat at the New York Stock Exchange.

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: George F. Cummings

AUG 27 1901

CUMMINGS & CO.

Mr. Cummings must have had a past that included acting.  By 1901 he was one of the most senior members of the New York Stock Exchange.

George F. Cummings in The Stock Exchange in Caricature from 1904:

Advertisement, Blue Pencil Magazine, September 1900

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Sylvester L. Blood

Stock Memo of Sale for 20 shares of what appears to be Consolidated Ice Company to John Wallace & Company

 

Stock memo of sale for 100 shares of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway to Eames & Moore

Mr. Blood must have owned an early automobile powered by benzene in addition to his yacht, somewhat standard equipment for wealthy New York bankers and brokers of the day.

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Elias C. Benedict

 

E. C. BENEDICT & CO.

FEB 23 1899

Weak cancel but still legible with close scrutiny.

Last year I first posted images from a volume called The Stock Exchange in Caricature from 1904.  There are many more brokers and their cancels that can be highlighted.  Today is Elias Benedict, friend of President Grover Cleveland, and famous for ownership of his steam powered yacht the Oneida.  The Stock Exchange in Caricature has Mr. Benedict aboard his yacht in the caricature, and the accompanying poetry refers to his friendship with Cleveland.  In 1893, Cleveland secretly had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor while aboard the Oneida.  The surgery was kept secret to prevent panic in the markets.  The story of the surgery is covered in a May 28, 2020 article in The Rotation.

Cleveland Goes Under the Knife: The Incredible True Story of a Secret Presidential Surgery Aboard a Luxury Yacht

By Ben Stanley May 28, 2020

In the modern media era, it is virtually impossible to imagine how much surgery on a sitting President would dominate the news cycle. Live updates through cable news, streaming services, and social media would be constant, while panels of pundits would deliver constant interpretations of what was happening in and around the White House while the President was under.

Now imagine the reaction if it was discovered a President had that surgery in secret, aboard a wealthy banker’s luxury yacht, in a bid to prevent an economic panic from worsening.

Incredibly, that all happened back in 1893 when, somewhere in Long Island Sound, President Grover Cleveland had a cancerous tumor removed from his jaw.

Despite rumors of the surgery leaking shortly after it took place, the first-ever surgery performed on a sitting president would be covered up for more than two decades before one of the surgeons eventually revealed what took place.

A plan was hatched for Cleveland to have the tumor removed while on a friend’s yacht, as it traveled from New York City to a holiday home on Cape Cod.

Though presidents as far back as Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) suffered from diseases and other ailments, only Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush joined Cleveland as those who have ‘gone under the knife’ when they lived in the White House.

Eisenhower (who also suffered from a heart attack and stroke while in office) underwent surgery to treat Crohn’s Disease in 1956, while Reagan had six surgeries during his two terms in the 1980s, including the removal of a bullet from an assassination attempt, in 1981.

More recently, George George W. Bush underwent two colonoscopy procedures in 2002 and 2007. While they were unconscious, both Reagan and Bush temporarily transferred the power of the presidency to their Vice-Presidents, George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney, under the 25th Amendment.

That constitutional lever was not available in 1893, nor were the vast improvements in medical technology that would ensure the continuing health of future Presidents.

The road to Cleveland’s historic, and unusual, surgery began on May 5, 1893, when the President discovered a bump on the roof of his mouth. It would take a month before he finally had it checked out by his personal physician Dr. Joseph D. Bryant, who diagnosed the growth as cancerous.

“It is a bad looking tenant,” Bryant reportedly told Cleveland. “Were it in my mouth, I would have it removed at once.”

The proposed removal of the growth came at a bad time for the president. Cleveland was dealing with the start of a four-year recession, later known as the Panic of 1893, and was worried that news of him going under the knife would scare Wall Street further.

A plan was hatched for Cleveland to have the tumor removed while on a friend’s yacht, as it traveled from New York City to a holiday home on Cape Cod.

 

Yacht Oneida. Later converted to a tug, she was USS Adelante in 1918-20

Photo by USN Photograph NH 100588 (public domain via US Navy)

 

While the press was told he was enjoying a four-day fishing trip, the ‘Oneida’, an impressive steam-powered cruiser owned by prominent New York banker Elias C. Benedict, was made ready for the presidential procedure.

The yacht’s saloon was transformed into an operating theatre, with all but a harmonium that was bolted to the floor, removed. The room was completely disinfected, while a large chair, where Cleveland would be seated, was tied to the mast that came through the center of the saloon. A single bulb powered by a portable battery provided light.

Along with Bryant, five other surgeons were brought aboard, having been ferried from different piers to avoid suspicion. Dr. William W. Keen, Jr, credited by many as America’s first brain surgeon, was involved.

Just after midday on July 1, 1893, Cleveland went under anesthesia (ether), and the surgeons went to work.  According to a recent article in The Surgery Journal, cocaine solution was injected around the growth, while nitric oxide was used to manage pain.

In a 90-minute operation led by Bryant, the tumor was removed, along with five teeth, a third of Cleveland’s upper palate, and part of his upper left jawbone. All were kept for further examination.

Because the tumor was removed through Cleveland’s mouth, there would be no major scarring. The president’s famed bushy mustache made for a perfect cover for any that did exist.

Even for modern surgeons with a far more extensive range of instruments and equipment, operating at sea is a hugely difficult task. Though the president would require further surgery to install a rubber palatal obturator, the operation was a great success; evidenced by a speech Cleveland gave to Congress a month after the tumor was removed.

The press described Cleveland, who was never troubled by cancer again, dying of a heart attack in 1908, as “in perfect health” and “looking well and not the least weary” when he spoke.

Thanks to confirmation from one of Bryant’s six-strong team, Philadelphia Press journalist E.J. Edwards would report about the secretive surgery later in 1893.

Cleveland denied Edwards’ reportage and even launched into a smear campaign against him. In 1917, Keen would write about what happened, finally proving Edwards right.

Regardless of Cleveland’s cover-up and the risks involved on the ‘Oneida’, Matthew Algeo, who wrote The President Is a Sick Man about the incident, described the first ever surgery on an American president as an “extraordinary achievement in American medicine.”

“The doctors took incredible risks. I mean, it was really foolhardy,” Algeo told NPR, in 2011.

“I talked to a couple of oral surgeons [while] researching the book, and they still marvel at this operation: that they were able to do this on a moving boat; [that] they did it very quickly. A similar operation today would take several hours; they did it in 90 minutes.”

New York Stock Brokers: Frederick W. Perry

 

Column advert from The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, May 6, 1899

Stock memo of sale for 100 shares of Republic Steel common stock to Eames and Moore for 19 1/8 per share

F.  W.  P.

AUG

12

1901

Mr. Perry from "The Stock Exchange in Caricature" from 1904.  The upper right cartoon depicts a scene for which society is finally starting to render proper judgment over racist representations.  Which brings to mind the whole subject of cancel culture.  On this site we pride ourselves in the advancement of cancel culture, specializing in railroad cancels, printed cancels of all sorts, and stock broker cancels, among others.