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Documents for "Business Leaders":
  • Ames, Oakes 1804-73, American manufacturer, railroad promoter, and politician, b. Easton, Mass. With his brother Oliver he managed the family's well-known shovel factory at Easton. The business grew under...
  • Astor, John Jacob 1763-1848, American merchant, b. Walldorf, near Heidelberg, Germany. At the age of 16 he went to England, and five years later, in 1784, he arrived in Baltimore, penniless. He later went to New...
  • Astor, John Jacob 1822-90, American financier, b. New York City, educated at Columbia and Göttingen universities and at Harvard law school; son of William Backhouse Astor (1792-1875). He served in the Peninsular...
  • Astor, John Jacob 1864-1912, American financier, b. Rhinebeck, N. Y.; son of William Backhouse Astor (1829-92). He served in the Spanish-American War. Drowned in the Titanic disaster, he left two sons, Vincent, the...
  • Astor, William Backhouse 1792-1875, American financier, b. New York City; son of John Jacob Astor (1763-1848). Educated in Germany, he was associated with his father in business after 1818. Later called the landlord of New York, he also inherited money from his uncle Henry Astor and left an...
  • Astor, William Backhouse 1829-92, American financier and sportsman, b. New York City. The son of William Backhouse Astor (1792-1875), he was a retiring man, notable principally for his wealth and for his marriage to Caroline Schermerhorn. With the assistance of Ward McAlister, she became famous as the Mrs. Astor of...
  • Astor, William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount 1848-1919, American-British financier, b. New York City, educated in Germany and in Italy and at the Columbia law school; son of John Jacob Astor (1822-90). He served as a state assemblyman and senator, but his political career was halted by his failure to win an election to the U.S. Congress. He was then appointed minister to Italy...
  • Bache, Richard 1737-1811, American merchant, b. Yorkshire, England. He came to New York City in 1765 to join an older brother in the mercantile business. Bache soon moved to Philadelphia in the interest of the...
  • Baker, George Fisher 1840-1931, American financier and philanthropist, b. Troy, N.Y. Baker was one of the founders of the First National Bank of New York in 1863 and became (1877) its president and then (1909) chairman...
  • Brady, Diamond Jim (James Buchanan Brady), 1856-1917, American financier and philanthropist, b. New York City. He was a bellboy and messenger and then worked for the New York Central RR in various capacities. He...
  • Brown, Moses 1738-1836, American manufacturer and philanthropist, b. Providence, R.I. He was associated with his brothers John, Joseph, and Nicholas in the family's mercantile activities before establishing...
  • Brown, Nicholas 1769-1841, American manufacturer and philanthropist, b. Providence, R.I., grad. Rhode Island College (renamed Brown Univ. in 1804 for him), 1786. He extended the internationally known mercantile business of his father, Nicholas Brown. Later his own firm, Brown and Ives, came to control most of the waterpower on the...
  • Buffett, Warren Edward 1930-, American financial executive, b. Omaha, Nebr., studied at Wharton School of Finance (1947-49), grad. Univ. of Nebraska (B.S., 1950), Columbia Univ. (M.S., 1951). After working as an...
  • Carlson, Chester Floyd 1906-68, American inventor; b. Seattle, Wash. A patent lawyer, he invented (1938) xerography , a method of electrostatic printing. For the next two decades he struggled to find a company that would produce his copying machine, finally finding the Haloid Co., which first marketed a Xerox...
  • Carnegie, Andrew 1835-1919, American industrialist and philanthropist, b. Dunfermline, Scotland. His father, a weaver, found it increasingly difficult to get work in Scottish factories and in 1848 brought his...
  • Carnegie, Dale 1888-1955, American lecturer and writer on self-improvement, b. Maryville, Mo., as Dale Carnagey; grad. State Normal School Number Two, Warrensburg, Mo. (1908). After stints as a salesman and...
  • Chrysler, Walter Percy 1875-1940, American industrialist, founder of the Chrysler Corp. (now part of DaimlerChrysler A.G.), b. Wamego, Kans. He began as a machinist's apprentice and rose within the industry to become...
  • Cook, Thomas 1808-92, English travel agent. In Leicester in 1841 he founded the travel agency that bears his name. The idea of the guided tour met with quick success, and by 1852 Cook had moved his office to...
  • Cooke, Jay 1821-1905, American financier, b. Sandusky, Ohio. He founded Jay Cooke & Company, which marketed the huge Civil War loans of the federal government. He later turned to railroad bonds and in 1870...
  • Cooper, Peter 1791-1883, American inventor, industrialist, and philanthropist, b. New York City. After achieving success in the glue business, Cooper, with two partners, erected (1829) the Canton Iron Works in...
  • Cudahy, Michael 1841-1910, American meat packer, b. Co. Kilkenny, Ireland. He went (1849) to Milwaukee and after 1856 worked for meatpacking firms. In the 1870s he introduced refrigeration into the meatpacking...
  • Cunard, Sir Samuel 1787-1865, Canadian pioneer of regular transatlantic steam navigation, b. Halifax, N.S. The son of a United Empire Loyalist, he became a leading businessman of Nova Scotia and engaged in banking,...
  • Dale, David 1739-1806, Scottish cotton manufacturer and philanthropist. In 1785 he built New Lanark, a cotton mill and model community that provided his employees with good housing and schools. He was...
  • Daly, Marcus 1841-1900, American copper magnate, b. Ireland. He went to New York City at 15 and later moved to California, where he worked as a miner. He was employed by the "silver kings," J. G. Fair and J. W. Mackay, at the Comstock Lode. In 1876 he was sent by a large company to investigate the silver mines at Butte, Mont. Discovering that there was rich copper beneath the silver,...
  • De Pauw, Washington Charles 1822-87, American manufacturer, b. Salem, Ind. At first successful at banking, he later established a plate-glass works at New Albany, Ind., which became one of the largest plants in the country...
  • Deere, John 1804-86, American industrialist, manufacturer of agricultural implements, b. Rutland, Vt. He was one of the pioneers of the steel plow industry. A blacksmith by trade, he established (1837) a shop at Grand Detour, Ill. There he was associated with Leonard Andrus in making (1837) the first Grand Detour steel plow. In 1843, Deere...
  • Deming, William Edwards 1900-1993, American statistician and quality-control expert, b. Sioux City, Iowa. Deming used statistics to examine industrial production processes for flaws and believed that improving product...
  • Derby, Elias Hasket 1739-99, American merchant, b. Salem, Mass. He inherited the considerable wealth and maritime business that his father, Richard Derby (1712-83), also of Salem, had acquired in trade with Spain and...
  • Drake, Edwin Laurentine 1819-80, American oil well driller, b. Greene co., N.Y. In 1858 he was employed to conduct drilling operations and on Aug. 27, 1859, he struck oil near Titusville, Pa., at a depth of 69 ft (21.1...
  • Drew, Daniel 1797-1879, American railroad speculator, b. Carmel, N.Y. He became a cattle dealer in early life and by 1834 was successful enough to engage in the steamboat business on the Hudson, which he...
  • Drexel, Anthony Joseph 1826-93, American banker and philanthropist, b. Philadelphia. He entered (1838) at an early age the well-known banking firm of Drexel and Company, founded by his father, Francis Martin Drexel, an...
  • Du Pont family notable in U.S. industrial history. The Du Pont family's importance began when Eleuthère Irénée Du Pont established a gunpowder mill on the Brandywine River in N Delaware. Development, expansion, and family control of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours & Company were long the family's chief concerns, and its...
  • Du Pont, Eleuthère Irénée 1772-1834, American gunpowder manufacturer, b. Paris, France; son of Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours. At the age of 17, Irénée entered the royal gunpowderworks, where Lavoisier taught him the trade. After Lavoisier was forced to leave the plant, Irénée began managing (1791) his father's printing house, where the Du Ponts published counterrevolutionary pamphlets. When the...
  • Du Pont, Pierre Samuel 1870-1954, American industrialist, b. Wilmington, Del., grad. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1890. Du Pont worked as a chemist with the family's company, helping to develop smokeless...
  • Duke, James Buchanan 1856-1925, American industrialist, processor of tobacco products, b. near Durham, N.C. The Civil War left the Duke family poor, but James and his brother, Benjamin, helped their father in building...
  • Durant, Thomas Clark 1820-85, American railroad builder, chief figure in the construction of the Union Pacific RR, b. Lee, Mass. He was successful in building railroads in the Midwest, and, after the Union Pacific was...
  • Eastman, George 1854-1932, American inventor, industrialist, and philanthropist, b. Waterville, N.Y. By mass production of his photographic inventions, Eastman enormously stimulated the development of photography...
  • Fair, James Graham 1831-94, American financier, b. near Belfast, Ireland. He emigrated to America as a child, grew up on an Illinois farm, and went to the West in 1851 in search of gold. In partnership with J. W...
  • Fargo, William George 1818-81, American pioneer expressman, b. Pompey, N.Y. He had been successively a postrider, freight agent, messenger, and resident agent (1843) for an express company in Buffalo, N.Y., when in...
  • Field, Cyrus West 1819-92, American merchant, promoter of the first Atlantic cable, b. Stockbridge, Mass.; brother of David Dudley Field and Stephen J. Field. As head of a paper business, he accumulated a modest fortune, and in 1853 he retired. In 1854 he conceived the idea of the cable. He secured a charter, organized the English and American...
  • Field, Marshall 1834-1906, American merchant, b. Conway, Mass. In 1856, after five years' apprenticeship in a general store in Pittsfield, Mass., he went to Chicago and became a clerk for Cooley, Wadsworth & Co.,...
  • Filene, Edward Albert 1860-1937, American merchant, b. Salem, Mass. As president of the Boston firm of William Filene's Sons he pioneered in scientific and ingenious methods of retail distribution—the "bargain basement" was one of his innovations. He planned and helped organize the Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Commerce of the United States and served in World War I as chairman of the War Shipping...
  • Firestone, Harvey Samuel 1868-1938, American industrialist, manufacturer of rubber products, b. Columbiana co., Ohio. The son of a prosperous farmer, Harvey Firestone began to manufacture rubber tires in 1896. He organized...
  • Fish, Stuyvesant 1851-1923, American railroad executive, b. New York City; son of Hamilton Fish (1808-93). He became (1877) a director of the Illinois Central RR, and as its president (1887-1907) he built the...
  • Fisk, James 1834-72, American financial speculator, b. Pownal, Vt. In his youth he worked for a circus and as a wagon peddler of merchandise. During the Civil War he became wealthy purchasing cotton in...
  • Flagler, Henry Morrison 1830-1913, American financier and real-estate developer, b. Hopewell, near Canandaigua, N.Y. As a youth he struck out for himself in Ohio. After trying the grain and salt business, he joined John D. Rockefeller in oil refining. The firm of Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler became the Standard Oil Company in 1870, and Flagler was connected with it until 1911, resigning as vice president, however, in 1908. He...
  • Ford, Henry 1863-1947, American industrialist, pioneer automobile manufacturer, b. Dearborn, Mich.