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This
list is based on an article of New York statistician Thomas Shearman and
was initially published in the Forum, November 1889. It lists personal
fortunes and estates exceeding $20 million. In addition to the listed
living or deceased individuals, it also mentioned Trinity Church, holder
of large tracts of Manhattan real estate, with a fortune of $150 million.
We believe the following fortunes to be overestimated :
Leland Stanford was a member of the
Pacific Quartett, who built the Central Pacific and later the Southern
Pacific railroads. Stanford was president of the railroads but his fortune
did not significantly exceed the ones of his partners :
C.P. Huntington,
Mark Hopkins and the Crocker brothers.
His estate was $19 million in 1893 with a gift of a similar amount to
endow Stanford University made in 1885. There is no reason to believe he
was ever worth $100 million. The fortune of
Charles Crocker of $60 million seems likewise exaggerated in relation
of his estate of $40 million in 1888. It does reflect the overall Crocker
fortune though, that is including the estate of his brother
Edwin Bryant Crocker, who died years before him.
The
estimates of other railroad fortunes are generally a little high, although
this may have seemed correct in these days of the Golden Age of
railroading. Neither the solid Cornelius
Vanderbilt II nor his more social brother
William Kissam Vanderbilt left a
fortune of $100 million, when they died respectively in 1899 and 1920.
Jay Gould also barely made it to $80
million and his longtime partner Russell
Sage seemed to have had a lien on much of this. In this light the
estimated $50 million of Sage’s fortune seems very conservative in
relation to Gould’s. John Work Garrett
left $15 million in 1884 and his son Robert
Garrett was down to $5 million, when he died in the middle of the
1890’s. By that time their Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had gone through
receivership and reorganization by
J. Pierpont Morgan.
Edwin Augustus Stevens died in 1868
leaving at best $6 million to a large family. His son and namesake was
just trustee of the Stevens Estate, and certainly not worth anything near
to $50 million, a figure that also exceeds the most generous estimate for
the overall Stevens family fortune. Mr Shearman’s “R. J. Livingston” may
have designated Robert James Livingston, a son of Maturin Livingston and
Margaret Lewis. In any case no R. J. Livingston who could have been worth
$30 million in 1889 is known to us. The richest Livingston at this time
was Johnston Livingston, who made a
fortune in American Express and other express companies. But even his
fortune probably never reached $30 million. We also have serious doubts in
the case of Mr Shearman’s “A. Schermerhorn”.
Abraham Schermerhorn, the father of
Mrs (Caroline Webster Schermerhorn) Astor, died in 1850 and
F(rederick) Augustus Schermerhorn, a
grandson of the younger Peter Schermerhorn
and a director of the Consolidated Gas Company of New York, was reputed
the be worth several millions, but not $20 million, which rather comes
close to the overall Schermerhorn fortune.
Of
H. A. Hutchins we know nothing except that he was a Standard Oil
shareholder in 1882, which may justify his $20 millions. Standard Oil’s
outstanding profitability can also justify a similar amount for William P.
Thompson, who joined the group through its West Virginia subsidiary. In
this case we miss however Johnson Newlon Camden, Thompson’s partner in
Parkersburg and afterwards an active Standard Oil partner. Also missing in
Shearman’s list are Jabez A. Bostwick, Oliver Burr Jennings,
Charles Lockhart and
Jacob Jay Vandergrift, all large
shareholders of Standard Oil.
- Other people
we would have expected on the Forum list are :
John William Mackay, the richest
of the Comstock silver kings, Lloyd Tevis, brother-in-law and
partner of J. B. Haggin, Chicago’s other large meat packers, Nelson
Morris and Gustavus Franklin Swift and the estate of Robert Goelet (II), the
multi-millionaire brother of the bachelor Peter Goelet (III).
It is clear that the
appraisal of private fortunes was not easier then than now, and Thomas
Shearman’s statistical work is certainly a valuable reference against
which we could compare our information from other sources. The
differences with our other figures may result from inaccuracies of
information then publicly available or from changes in perception of the
economic conditions that prevailed a few years after the Forum list was
computed. This would for example explain the systematic overestimation of railroad fortunes by Mr Shearman.
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