Fifty years in Wall Street

by Henry Clews

Shortly before his death, in 1869, he bequeathed two and a half millions as a building fund for lodging houses for the poor of London, and devised for a Southern Education Fund two million one hundred thousand. In addition to these he left five millions to various relatives. J. S. Morgan, who was Mr. Peabody’s partner in the banking business, became, at his death, his successor, and is now supposed to be a richer man than Mr. Peabody ever was.

Johns Hopkins, who died at Baltimore in 1873, at the age of 78, was one of the most eccentric millionaires and philanthropists. Very few expected that he would bequeath the great university and the hospital which are called by his name. He was so wretchedly penurious that he hardly afforded himself the means of subsistence. His benefactions to these two institutions, however, exceed eight million dollars.

Alexander T. Stewart, the great dry goods merchant, who was reputed to be one of the three wealthiest men in the United States, Commodore Vanderbilt and John Jacob Astor being the other two, died in 1876. He had no legitimate heirs, and his estate, estimated at one time between twenty and thirty millions, was left to his wife, with the exception of a million to Judge Hilton and $325,000 to his employes.

Mr. Stewart’s two great benefactions were failures, as he left nobody able and willing to carry out his intentions in regard to their arrangement.

They would probably have been failures in any event, as they seemed to the majority of people to be in a large measure Utopian. One was Garden City on Long Island, intended to be homes for industrious mechanics on a higher and more comfortable scale than the majority of the dwelling of these sons of physical and intellectual toil. A grand cathedral was built there in memory of the merchant prince, and a beautiful crypt for his mortal remains, which were stolen from St. Mark’s churchyard shortly after the interment.

The mechanics and laborers were not attracted to Garden City, and it is now making slow progress with tenants whose avocations are generally in the higher walks of life.

The other great enterprise was a home for girls and women at moderate expense. This was in the shape of a hotel on a large scale at Park Avenue and Thirty-third street. The restrictions and the prices were such that the home also failed to attract the class it was intended for. The public gift, therefore, reverted to the Stewart estate, or rather was taken forcible possession of by the trustees and transformed into the Park Avenue Hotel. To carry out the rather indefinite terms of the bequest would probably have involved the expenditure of a very large amount of the Stewart estate, and, perhaps, the enterprise would even then have been a failure. It is more than probable that if Mr. Stewart had lived a few years longer, he himself would have been satisfied with the impracticability of both his semi-philanthropic schemes.

There were great things expected in the shape of benefactions from Mr. Stewart at the time of his death. He had done so little in that respect while living that the public indulged the hope that he would make up for his charitable shortcomings when he found that his worldly accumulations could no longer be of any service or gratification to him, and that he could not take any of them away with him.

Hence, it was a considerable disappointment to the public when the will revealed the fact that nothing had been devised, out of the immense hoard of nearly half a century’s savings, to charitable purposes.

On the day of his death I had an engagement with my dentist, Mr. Dwinell, in Thirty-fourth street, and while I was seated in the chair Mr. Wilson MacDonald, the well known sculptor, came in to pay a visit to the dentist, with whom he was well acquainted. Having been introduced by the sculptor, we immediately entered into conversation on the prominent local topic of the day, the death of Mr. Stewart and the probable distribution of his wealth.