Oldest First

John Adams was President of the U. S. when Jacobus Roosevelt opened his Manhattan hardware store in 1797. The hardware business flourished despite the yellow fever that plagued the city the following year and Jacobus Roosevelt took his son Cornelius into partnership. In the course of business Roosevelt & Son found it expedient to discount its customers' notes. Before long it began discounting notes of other hardware merchants. By 1824 the prospering Roosevelts were able to take a hand in founding the Chemical Bank (now Manhattan's potent Chemical Bank & Trust Co.). By 1845 a biographer, rating the Roosevelt fortune at the then fat figure of $500,000, observed: "No family shines more honorably in the ancient Dutch annals of this Province than the Roosevelts, the venerated Burgomasters of their day." And by the end of the Civil War, having left the hardware business far behind, Roosevelt & Son was a full-fledged banking house.

Roosevelt & Son financed Cyrus Field's first transatlantic cable, floated James J. Hill's first railroad bonds and gained the undying enmity of Jay Gould for refusing to play his slippery games. In late years the firm has practically withdrawn from the underwriting field to specialize as a dealer in railroad and municipal issues. But what lifted Roosevelt & Son above the run-of-the-mill Wall Street houses was its unbiased investment counsel. Its clientele consisted largely of institutions, wealthy individuals and estates which turned over their portfolios to Roosevelt management. And Roosevelt management was good.

Old Jacobus Roosevelt would not have been surprised that his great-grandson Theodore should become 26th President of the U. S. Nor would he have been greatly startled when his second cousin three times removed became the 32nd President of the U. S. But what would have given him a severe shock would have been the signing by any Roosevelt in the White House of a law which would split his venerable firm three ways.

Last week in its 137th year Roosevelt & Son announced a complete breakup in anticipation of the provision of the Banking Act of 1933 which requires private bankers to segregate their banking business from their securities business before next June. Thus the oldest investment firm in Wall Street became the first to submit to the new Roosevelt rule.

George Emlen Roosevelt and his brother Philip James, fifth in the direct line of Founder Jacobus, and another partner "will continue the business of managing investments and other property, including the collection of income and the reinvestment of principal, and of acting as custodians of securities." They will perpetuate the old firm's name.

Second Cousin Archibald Roosevelt, Theodore's son, will take the municipal bond business with Partner Charles E. Weigold under the name of Roosevelt & Weigold, Inc.

The general securities business will be done by Fairman Rogers Dick, Van S. Merle Smith, Charles B. Robinson and John K. Roosevelt (special partner) under the firm name of Dick & Merle Smith.

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