1. Jay Cooke was an American financier who helped finance the Union war effort during the American Civil War and the postwar development of railroads in the northwestern United States.
15 Facts About Jay Cooke
1. 2.
Jay Cooke is generally acknowledged as the first major investment banker in the United States and creator of the first wire house firm.
3.
Eleutheros Jay Cooke was a pioneer Ohio lawyer and Whig, a member of the Ohio General Assembly, and a member of Congress from Ohio from 1831 to 1833.
4.
Meanwhile, Jay Cooke secured the support of most Northern newspapers, purchasing ads through advertising agencies, and often working directly with editors on lengthy articles about the virtues of buying government bonds.
5.
Jay Cooke quickly sold the $500 million in bonds, and $11 million more.
6.
Jay Cooke influenced the establishment of national banks, and organized a national bank at Washington and another at Philadelphia almost as quickly as Congress could authorize the institutions.
7.
Jay Cooke sent agents into remote villages and hamlets, and even into isolated mining camps in the west, and persuaded rural newspapers to praise the loan.
8.
Jay Cooke moved to Duluth, Minnesota after purchasing land, particularly in Carlton and St Louis counties, mostly through agricultural college scrip.
9.
Jay Cooke believed the lumber industry would be furthered by the road which lay through hundreds of miles of white pine and hundreds more of bare prairie for settlers.
10.
Jay Cooke's investments brought other lumbermen to the area to purchase blocks of timber.
11.
Jay Cooke was heavily involved in financial scandals with the Canadian government and caused the Prime Minister John A Macdonald to lose his office in the 1873 election.
12.
Jay Cooke died in the Ogontz section of Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania, on February 16,1905.
13.
Jay Cooke married Dorothea Elizabeth Allen in 1844; she died in 1871.
14.
Jay Cooke died in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, in 1905 at the age of 83.
15.
Jay Cooke donated funds to the Philadelphia Divinity School and for the building of Episcopal churches.