Banker in St. Louis
Within a few short months, Prescott had met and then married Dorothy Walker, daughter of the railroad's president,
G.H. Walker, who had been born and reared in the Missouri city.
One year before the wedding, which took place, not in St. Louis, but at the Walkers' summer home in Maine's Kennebunkport, "Bert "Walker, as he was called, had been made president of Averell Harriman's new investment bank--W.A. Harriman & Co.--and had moved to Wheatly Hills, a close-knit community within Old Westbury, Long Island. The "community" consisted mostly of members of Jock Whitney's polo team.
In
1922 Bert and Averell formed a horse-breeding and racing partnership
(Log Cabin Stud) near Harry Payne Whitney's estate at Manhasset, Long
Island. The estate was so large that at times it was said to be located at Rosslyn, NY, or identified as the Wheatley stables.
What I never realized before starting my research into the background of Prescott Bush's father-in-law was that Bert Walker had long been involved with the New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railway Co. (NOTM, or Gulf Coast Lines) from as early as 1902, ensuring first that his investor-clients' railroad stock would prosper; navigating it through bankruptcy and into private operation, finding a buyer, and, later, protecting the interest of bondholders who held the debt.
Walker oversaw the Frisco's sale to the Missouri Pacific in 1925, agreeing to accept 5% gold bonds as part payment to the former shareholders. The infamous Van Swearingen brothers of Cleveland, assisted by loans from J. P. Morgan banks, such as Bankers Trust, had obtained control of various railroad assets through their holding company, Alleghany Corporation, in 1930, but then were forced into bankruptcy two years later when MOPAC could not pay its bonds.
The default brought on a resulting sale of control in 1935 at bargain prices, according to a U.S. Senate inquiry, at an auction conducted by J. P. Morgan officials, of its collateral worth over $3.5 billion securing a $48 million loan. Thus control of the railroads went into the hands of George A. Ball (Mid-America) for less than one-third of a million dollars. In 1938, Bert Walker was again one of a five-member protective group ensuring the viability of those bonds.
We know that two years after George Herbert Walker Bush, Bert's grandson, was discharged from the U.S. Navy in September 1945, he decided to move to West Texas to go into the oil business, with help from his maternal uncle, Herbie Walker--Bert's son--who advised him about potential investors. We have to wonder how many of those potential investors in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana had been known to George Herbert Walker through his connections with the railroad to which much of his career had been linked.
Frisco Branches in Texas and Oklahoma
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| G.H. Walker son-in-law, Prescott Bush |
As our readers are undoubtedly aware, Prescott Bush moved to St. Louis after completing his Yale diploma and his military service in WWI. Tapped for Skull and Bones in 1917, Prescott became fast friends with Bunny Harriman in his class, as well as with Bunny's older brother, Averell, scions of E. H. Harriman's railroad empire. E.H. Harriman's successor after his 1909 death, R.S. Lovett from the Baker & Botts Houston, Texas law firm, also had a son in the secret society around the same time. Prescott took a job with Simmons Hardware, owned by the family of other Bonesmen of the same age at Yale.
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| Another kind of merger |
One year before the wedding, which took place, not in St. Louis, but at the Walkers' summer home in Maine's Kennebunkport, "Bert "Walker, as he was called, had been made president of Averell Harriman's new investment bank--W.A. Harriman & Co.--and had moved to Wheatly Hills, a close-knit community within Old Westbury, Long Island. The "community" consisted mostly of members of Jock Whitney's polo team.
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| Bert Walker's Old Westbury home from 1920. |
What I never realized before starting my research into the background of Prescott Bush's father-in-law was that Bert Walker had long been involved with the New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railway Co. (NOTM, or Gulf Coast Lines) from as early as 1902, ensuring first that his investor-clients' railroad stock would prosper; navigating it through bankruptcy and into private operation, finding a buyer, and, later, protecting the interest of bondholders who held the debt.
Walker oversaw the Frisco's sale to the Missouri Pacific in 1925, agreeing to accept 5% gold bonds as part payment to the former shareholders. The infamous Van Swearingen brothers of Cleveland, assisted by loans from J. P. Morgan banks, such as Bankers Trust, had obtained control of various railroad assets through their holding company, Alleghany Corporation, in 1930, but then were forced into bankruptcy two years later when MOPAC could not pay its bonds.
The default brought on a resulting sale of control in 1935 at bargain prices, according to a U.S. Senate inquiry, at an auction conducted by J. P. Morgan officials, of its collateral worth over $3.5 billion securing a $48 million loan. Thus control of the railroads went into the hands of George A. Ball (Mid-America) for less than one-third of a million dollars. In 1938, Bert Walker was again one of a five-member protective group ensuring the viability of those bonds.
We know that two years after George Herbert Walker Bush, Bert's grandson, was discharged from the U.S. Navy in September 1945, he decided to move to West Texas to go into the oil business, with help from his maternal uncle, Herbie Walker--Bert's son--who advised him about potential investors. We have to wonder how many of those potential investors in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana had been known to George Herbert Walker through his connections with the railroad to which much of his career had been linked.
Frisco Branches in Texas and Oklahoma
The
Rio Grande Valley of Texas extends along the river that has served as
the border between Texas and Mexico since the terms of the Mexican War
were settled in the mid-1840's. The western extension begins just
southwest of Uvalde, Texas, and travels southeasterly
to the tip of Texas at Brownsville. The valley stretches out from the
Rio Grande River.
It was first developed into irrigated farms by agents of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway, the stock of which was controlled by a syndicate of primarily St. Louis businessmen, who also later controlled the New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railway Co.
As early as 1902, that syndicate included G.H. "Bert" Walker of St. Louis, stockbroker and private banker, who was named president during receivership of the railroad in 1914. In 1918 officers of the New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railroad included the following:
- J. Samuel Pyeatt, president and general manager, had been born in Arkansas and married Myra Loy in St. Louis in 1912, the same year he was hired as a vice president of the Frisco lines--New Orleans, Texas & Mexico; Beaumont, Sour Lake & Western; and St. Louis, Brownsville & Mexico--with his headquarters at the Union Station in Houston. In 1923, he applied for a passport to take his family on a European tour, giving his address as 518 Union Station Building in Houston. That building when I worked in downtown Houston in 1990 stood vacant, merely another boarded up building taking a space reserved for a new stadium for the Astros baseball team. The location had been preserved for Houston's modernization just as Enron (formerly Houston Natural Gas) imploded in 2001. Pyeatt, however, had moved to Denver in 1930 to head another railroad.
G. H. Walker, vice president, from St. Louis, Mo.;
Bert Walker of Walker Cup Fame - Roy Terrell, vice president, and H. Generes Dufour, secretary, both from New Orleans, La.;
- J. H. Lauderdale, Treasurer and assistant secretary, who left in 1920 to work for the United States Railroad Commission;
- George E. Warren, of Columbia Trust, assistant secretary and assistant treasurer, from Houston, Texas;
- J. W. McCullough, auditor, from Houston, Texas; and
- J. E. Anderson, Purchasing Agent, from Houston, Texas.
- Frank Andrews and J. S. Pyeatt of Houston,
- G. H. Walker of St. Louis, Mo.,
- Henry Sanderson and Elisha Walker of New York.
In
1920 G. H. Walker became chairman of the company, most of whose officers still lived in Houston. That is the year the receivership ended. It's also the year Bert Walker moved to New York.
St. Louis Railroad Builders
Years earlier, in 1902, directors of the Frisco had been:
St. Louis Railroad Builders
Years earlier, in 1902, directors of the Frisco had been:
- Stedman Buttrick, Boston, Mass., broker at Estabrook & Co.;
- Henry Sanderson,
- Lorenzo Semple, graduate of the Naval Academy and retired from U.S. Navy, an attorney with Coudert Brothers law firm;
- Carl A. deGersdorff, attorney with Cravath, Swain;
- Elisha Walker of Blair & Co.,
- Willard V. King, president of Columbia Trust in New York;
- G. H. Walker,
- Albert T. Perkins,
- Neill A. McMillan, originally from Waxahachie, Texas, who ran the St. Louis Union Trust Co. and that city's clearinghouse until the trust company merged with the Third National Bank in 1919, located at Broadway and Olive Streets in St. Louis, Mo.;
- J. C. Harvey, St. Louis, Mo., friend and associate of Augustus Busch;
- Alexander Berger, Maryton, Va., friend and associate of William Jennings Bryan;
- J. D. O'Keefe, president of Whitney Bank, New Orleans, La.;
- C. B. Fox, New Orleans, La.;
- Frank Andrews and John Samuel Pyeatt of Houston, Tex.
Frisco Investors
The list of the directors tells us a great deal about the railroad's investors as well as their political connections. Wealthy businessmen often use their attorneys and bankers as debt collectors in the event of default. When the legal system is not successful, they traditionally lobby their political representatives to change the laws to give them greater enforcement rights. What we see when we look at the above names are the men who consolidated their interests to rescue the railroads' hard assets as well as the contract rights of the merged railroads to their maximum benefit.
For example, Frisco director Carl A. deGersdorff, once a partner in the law firm known for a time as Cravath, Swain & Moore, in 1913 was a banker at William Salomon & Co. The Cravath firm was also home for a time to Thomas K. Finletter and John J. McCloy, both of whom wielded considerable clout after WWII. In 1902 deGersdorff was a virtual unknown, but in 1905 he was nominated as an overseer of Harvard, and in 1913 he was named to the protective committee for holders of the Frisco's gold bonds, as was Bert Walker.
In 1913 the bondholders' attorneys--Carter Ledyard & Milburn--were the same attorneys who handled Payne Whitney's estate in 1927, and the firm's partner, John G. Milburn, handled Standard Oil of New Jersey legal business for John D. Rockefeller. De Gersdorff was also closely involved with both the Frisco and the Missouri Pacific railroads, which his firm represented. (The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors, 1819-1947, Volume 1 - By Robert Taylor Swaine, p.338)
Elisha Walker was a banker for Blair & Co., where James Grant Forbes, John Kerry's grandfather had been a director. Blair & Co. was sold to A.P. Gianinni in 1929 and merged with Bank of America, renamed Transamerica. A few years later, Gianinni filed a huge lawsuit to get all his stock back from Elisha Walker. [See Moira Johnston's The Tumultuous History of the Bank of America, p. 42]
Walker and his colleagues had done an admirable job of satisfying the creditors and stockholders alike who made an inspection of the various Frisco railroad lines in 1915 before agreeing to allow it out of receivership. So happy were they that they elected Walker president in charge of continuing the Frisco operations. By 1925 the New Orleans, Texas & Mexico Railroad, as well as the San Antonio, Uvalde & Gulf Railroad in which three members of H.D. Byrd's father's family were directors, was sold to Jay Gould's Missouri Pacific Railroad.
G.H. Walker and the Harrimans
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| Partners in Brown Brothers Harriman |
In 1931 Harriman made an infusion of capital into investment bank Brown Brothers to create Brown Brothers Harriman, while G.H. Walker continued to run the brothers' first investment bank called W.A. Harriman & Co. at the original office.
R. S. Lovett's son, the Texas-born Robert Abercrombie Lovett, married Adele Q. Brown, daughter of the senior partner of the old Brown Brothers firm. The Brown family's early American genealogy was traced at a sister blog, Minor Musings, some time ago: Alexander Brown had relocated from Ireland to Baltimore, Maryland in 1800.
Alexander
Brown had begun investing in cotton and linen markets, but his bank
expanded into commodities and manufacturing which were of interest to
the capitalists around him. They were the first to invest in American
railroads, such as the Baltimore & Ohio and the Chesapeake in
Maryland. The daughters of George "Brook" Brown married wealthy men from Chicago (Palmer, Keith and Field), who undoubtedly had investments in railroads in that area.
Alex. Brown and sons
The third and fourth generations of Alexander's family, who remained in Baltimore, gave up management of the bank to outsiders. They hired Buzzy Krongard as president in July 1991. Kongard fought hard to keep from selling, but in 1997 agreed to merge with Bankers Trust in New York, but Bankers Trust lost $350 million in Russian market trades in 1998. Those Russian trade losses led to its acquisition by Deutsche Bank on June 4, 1999. By then Krongard had left the bank to work for the CIA, promoted to executive director (third man in charge) in March 2001, still in that position when
9/11 occurred.
The question is whether Krongard had any insight into the workings of Deutsche Bank, which possibly even in the late 90's was working trades with Russian oligarchs, as Bankers Trust had done. Timothy L. O'Brien in Bloomberg declared: "Deutsche’s executives, dealmakers, bond salesmen and loan officers have kept in step with Trump — despite misgivings and sometimes lackluster or disastrous results — for about two decades"--that is, since its acquisition of Alex. Brown & Sons in 1999.
Meanwhile, the sons who did not remain in Baltimore made names for themselves in Philadelphia, Boston and New York, attracting wealthy investors in those areas. In Boston they became friends and married into wealthy families who had made fortunes in shipping, including opium fortunes from the China trade. John Crosby Brown had died in 1909.By the 1920's, however, James Brown and his partners were elderly and wanted to retire. Partner Eugene Delano died in 1920. An uncle of then-future President Franklin Roosevelt, he had married a granddaughter of Massachusetts shipbuilder Thatcher Magoun.
It was at about this same time that a man of few words, thus dubbed "Silent Cal" became noted for saying "The business of America is business." Calvin Coolidge knew of what he spoke. Behind every philosophical aphorism and tirade about religion or morality, the underlying concern of those who elect America's leaders is the issue of money--how to make it and how to keep it.
The CIA's website informs us that during this time there was a counter-intelligence vacuum, even though Treasury had the Secret Service, Justice had the Bureau, and the Secretary of State also was involve in domestic counter-intelligence to some extent. The APL was intended to fill the vacuum, but soon got totally out of hand, according to Secretary of State Robert Lansing, the uncle of the Dulles brothers.
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| Dulles brothers, Allen and John Foster |
Both sons spent much of their careers at Alsop Process Company, but also operated private banking through A.R. Byrd & Sons Investments in St. Louis, with offices in 1908 in the Union Trust Building on Olive Street. Later they moved to 420 Olive (possibly in the Rialto Building). J. Hunter Byrd's home was 4211 Westminster Place in St. Louis, approximately a mile from the G.H. Walker home at 12 Hortense Place. J. Hunter Byrd's first cousin, William C. Byrd, Jr., met and married Lillian Vandiver, of 4207 Westminster, across the street from his cousin.
The Byrds undoubtedly became aware of their fellow Missourian, G. H. Walker, who was promoting his railroads in Texas as early as 1902. George Herbert (G.H.) Walker had first established his brokerage firm in St. Louis in 1901 at 810 N. 4th, eventually moving the office to 307 N. 4th Street, the latter address being across the street from the Byrds' offices on Olive--both within a couple of blocks from the huge Federal Reserve Bank Building.
In 1911 these sons of Abram Byrd set up another investment company to invest in Georgia land and to build a railroad, buying up 90,000 acres in three states. Their plan not only fizzled into ruin but subjected them to a decade of litigation, fighting allegations of fraud as they did with the Alsop Process.
Both A.R. Jr. and his brother Joseph Hunter Byrd moved from St. Louis to New York City, opening an office in the new Equitable Life Building at 120 Broadway during the WWI years. In that building the American International Corporation (AIC) could also be found. It was a premise of Anthony C. Sutton, author of Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, that "two
of the operational vehicles for infiltrating or influencing foreign
revolutionary movements were located at 120 Broadway: the first, the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, heavily laced with Morgan appointees;
the second, the Morgan-controlled American International Corporation."According to passport applications, A.R., Jr. spent several months during 1921-1923 in South American countries of Colombia, Panama and Venezuela handling unspecified investments. It was reported by the UT daily newspaper in 1922 that he maintained an office in New York City on Fifth Avenue while he was out of the country.
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| Byrd invested in Colombia, Panama, Venezuela before 1923. |
A 1906 issue of the Modern Miller alleged that Abram R. Byrd had health problems and found spending time in Mexico therapeutic, and in another section mentioned that he had retired, replaced by his son J. Hunter Byrd. This branch of the Byrd family would eventually live in Tucson, Arizona, after becoming involved in various mining ventures.
One of these ventures, Campana Gold Mines, Inc., a Delaware corporation, promoting stock in a gold mine in Sonora, Mexico, resulted in the indictment for mail fraud of both A.R. Byrd, Jr. and his first cousin, D. H. Byrd, in 1940. Co-defendant, William Socrates Deree, a Greek who lived in Chicago, pled guilty in 1945, leading to dismissal of the Byrds and others. Elmer E. Pope of Parkersburg, W. Va. was shown as the company's president and Philip J. Kealy of Chicago, stock distributor. Prosecutors alleged the defendants had rigged the value of common stock by making false claims on gold vein discoveries, a classic pump and dump scheme.
Edward Byrd's Family
The
youngest of Stephen Byrd II's sons, Edward Byrd, orphaned at age 12,
was living at his brother William's farm in 1870 but by 1879 had found
a wife. When and how they met, we have no clue, but his wedding to
Mary (Mollie) Easley, daughter of Robert MacDonald Easley, took place
September 24, 1879 in Blossom Prairie, Texas.
The bride's father had
resettled his family from their previous home in Hot Springs, Arkansas,
just as the Texas Pacific Railroad made Blossom a stop on its line.
Extensive research does not reveal how the couple met, but we know Mollie soon gave
birth to their first child, Ruddell Jones Byrd, who was called Leo. Their youngest child, the subject of all
this research, David Harold Byrd, was born in Red River County in the
small town of Detroit, Texas, in 1900. In this same town 32 years earlier (1868) a Texas icon, John Nance "Cactus Jack"
Garner, had been born, and he grew up with the Easley family into which Ed Byrd had married in 1879. Jack Garner relocated to
Uvalde in South Texas in 1892, shortly thereafter entering a career in politics that would take him one step from the White House, his title being U.S. Vice President from 1933 to 1941. Garner nevertheless retained ties with his birthplace. When their only child,
Tully Charles Garner, was born in 1896, his mother went to Detroit, Texas, to have her baby.
Mollie Easley Byrd's family were among Garner's earliest and most avid supporters for President, her brother R.J. Easley acting as chairman of his hometown campaign in 1932, and remaining loyal even when he began contesting FDR for the 1940 Democratic nomination in 1938. Garner and his supporters never forgave Roosevelt for running for a third term, nor for choosing Henry A. Wallace as his replacement as Vice President.
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| Vice Pres. Garner with FDR |
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| D. Harold Byrd's uncle, R.J. Easley, 1932 |
Mollie Easley Byrd's family were among Garner's earliest and most avid supporters for President, her brother R.J. Easley acting as chairman of his hometown campaign in 1932, and remaining loyal even when he began contesting FDR for the 1940 Democratic nomination in 1938. Garner and his supporters never forgave Roosevelt for running for a third term, nor for choosing Henry A. Wallace as his replacement as Vice President.
