[[Millionaires' Club]] | [[Federal Reserve]] | [[President Wilson]] | [[Federal Reserve Act]] | [[1 Esdras]] | [[19th Century]] | [[Georgia (USA)]] | [[Henry Baldwin Hyde]] | [[Marshall Field]] | [[JP Morgan Sr. (1837-1913)]] | [[Joseph Pulitzer]] | [[William K Vanderbilt]] | [[Cornelius Vanderbilt II]] | [[Theodore Newton Vail]] | [[Samuel Spencer]] | [[Frederick Snow]] | [[William Avery Rockefeller Jr.]] | [[JP 'Jack' Morgan Jr. (1867-1943)]] | [[Charles Lanier]] | [[Morris Ketchum Jesup]] | [[George Jay Gould I 1]] | [[Edwin Gould]] | [[Charles Deering]] | [[Richard Teller Crane I]] | [[Charles Richard Crane]] | [[George Fisher Baker]] ## Complete History ### **Formation and Early Years (1886-1900)** **Origins**: The story begins in 1879 when Newton Finney, a former Confederate officer who had served on General Robert E. Lee's staff, partnered with his brother-in-law John Eugene DuBignon (descendant of Christophe DuBignon, who had fled the French Revolution to Jekyll Island in 1792) to transform Jekyll Island into an exclusive hunting retreat for America's wealthiest individuals. **Purchase**: December 9, 1885, Finney and New York associate Oliver K. King petitioned Glynn County courts and incorporated as the "Jekyl Island Club." They sold 100 shares at $600 each ($15,000 in today's money) to 50 people. February 17, 1886, they purchased the entire island from DuBignon for $125,000 ($3.1 million today). <iframe width="400" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/it1cU2mayeU?si=tiRgcHq6P81AmruW" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> **Founding Members** (53 total): - **J.P. Morgan** - banker, financier - **William Rockefeller** - Standard Oil executive, brother of John D. Rockefeller - **William K. Vanderbilt** - railroad magnate - **Joseph Pulitzer** - newspaper publisher - **Marshall Field** - department store magnate - **Henry Hyde** - insurance executive - **Frank Goodyear** - lumber and railroad magnate - **Richard L. Ogden** - **William B. D'Wolf** - **Charles L. Schlatter** **Exclusivity**: Munsey's Magazine called it "the richest, the most exclusive, the most inaccessible club in the world." Members at one time represented one-sixth (some accounts say one-seventh) of the world's wealth. ### **The Club Opens (1888)** **Architecture**: Ground broke August 1886. Architect Charles A. Alexander designed the clubhouse in Queen Anne style with a signature turret. The clubhouse was completed November 1, 1887, and officially opened January 21, 1888, when the executive committee arrived for the season. **Operations**: The club operated as a winter retreat. Members arrived by private yacht or private railroad cars from New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. The season typically ran from January through early April. ### **The Golden Age (1888-1929)** **The Cottages**: Between 1888 and 1928, members built 18 mansion-sized "cottages" including: - **Indian Mound** (1892) - William Rockefeller's cottage - **Chicota Cottage** (1895) - **Sans Souci Apartment Building** (1896) - Co-owned by J.P. Morgan, recognized as one of America's first condominiums - **The Annex** (1901) - Eight suites added to the clubhouse - **Crane Cottage** (1917) - Built for Richard Teller Crane Jr. in Italian Renaissance style, the largest and most lavish cottage with sunken gardens and fountains - **Villa Marianna** (1928) - The last cottage built **Lifestyle**: Members enjoyed elaborate costume balls, outdoor parties, yachting, golf, tennis, and hunting. December 26, 1900, the first gasoline automobile arrived on the island, disturbing its quiet glades for the first time. **Historic Events**: - **January 15, 1915**: First transcontinental telephone call. AT&T President Theodore Newton Vail placed the call from Jekyll Island to President Woodrow Wilson in Washington, Alexander Graham Bell in New York, Thomas Watson in San Francisco, and Henry Higginson in Boston. - **1924**: The USGA selected Jekyll Island as testing ground for golf, replacing hickory shafts with steel clubs and testing ball performance—forever changing the game. - **1926**: Great Dunes Golf Course designed by Walter J. Travis, still regarded as one of Georgia's best courses. ### **The Secret Meeting of November 1910** **Context**: Following the Panic of 1907—a severe banking crisis—Senator Nelson Aldrich (R-Rhode Island), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, sponsored the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908, creating the National Monetary Commission to study banking reform. After two years studying European banking systems, Aldrich needed to draft actual legislation. **The Participants** (November 22, 1910): 1. **Senator Nelson Aldrich** - Chairman of National Monetary Commission, kinsman of the Rockefellers 2. **Henry P. Davison** - Senior partner at J.P. Morgan 3. **Frank A. Vanderlip** - President of National City Bank of New York (now Citibank), former Treasury official 4. **Paul Warburg** - Partner at Kuhn, Loeb & Co., naturalized German banker with extensive European banking knowledge 5. **A. Piatt Andrew** - Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, former Harvard economics professor 6. **Arthur Shelton** - Aldrich's private secretary (Note: Benjamin Strong, vice president of Bankers Trust and future first president of the New York Fed, may or may not have attended—accounts conflict) **The Secrecy**: - J.P. Morgan (or another club member) arranged for the group to use the club's facilities - Aldrich created a cover story: a duck hunting trip - Men traveled separately to an unfrequented train platform in Hoboken, New Jersey - They boarded Aldrich's private railroad car - During the journey, they used only first names—no last names permitted - Warburg brought duck hunting equipment though he'd never shot a duck - Andrew didn't tell his boss (the Treasury Secretary) where he was going - Regular club attendants were given two-week vacations - New servants brought from the mainland who didn't know the participants' identities - The group called themselves the "First Name Club" **The Work**: November 22-30, 1910 (approximately 9 days), the men worked intensely, rising early and working late into the night. They were "locked up," "disappeared from the world onto a deserted island," working on what Warburg called a "desperately trying undertaking." Despite common interests, friction arose: - Aldrich was domineering, ordering everyone around - Aldrich felt out of place as the only non-professional banker - Warburg lectured constantly in his thick German accent, which grated on the others - Warburg insisted on technical banking details as his private preserve - Aldrich and Warburg clashed repeatedly - Henry Davison's diplomacy kept the group working **The Disagreement**: Aldrich wanted a straightforward central bank on the European model. Warburg insisted political realities required cloaking central control in "decentralized" camouflage. Warburg's duplicitous tactic won. **The Product**: The group drafted the "Aldrich Plan"—a proposal for a Reserve Association of America, a single central bank with 15 regional branches. Each branch would be governed by boards elected by member banks, with larger banks getting more votes. This became the blueprint for the Federal Reserve. **The Silence**: Participants swore to secrecy. The meeting's existence wasn't publicly admitted until the 1930s. Paul Warburg's massive work on the Federal Reserve System doesn't mention "Jekyll Island" except once in a brief memorandum for Aldrich's biography, where he wrote: "The matter of a uniform discount rate was discussed and settled at Jekyll Island." **First Public Revelation**: B.C. Forbes (founder of Forbes Magazine) somehow learned of the meeting and published articles in 1916 and 1917 revealing the secret gathering. **From Aldrich Plan to Federal Reserve**: January 1911, Aldrich presented the Jekyll Island draft to the full National Monetary Commission. However, Democrats captured the House in 1910 elections and were positioned to win the presidency in 1912. The Aldrich Plan faced fierce opposition as a "Wall Street" plan. Congressman Carter Glass and economist H. Parker Willis reworked the proposal with different political structures to satisfy progressive and populist Democrats. December 23, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act. The technical details closely resembled the Jekyll Island plan, but the governance structure was modified to appear less centralized. ### **Decline and Closure (1929-1942)** **Financial Shocks**: The club survived the Panic of 1893 and Panic of 1907, but these events took their toll. **Golden Age**: 1919-1927 was the club's peak, holding its own against increasingly popular Florida resorts. **The Depression**: The 1929 stock market crash initiated a "death spiral." Membership declined steadily throughout the 1930s as fortunes evaporated. **World War II**: The club closed at the end of the 1942 season. German U-boats prowling the Atlantic coast made the seaside location dangerous. Members didn't return. **Aftermath**: For five years, remaining members funded staff to maintain lawns and cottages, hoping to reopen. ### **State Acquisition and Modern Era (1947-Present)** **1947**: The State of Georgia purchased Jekyll Island for $675,000 ($7.4 million today) during condemnation proceedings, preventing commercial development. **Failed Resort**: The state tried operating the club as a resort but it wasn't financially successful. The complex closed by 1971. **1954**: Journalist Tallu Fish opened the Jekyll Island Museum inside William Rockefeller's Indian Mound cottage. **National Recognition**: - January 20, 1972: Added to National Register of Historic Places - June 2, 1978: Designated National Historic Landmark District **1985**: Leon N. Weiner & Associates acquired the abandoned Jekyll Island Club. **1987**: The Jekyll Island Club reopened as a public resort, preserving historic structures. **Today**: The Jekyll Island Club Resort operates as a hotel. The 240-acre Jekyll Island Club Historic District contains 33 contributing properties. Visitors can tour the cottages and grounds. The island functions as a state park, making the former playground of millionaires accessible to everyone. ### **Legacy and Significance** The Jekyll Island Club represents: 1. **Gilded Age Opulence**: The pinnacle of American wealth concentration before the income tax 2. **Exclusive Power**: An unprecedented concentration of corporate and financial control 3. **Architectural Heritage**: Preserved Victorian and Queen Anne structures 4. **Financial History**: The birthplace of America's central banking system 5. **Democratic Transformation**: From private exclusivity to public accessibility The club's greatest irony: its most consequential event—the 1910 secret meeting—occurred during a deceptive duck hunting trip by men who controlled one-sixth of the world's wealth, resulting in the Federal Reserve System that fundamentally reshaped American and global finance. The meeting remained secret for over two decades, participants bound by pledges of secrecy about the most significant banking legislation in American history.