Theodore P. Gilman

Theodore P. Gilman with the American tycoon Andrew Carnegie (1914)

Theodore P. Gilman (born January 2, 1841 in Alton , Illinois , † August 9, 1930 ) was an American banker and politician .

Career

Theodore P. Gilman, son of Abia Swift Lippincott and Winthrop Sargent Gilman (1808-1884), was born in Madison County during the economic crisis of 1837 . His childhood was overshadowed by the Mexican-American War . Nothing more is known about his youth. He graduated in 1862 during the Civil War at Williams College in Williamstown ( Massachusetts ) where he became a member of the Kappa Alpha Society was, and 1865 with a Master of Arts . He married Elizabeth Drinker Paxson (around 1843-1912), daughter of Samuel Canby Paxson. The couple had a son named Theodore P. Gilman junior (* 1873).

Gilman had a banking career. In the 1870s he helped fund railroad lines in the Midwest , particularly the Quincy, Missouri and Pacific Railroad . In the 1880s and 1890s, he helped expand this railroad line, which became the Quincy, Omaha and Kansas City Railroad . He acted for the Kansas City entrepreneur Arthur Stilwell , the chairman of the Kansas City, Pittsburgh and Gulf Railroad (now known as the Kansas City Southern Railway ) to finance the so-called northern properties . As a result, a rail link was established between Kansas City , Omaha and Quincy . Gilman left the board in 1897 when there was a difference of opinion with Stilwell over the construction of certain secondary railway lines. Gilman City ( Missouri ) was a real estate project on the Quincy, Omaha & Kansas City Railroad. The town was named after Gilman.

In 1894 he was arrested for fraud for selling shares in Port Jervis Brewery , where he had been president. The company was already insolvent at that point and a bankruptcy administrator was appointed.

Gilman returned to New York and went about his banking business. In 1898 he published A Graded Banking System (Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin).

From 1899 to 1900 he was First Deputy Comptroller. Following the death of William J. Morgan in September 1900, Gilman was appointed New York State Comptroller to fill the vacancy by the end of the year. In 1901 he was reappointed First Deputy Comptroller. On January 15, 1903, resigned to become President of the General Electric Inspection Company .

In 1903 he published a 17-page article, The Clearing-House System, in The Journal of Political Economy (Volume 12, No. 2, pp. 208-224, March 1904). This is generally considered to be the original plan for creating the Federal Reserve System.

The museum director Benjamin Ives Gilman (1852–1933) was his brother.

literature

• Reid, Loren: Hurry Home Wednesday, Columbia (Missouri), University of Missouri Press, 1978, pp. 4-21
• Michael R. Johns and Ralph L. Cooper: Quincy Route - A History of the QOKC Railroad, Burlington, Iowa, South Platte Press, 2008, Chapters 1-4

Individual evidence

1. ^ Winthrop S. Gilman Dead , The New York Times, October 5, 1884
2. ^ Died , The New York Times, Nov. 20, 1912
3. ^ Theodore P. Gilman Arrested , The New York Times, November 11, 1894
4. ^ The New State Officers , The New York Times, December 31, 1898
5. ^ Theodore P. Gilman Resigns , The New York Times, Jan. 16, 1903