'John Pierpont Morgan, Jr.' (
September 7,
1867 —
September 7,
1943) was an
American financier. He was born in
New York City and graduated from
Harvard in
1886, where he was a member of
Delta Phi and
Delta Kappa Epsilon. In
1890 he married Jane Norton Grew, daughter of a Boston banker and mill owner Henry Sturgis Grew, and was the aunt of
Henry Grew Crosby. The couple had two sons and two daughters. Upon his
father's death in
1913, he inherited the major portion of his great fortune.
He took a prominent part in the financial aspects of the
World War I. Following its outbreak, he made the first loan of $12,000,000 to
Russia. In
1915, a loan of $50,000,000 was made to the
French Government. All of the munitions purchased in the
United States by the
British were made through one of his firms. Mr. Morgan organized a syndicate of about 2200 banks and floated a loan of $500,000,000 to the
Allies. After the war, he made several trips to Europe to investigate and report on financial conditions there. On July 3rd, 1915, a Frank Holt, (AKA Eric Muenter) tried to assassinate Morgan at his home at Glen Cove on Long Island. The night before, Holt had exploded a bomb in the Senate wing of the U.S. Capitol. After traveling to New York by train, he attacked Morgan the next morning, shooting him twice in the groin. The stated purpose of both acts was to get the U.S. to stop shipping munitions to France and Germany during World War I. After being arrested, Holt committed suicide in his jail cell several days later.
He resembled his father in his dislike for publicity and in continuing his father's
philanthropic policy. In 1920 he gave his London residence to the U.S. government for use as its embassy and later created the
Pierpont Morgan Library as a public institution in
1924 as a
memorial to his father.
Belle da Costa Greene, J.P. Morgan's personal librarian, became the first director and continued the aggressive acquisition and expansion of the collections of
illuminated manuscripts, authors' original
manuscripts,
incunabula, prints, and drawings, early printed
Bibles, and many examples of fine
bookbinding. Today the library is a complex of buildings which serve as a
museum and scholarly research center.
Morgan died
on his 76th birthday,
September 7,
1943.
References
★ Forbes, John Douglas. ''J. P. Morgan, Jr., 1867-1943.'' U. Press of Virginia, 1981. 262 pp. ISBN 0813908892
★ Chernow, Ron. ''The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance'', (2001) ISBN 0-8021-3829-2
★ Newsday article about 1915 shooting:
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