100 Millionaires on Jekyll Island
The Massive Growth of the 20th Century
It is no secret that the first millionaires in America were ambitious, inventive, competitive, and somewhat scrupulous. They were born during an era when a faster means of transportation was needed in order to put away horses and carriages. It was an era when the income tax was non-existent, and it was possible that a little bit of imagination could make millionaires. And, that is what happened!
Look down. The Earth Gives Wealth.
Yet the visitors were the innovators of new ideas and inventions. Andrew Carnegie, John Pierpont Morgan, William Vanderbilt, and John D. Rockefeller. Innovators take natural elements from the earth and make something of them. Although recent history has depicted these fellows as having taken advantage of society, it was the simple elements of the earth that brought them wealth and notoriety. While Carnegie invested in some iron mills, he soon realized that steel would eventually replace iron for the manufacture of railroad rails, pipe, and structural forms. Andrew, the immigrant from Scotland, envisioned using the earth’s resources to move people and products across America.
John Pierpont Morgan was already the son of a millionaire from Connecticut. His ideas of loaning money for a profit with eventual control. I don’t think that he ever considered letting the control slip from his hands. Upon his father making him a partner in foreign exchange and banking, young Morgan was known to be abrupt, domineering, and morose.
During the Civil War, Morgan entered a scheme to finance the purchase of 5,000 defective weapons and re-sell them to the Union Army for which he was later reprimanded by the Secretary of War. During wartime, Morgan influenced the price of gold.
The Jekyll Island Club
In 1886, John Eugene DuBignon, the owner of the Island, sold it to a group of 100 millionaires including Rockefellers, Goulds, Vanderbilts, and their contemporaries. They wanted it mainly as an exclusive hunting lodge. It was known as the Jekyll Island Club.
The DuBignon family owned land on Jekyll Island from 1794 to 1886. They were descendants of the French emigrant, Christophe Poulain Dubignon (1739–1825), a sea captain and entrepreneur who amassed a small fortune in trade and privateering. It can be said that Capt. Dubignon helped the cause of the Revolutionary War by harassing British shipping in the Indian Ocean, where he captured a dozen ships and gained more than a million French pounds.
On January 25, 1915, the first coast-to-coast conference telephone call was made on Jekyll Island. The parties to the call were J. P. Morgan Jr., William Rockefeller, President Woodrow Wilson, and dignitaries from New York City, Boston, and San Francisco.
The Millionaires on Jekyll Island, Georgia
As a person who has visited Jekyll Island for many years and gone inside the old cottages constructed by millionaires during the early 20th century, I can tell you that a personal view of those residences where they spent their vacation left one wondering about that century of luxury.
In other words, the cottages were the typical Victorian style having but one bath closet with porcelain sinks that were easily stained and the classic lever-handle faucets. Considering our fashionable homes today with the latest inventions, these cottages seemed rather primitive.
The millionaires arrived on the island by boat. J. P. Morgan was known to blast a horn announcing his arrival. It was standard practice to transport food and delicacies, as well as servants and workers, some of whom were left on the island for maintenance purposes. The result was that the millionaires built their own little play world.
Yet, one cannot suppose that the exclusivity of the playground did not produce more ideas, and deals amongst the hundred players.
The old cottages, although the latest in invention and style, seem rudimentary to us now. A walk-through left me with the question was this luxury?
As a genealogist and historian, there is always value to be found in old homesteads and farms. Something of the past always remains. You just have to look.
I spent many vacations on Jekyll Island, and while wading in the surf, broken pieces of china sometimes crunched between my toes… the evidence of a lifestyle…gone. The sea is a great gatherer of relics. And sometimes they wash ashore!