Montgomery County PA Archives Biographies.....Cooke, Jay August 10, 1821 - 
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Source: Biographical Annals of Montgomery County Pennsylvania, T. S. Benham & Company and the Lewis Publishing Company, 1904
Author: Ellwood Roberts, Editor

  JAY COOKE, a resident and citizen of Montgomery county, 
Pennsylvania, honored throughout the nation and favorably 
known to the entire civilized world for his eminently useful 
and patriotic services during the Civil war, was to the 
nation in that tremendous struggle what another masterly 
financier, Robert Morris, was to it in its infancy, during 
the battling for independence.
  He is a native of Ohio, born in Sandusky, August 10, 1821. 
He is of Puritan ancestry, and his father, Eleutheros Cooke, 
was an early settler in that state. The elder Cooke located 
at what was then called Portland, which was then changing 
from an Indian village to what is now known as the city of 
Sandusky, and there built the first stone house in the 
village. He was the leading lawyer in that region, and 
represented his district in the legislature for a number of 
years, both before and after he had served in congress, 
(1831-33) and was primarily instrumental in procuring the 
granting of the first railroad charter in the world, in 
1826. Mr. Cooke was a mail of great public prominence, and 
was orator on the occasion of a visit by President Harrison 
(1835) and other of the great men of that day.
  Jay Cooke, after completing his education, entered the 
banking house of Enoch White Clark & Company, in 
Philadelphia, in 1838.He soon gave evidence of that masterly 
ability which was afterward to stamp him as the foremost 
financier of the world in his day, and before attaining his 
majority was made the confidential clerk of the firm, with 
power of attorney, and personally conducted many of its most 
important transactions. On his twenty-first birthday he was 
admitted to partnership, and was a member of the firm for 
sixteen years. During this period he personally effected the 
sale of the Western, Northern, Wyoming & Delaware Divisions 
of the Pennsylvania Canal, and assisted in the negotiation 
of the government loans required to carry on the Mexican 
war. This special experience served to fit him for the 
masterly part he was to take in financiering the much more 
important conflict of 1861-65.
  Early in 1861 Mr. Cooke associated with himself William G. 
Moorhead in the banking firm of Jay Cooke & Company. The 
firm opened houses in New York and Washington City, under 
its own name, and established a branch house in London in 
connection with Hugh McCulloch Company, under the firm name 
of Jay Cooke, McCulloch & Company. This banking business, 
probably the most extensive in the country, was carried on 
with entire success, including the building and financing of 
nearly all the older railroads of the country, and until the 
setting in of the panic of 1873, the inevitable revulsion 
from the unprecedented inflation of the period immediately 
following the war. The era of shrinkage and liquidation had 
come, and many hitherto prosperous banking establishments 
went down in the general crash. Jay Cooke & Company were 
heavily involved in consequence of their effort to carry 
through the construction of the Northern Pacific Railroad, 
the most stupendous and important enterprise of the times. 
Their suspension was a national calamity, and expressions of 
regret were universal, the fact being generally recognized 
that their failure was consequent upon their making possible 
the construction of that great transcontinental line which 
promised so much to the prosperity and development of the 
west and of the nation at large. It is gratifying to note 
that Mr. Cooke, with wonderful courage and indominatable 
will, set himself to the work of self-restoration, and in a 
few years had retrieved his shattered fortune.
 A peculiar tribute is due Mr. Cooke for his great services 
during the Civil war period. The story is one which in a 
sense belongs to a past age, and only one who lived through 
the tremendous conflict which absorbed the energies of the 
American government and of the people for nearly five years 
can form an adequate idea of the vastness of his task and of 
the necessities which called into exercise his magnificent 
abilities as a financier. Without the successful negotiation 
of the government loans, the war could not but have proved a 
failure, no matter how brave the soldiers of the Union upon 
the field of battle, or how skillful their generals. When 
President Lincoln issued his initial call for seventy-five 
thousand men, following the assault upon Fort Sumter, the 
national treasury was practically bankrupt, and the credit 
of the country was at low ebb. President Buchanan had been 
obliged to pay twelve per cent interest for a loan to carry 
on the government upon its ordinary basis during the latter 
part of his administration. The enormous sums of money 
required to equip and maintain the army and navy, in fact to 
create them, were not to be had until the genius of Mr. 
Cooke was invoked to aid in the sale of the government bonds 
whose issuance was imperatively necessary as the sole 
resort. To Mr. Cooke, as the fiscal agent of the government, 
was entrusted the great task of negotiating the loans, and 
nobly did he fulfill the trust, devoting to it his undivided 
attention and weighing himself down with a vastness of 
responsibility which would have crushed one of less heroic 
mould. Appealing to the patriotism of the American people 
and enlisting the aid of their local leaders in every walk 
of life, he achieved a remarkable success, negotiating all 
the great government loans, amounting to the stupendous shin 
of more than two thousand million of dollars, and at a less 
compensation that his firm had received for negotiating the 
Mexican war loans of less than seventy million dollars. At 
one critical time he saved to the United States Treasury one 
hundred millions of dollars, at the same time elevating the 
national credit to a higher point than that of any nation on 
earth, and making possible the death-stroke to the great 
rebellion. It is not too much to say that Mr. Cooke was in 
the field of these, his stupendous transactions, as 
necessary to this great result as was Lincoln in the 
presidency, Grant on the field, and Farragut on the sea.
 During all the years of the great conflict, Mr. Cooke 
enjoyed confidential relations with the principal public men 
of that day. He made repeated visits to Washington for 
conference with President Lincoln, Secretary of the Treasury 
Chase, Senators Fessenden and Sherman, and General Grant, 
besides many others, and all the great men named visited him 
from time to time at his home near Philadelphia.
 For many years past Mr. Cooke has resided in Montgomery 
county, in the serene enjoyment of a happy and well earned 
retirement upwards of eight. years of age, he preserves his 
mental faculties unimpaired, keeping closely in touch with 
the events of a period less stirring than was his own, and 
secure in the affection of his family and of a troop of 
friends who hold him in honor for the usefulness of his life 
and the nobility of his character. Soon after the war he 
erected the palatial residence which is his home in 
Cheltenham township, at Ogontz, so named for the Indian 
Chief of the early days of Ohio, his father's chosen friend, 
upon whose shoulder he had been carried as a child.

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