Search results
Known as the “King of Wall Street,” Jerome was a flamboyant stock speculator, financier, and patron of the arts who became a powerful figure in the thoroughbred game as the driving force behind the conception of three major racetracks in the New York City area.
- Finest Hour 176, Spring 2017
- Opportunity Knocks
- A Midas Touch
- Turbulent Times
- Clara Lives Her Dream
- New America and Old England
- “Pass It on.”
By Paul J. Taylor
Winston Churchill once observed about a photo of his grandfather Leonard Jerome that he was “very fierce.” “I’m the only tame one they’ve produced,” he said modestly.1Jerome, like his grandson, spent a lifetime beating the odds. Despite an historic disdain for hereditary aristocracy, Americans love to create their own—if transitory—nobility. They are the wealthy, stars, glamorous, or notorious. Leonard Jerome was all that and more: he was a feisty, flamboyant, ultra-wealthy investor, sportsma...
A knack for profitmaking led Jerome to New York City in 1850, where he and brother Lawrence invested and helped run an early telegraph enterprise. It flourished and rapidly sold for a big profit. Thus started a classic Horatio Alger story. The Jerome brothers loved New York, America’s fastest growing commercial center and transportation hub. Vast o...
Returning home, Jerome formed a stock brokerage partnership with his brother. They cunningly hosted posh lunches for editors and planted tips for publication about stocks they owned. Jerome’s wealth skyrocketed, estimated at ten million dollars at a time when New York had fewer than twenty millionaires. Jerome became a patron of the arts, especiall...
During the Civil War, Congress passed a mandatory military draft in 1863. Working-class New Yorkers rioted, killing blacks and burning entire blocks. Although the Jeromes owned about a quarter of the New York Times, Leonard was never its majority owner nor editor, as often claimed. But he was no passive investor. When the pro-Lincoln newspaper was ...
The family’s world turned upside down in the late 1860s. They moved to Paris. Biographers suggest many reasons. William Manchester points to Clara’s love of Paris and fascination with the Second Empire.8 Others speculate that Leonard’s adultery embarrassed Clara in New York society.9Anita Leslie claims that Clara persuaded Leonard to go for two yea...
The family bolted to a stylish resort on the Isle of Wight. They quickly became popular guests at swanky events, including a shipboard gala where Jennie was introduced to Lord Randolph Churchill. Randolph told a friend that night that he would marry Jennie. She just as quickly caught the marriage bug. They were engaged three days later. Both famili...
By the 1880s, Jerome’s health flagged and so did his finances. He devoted more time to thoroughbred horses than to business. A contemporary account of him provides this description: “…The large, tall bony figure is attired in loose-fitting, old-fashioned black frock coat…the face bronzed by exposure to the weather…the hair iron gray….Once he domina...
People also ask
Who was Leonard Jerome?
Who were Leonard Jerome parents?
Where did Leonard Jerome live in 1854?
Is Jerome Street named for Leonard Jerome?
Jennie Spencer-Churchill CI RRC DStJ (née Jerome), better known as Lady Randolph Churchill, was a British socialite born in America. The wife and later widow of Lord Randolph Churchill, she garnered widespread attention due to her son, Sir Winston Churchill, who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 1940 and 1945.
Jul 19, 2023 · Born in Pompey, New York, in 1817, Jerome was one of 10 children — he had eight brothers and one sister — who grew up on the family farm in Onondaga County. Jerome studied briefly at Princeton...
Oct 21, 2020 · Jerome was born in upstate Onondaga County and after graduating Princeton, became a successful stock speculator, investing in railroads in which Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt was a partner. For a time he resided in Brooklyn, but then built the Jerome Mansion at Madison Avenue and East 26th Street, which stood until 1967.
Aug 29, 2008 · Through his maternal grandfather, Leonard Jerome, sometime proprietor and editor of The New York Times, he had at least two forebears who fought against the British in the American War of Independence: one great-grandfather, Samuel Jerome, served in the Berkshire County Militia while another, Major Libbeus Ball, of the 4th Massachusetts Regiment...
Jul 8, 2013 · Jennie Jerome was born on 9 January 1854, when her father Leonard was 36 and her mother Clara 29. Jennie was 20 when she gave birth to a premature Winston on 30 November 1874, confirmed in a letter she wrote her mother on 9 January1888: “Do you know that it is my birthday today? 34!!! I think for the future that I will not proclaim my age.”*
