A One-Name Study for the BARNUM/BARNHAM Surname
William Milo Barnum was a founder of a law firm in New York City -- Simpson, Thatcher & Barnum -- which is now known as Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett. Together with his daughter and heir, Laura C. Barnum, he donated the Barnum Family Homestead in Lime Rock, Connecticut to Yale University in 1927.
William Milo Barnum: A Founder of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP by Blake A. Bell: William Milo Barnum was one of the three Columbia law graduates who founded Simpson, Thacher & Barnum in early 1884. He gave up the practice of law in 1901 to become a businessman and, later, a financier. William Milo Barnum was born in Lime Rock, Connecticut on January 25, 1856. He was the son of William Henry Barnum and Charlotte Burrall Barnum. Like the two colleagues with whom he later formed Simpson, Thacher & Barnum, William Milo Barnum came from a privileged background. His paternal grandfather, Milo Barnum, was a farmer-turned-businessman from Dutchess County who founded Barnum Richardson Company in Salisbury, Connecticut with a son-in-law, Leonard Richardson, in 1830. Although the business began as a small foundry for re-melting pig iron and casting it into clock and sash weights, plow castings and other such items, it grew into a “major fabricator of railroad car wheels” with eight blast furnaces. Milo Barnum was descended from a line of Barnhams in England. His father, Thaddeus Barnum, was born in 1749 and lived at least part of his life near Litchfield, Connecticut. Thaddeus Barnum married Lois Stevens, born in about 1750.
The couple had at least seven children including Milo who was born on July 16, 1790. Milo appears to have been educated in local common schools. He and his family lived near Salisbury, where there was an extensive iron bed known for “the exceptional quality of its iron ore”. He and his son-in-law took advantage of the local resources in 1830 and opened the Barnum Richardson Company as a small foundry. In 1840, one of Milo Barnum’s sons, William Henry Barnum, joined the company. At about that time, according to some accounts, “the firm expanded to include production of hardware for the new railroad industry. The company’s first major products were chains, frogs and headblocks for the Boston and Albany Railroad, which had just begun construction.” The company prospered. As William Henry Barnum learned the trade of iron founder with his father, he caught the political bug. He served as a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives (1851-1852). In 1852, William H. Barnum’s father, Milo Barnum, retired from Barnum Richardson and Company, leaving William Henry to take his place. At that time, the company changed its name to Richardson, Barnum and Company. Within a few short years, the firm began expanding by acquiring and building foundries. In 1856, William Henry Barnum had a son whom he named William Milo Barnum. In 1864, Leonard Richardson died. The company was reorganized and renamed the Barnum Richardson Company, a joint stock company with William H. Barnum serving as president and general manager. William H. Barnum had become a wealthy industrialist. Still, the political bug remained with the industrialist. He was elected to the Fortieth Congress and to the four succeeding Congresses, serving from March 4, 1867 until May 18, 1876 when he resigned to become the junior US Senator from Connecticut. He was elected to that body to fill a vacancy caused by the death of Orris S. Ferry, serving from May 18, 1876 to March 3, 1879. During that time, in 1876, he became Chair of the Democratic National Committee and served in that role until 1889. In about 1879, he returned to the foundry business that bore his name and remained with the business during much of the time he served as Chair of the Democratic National Committee. Among the more lasting monuments to William Henry Barnum is Trinity Episcopal Church in Lime Rock, Connecticut. Although there reportedly are a number of stories regarding the origins of the church, a brief history prepared by the church says that Mrs. Barnum had noted that many of the workers in the Barnum Richardson Company facility seemed to be “at loose ends spiritually.” Believing that a church might “help keep the workers away from unattractive distractions”, the couple sponsored construction of a Gothic Revival style church building that was consecrated on November 5, 1874. Senator William H. Barnum was active in the church from its inception until he died. He paid for construction of the building and was the first Senior Warden of the Church. William Henry Barnum died on April 30, 1889 in Lime Rock, Litchfield County, Connecticut and is buried in the Lime Rock Cemetery in Salisbury, Connecticut. U. S. President Grover Cleveland attended Senator Barnum’s funeral (during his interregnum) and delivered the eulogy. According to one account, “[i]t is believed that Senator Barnum’s funeral drew the largest crowd ever drawn to Trinity Church. . . . [T]he Barnum funeral is recorded to have been attended by an additional thousand people who could not fit into the building, and who thus waited outside in the rain.” As for the company he headed before his death, a brief history notes: “By the early twentieth century, the Salisbury iron industry was in decline. The newly imported Bessemer steel process, which produced a product more adaptable that the iron produced in small quantities by Barnum Richardson, made the small furnace iron industry of Connecticut obsolete. In 1920, Barnum Richardson Company was purchased by the Salisbury Iron Company. This new firm went out of business in 1923 and shut down what was then the last of Connecticut’s iron furnaces.”
William Milo Barnum attended college at Yale, from which he graduated in 1877. During his senior year, Barnum was inducted into the secret “Skull and Bones Society” of Yale. Thomas Thacher, with whom he later founded Simpson, Thacher & Barnum, likewise was a member of the Society. Barnum immediately entered Columbia University Law School, from which he graduated in 1879. After graduation, he joined the law firm of Alexander & Green, where he, like John W. Simpson and Thomas Thacher, served as a law clerk for a time. Also after graduation from law school, he married Anna Theresa Phelps on June 2, 1879. Her father was Colonel Walter Phelps, whose command was part of the famous Iron Brigade in the Civil War. Her mother, Lucy Beach Burrall, was born February 21, 1791 and died September 4, 1834. On December 27, 1880, the couple had a young daughter whom they named Laura. During the next eleven years they had at least three more children: William Henry Barnum (born April 5, 1882); Walter B. Barnum (born February 3, 1887); and Phelps Barnum (born August 19, 1891). William Milo Barnum seems to have become friends with John Woodruff Simpson and Thomas Thacher during the five or so years that he worked at the small firm of Alexander & Green. They left the small firm together and, on January 1, 1884, struck out on their own by launching Simpson Thacher & Barnum. Today the firm is known as Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP. Barnum was the most politically connected of the three young men at the time they started their new firm. His father was then the Chair of the Democratic National Committee. Barnum's Nearly Two Decades with Simpson Thacher.
For nearly two decades William Milo Barnum worked with his colleagues to build what would become one of a handful of the leading law firms in the world. Beginning in 1885, Simpson Thacher & Barnum became very active in the railroad reorganizations that resulted from the financial Panic of 1884. The firm remained involved with such reorganizations for several years. According to a history of the firm published in 1959: “While the records of the firm’s first year indicate an early orientation towards ‘corporation law’, there were also individual clients, for whom the firm appeared in litigated matters, and for whom wills were drawn, agreements prepared, and real estate transactions handled. . . . The. . . specialties, in the early years, were railroad reorganizations, involving many lines which were subsequently absorbed into larger systems, and the assembling by merger, stock purchase, or otherwise, of large business corporations.” Two of the highest visibility matters that Barnum worked on during his tenure with the firm were the reorganization of the nation’s silver plate business in 1898 and the creation of the American Locomotive Company in 1901.
In the late 19th century, the silver plate business in the United States could best be described as “chaotic”. Among the many companies that competed in the industry were the Barbour Silver Co., Holmes & Edwards, the Manhattan and Meriden Silver Plate Companies, the Meriden Britannia Co., Rogers & Co., the Wilcox Silver Plate Co., and others. William Barnum, Thomas Thacher and Alfred B. Thacher (his brother) worked on a reorganization that involved the formation of a New Jersey corporation that acquired the business and assets of many of these concerns. These and subsequent acquisitions formed the nucleus of the International Silver Company. In 1901, William M. Barnum headed up a team of Simpson Thacher lawyers to set up the American Locomotive Company. According to one account: “the greater part of his time between April 16 and May 21 was devoted to this task, and he continued for weeks thereafter to give it preferred attention, though he brought in to help him in various phases Thomas Thacher, Philip G. Bartlett, Dwight W. Morrow, Graham Sumner and others. The Company’s original acquisitions included Schenectady Locomotive Works, Pittsburgh Locomotive & Car Works, Dickson Manufacturing Co., International Power Co., and the locomotive manufacturing plants of other companies.” By the turn of the 20th century, William Milo Barnum had become a successful and wealthy Wall Street lawyer. He lived in a home located at 563 Madison Avenue near the intersection of Madison Avenue and East 56th Street. He also maintained a second home at Quaker Ridge in Mamaroneck, New York. At about this time Barnum’s oldest child, twenty-year-old Laura Barnum, had a brush with death involving the new-fangled electric automobile. Surely this incident must have affected Mr. Barnum profoundly. An account of the incident appeared in the April 23, 1902 issue of The New York Times. It read: “Lawyer's Daughter in Peril. ----- Miss Laura Barnum Escapes Unhurt from Cab Overturned by an Electric Car. Miss Laura Barnum, twenty years old, daughter of Lawyer William M. Barnum of 25 Broad Street, and living at 563 Madison Avenue, was being driven down Madison Avenue at Fifty-sixty Street yesterday afternoon in a cab, when the vehicle was struck by an electric car, which was going at a high rate of speed. Horse and cab were overturned and Miss Barnum was shaken up, but she succeeded in quickly opening the door of the cab, and, while the horse was frantically struggling to get up and free itself from the harness, she crawled over the side of the vehicle to the pavement. Her hat and dress were torn, but she was not bodily injured, and she ran through the crowd to her home around the corner. Edward Stankard, fifty years old, of 151 East One Hundred and Thirty-second Street, the driver, had saved himself by jumping. Policeman Kelly of the East Fifty-first Street Station took the motorman to Miss Barnum’s home, and asked her if she desired to make a complaint against him. She refused and he was not arrested. The horse was cut about the sides, and the cab much damaged. They are the property of the Nassau Cab Company of 132 East Fifty-sixth Street.” Ironically, barely three years later the tables were turned and a car owned by Mr. Barnum smashed into a carriage on Pelham Bridge on Shore Road in what then was lower Westchester County. Mr. Barnum’s chauffeur, J. Carlsen, was driving the automobile. In it were Barnum’s son, Walter F. Barnum, and two of his friends. As the car approached Pelham Bridge, a carriage driven by L. Vinton and his wife had just crossed the bridge when the automobile struck it. According to one account: “Mrs. Vinton was thrown out and her right arm was broken. The carriage was wrecked, and the horses dashed away with the wreckage. All the occupants of the automobile left it to care for Mrs. Vinton, while Carlsen, in the car, pursued and caught the horses. Mrs. Vinton and her husband were taken to their home in Mount Vernon. They declined to make a complaint.”
William Milo Barnum Leaves the Firm According to an obituary, William Milo Barnum “gave up his law practice in 1901 to devote his time to commercial activities as President of the Pacific Coast Company.” Research suggests, however, that in 1903, William M. Barnum became a senior executive and a member of the board of directors of Pacific Coast Company – though not its President (at least at that time). According to a brief item published in the October 16, 1903 issue of The New York Times, W. M. Barnum was elected a director of the Pacific Coast Company and, at a directors’ meeting held on October 14, 1903 “was elected Vice President to succeed H. H. Durand”. Although he subsequently rose to the position of President of the company, his involvement with Pacific Coast Company may have been short-lived. It appears that by 1905, he was a senior executive with the banking firm known as Harvey Fisk & Sons. The firm “Harvey Fisk & Sons” began in 1862 as a group of bankers and dealers in government securities known as “Fisk & Hatch”. According to one account, in March, 1885, “the partnership of Fisk & Hatch was dissolved, and the firm reorganized under the name of Harvey Fisk & Sons.”
Barnum's Involvement with “The Hudson Tubes” One of the early projects with which Barnum became involved while with Harvey Fisk & Sons was financing for the celebrated “Hudson Tubes” – the first tunnels excavated beneath the Hudson River to provide rail access to Manhattan. In addition, Simpson Thacher assisted with the project. It handled legal work for the financing of the project and, as discussed further below, may have accepted shares in the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad Company in exchange for the work. For nearly thirty years there had been unsuccessful efforts to construct a rail tunnel beneath the Hudson beginning in 1874 with work by the Hudson Tunnel Railroad Company led by a man named DeWitt Haskins. After at least two major accidents, one of which killed twenty workmen, those efforts ended in 1882. Additional efforts in 1890 ended when a financial crisis turned off the financing spigot.
By 1901, time was ripe to complete the tubes. A man named William Gibbs McAdoo, who became a friend and colleague of William Milo Barnum, was just the person for the job. According to one history of the project: “By 1901 . . . new and successful attempts at financing were made by William Gibbs McAdoo. . . . A newly organized company, New York and Jersey Tunnel Company, took over the completion of the original [uptown] tunnel and the underground segment to Hoboken; the Hudson Companies began on the construction of the new tunnels and the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company was organized to be the operator after the system was built. . . .” According to one source, financing for the project “was done by the banking firm of Harvey Fisk and Sons, Messrs. Pliny Fisk and William M. Barnum of that house having been closely connected with the enterprise. The total cost of the system and its equipment was about $70,000,000.” One account published at the time described William M. Barnum as among the four persons (including William McAdoo and the head of the construction company involved) “conspicuously concerned” with “this conquering of the Hudson River”. In 1905 William Milo Barnum was elected a director of one of the principal companies involved, the Hudson Street Railroad Company. According to one report, shortly after the company was organized in 1905, stockholders elected the following directors: “Pliny Fisk and William M. Barnum, members of the banking house of Harvey Fisk & Sons; Walter G. Oakman, President of the Hudson companies which are building the tunnels; William G. McAdoo, President of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company; Andrew Freedman, Director of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad Company; Andrew Freedman, Director of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, and David Young of Newark, a former official of the North Jersey Railroad Company.” For the next several years, Mr. Barnum repeatedly appeared at public events related to the progress of the Hudson Tubes project. He seems to have developed a friendship with William McAdoo that continued even after Mr. Barnum left Harvey Fisk & Sons in 1908 (see discussion below). For example, on February 15, 1908, he rode on a train through the one of the new tunnels with senior officials involved with the project as well as reporters – one week before the tunnel “opened to the public”. Both Mr. Barnum and his former law firm seem to have profited from involvement with the project. If nothing else, both were provided with the opportunity to own stock in at least one company related to the venture. In addition, Simpson Thacher provided legal advice for the financing of the McAdoo enterprises. According to one account, Simpson Thacher and a separate group of three persons that included “W. M. Barnum” were two of the three largest shareholders of the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad Company, the company formed to operate the tunnels. “Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, Trustees” was listed as the second largest shareholder with 136,684 shares of common stock. A note further stated: “The holdings trusteed with the law firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett are held, it was learned, in the interest of [the] firm of Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett are [sic] originally undertook the financing of the McAdoo enterprises.” Such a statement suggests – but does not, of course, establish – that Simpson Thacher accepted shares in lieu of or to supplement payment for its legal work. A group consisting of “D. Clarke, P. [likely Pliny] Fisk, W. M. Barnum” was listed as the third largest stockholder of the company. The group reportedly owned 71,250 shares of common stock. Interestingly, Mr. Barnum’s son, William Henry Barnum, also appears to have been among the eleven largest shareholders of the company. A “W. H. Barnum” was listed as owner of 1,229 shares of the company’s common stock. Barnum Leaves Harvey Fisk & Sons and Supports Taft for President. On July 1, 1908, the banking firm of Harvey Fisk and Sons announced that three of its “most active” partners, including William Milo Barnum, had withdrawn from the firm. According to the announcement: “As usual at the termination of the half-year a number of changes in the makeup of Wall Street firms were announced yesterday. In the firm of Harvey Fisk & sons, which copartnership expired by limitation yesterday, three of the members, including some of the most active partners, withdrew. They were William M. Barnum, Alexander G. Fisk, and William S. Fanshawe. Concerning the withdrawals the following statement was issued at the firm’s office yesterday: Mr. Barnum withdraws to devote more time to varied personal interests. His business office will continue to be at 62 Cedar Street, in close relation with the firm.” Shortly before he left Harvey Fisk and Sons, Mr. Barnum became involved in the campaign to elect William Howard Taft president of the United States. Mr. Barnum and Mr. Taft were “college mates” at Yale and knew each other from that time. Mr. Barnum and his two young partners had employed William Howard Taft’s brother,
Henry W. Taft, as the first salaried attorney (associate) of their new law firm, Simpson, Thacher & Barnum, when it was founded in 1884.55 On April 1, 1908, New York City Republicans met and elected officers for the local Taft Club. They elected “William Barnum of Harvey Fisk & Sons” as treasurer. Following Taft’s victory, William Milo Barnum seems to have called in one small favor in exchange for his support. He reportedly called on the President-elect at Henry W. Taft’s home at 36 West 48th Street to make “arrangements for him to be present at the dinner of the Yale Alumni Association . . . on March 19”.
Real Estate Ventures. Research suggests that for the next fifteen years or so, Mr. Barnum became involved in a variety of business projects. He does not, however, seem to have been affiliated with any one firm during that time. For example, Mr. Barnum served as Chairman of the committee involved with reorganization of the troubled McCall’s Ferry Power Company in 1909. The company was building a hydro-electric plant on the Susquehanna River at McCall’s Ferry, Pennsylvania when the company providing McCall’s financing failed. The committee proposed a reorganization plan, but a minority of bondholders attacked the plan as inequitable. The issues seem to have been resolved since Mr. Barnum, representing “majority bondholders”, attended an auction of the real and personal property of the McCall’s Ferry Power Company on December 7, 1909 and purchased all the company’s assets for $2,000,000 on behalf of the bondholders. According to the account, he was the only bidder. Not long after that, Mr. Barnum seems to have become involved in the formation of a real estate venture headed by his son, William Henry Barnum. The corporation, named Long Acre Land Company, was formed in 1911. William M. Barnum was a member of the Board of Directors. The newly formed company promptly acquired rights to erect a “long-contemplated building at the northeast corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street, opposite the Times Building.” Several weeks later when work began to raze the buildings necessary to permit construction of the twelve-story building at the northeast corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, The New York Times reported that William Henry Barnum was President of Long Acre Land Company. Eventually Mr. Barnum’s son, William Henry, seems to have parlayed his real estate experience with Long Acre Land Company into a small real estate empire named William Henry Barnum & Co. For example, in 1922, The New York Times reported that: “William Henry Barnum & Co. are heading a syndicate with Tucker Anthony & Co. and Otis & Co., which is taking an issue of $2,750,000 of first mortgage bonds on Grand Central Palace and the adjoining Park Avenue leasehold. The bonds will bear interest at 7 per cent, and provide for a sinking fund to retire the bonds in twenty years. Out of the proceeds of this loan a new twenty-story office building will be constructed on the Park Avenue plot to the west of the Palace, between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh Streets, as proposed several years ago.” Throughout all this time, William Milo Barnum seems to have continued his decades-long friendship with Waldo H. Marshall who rose to become the American Locomotive Company. (Indeed, Mr. Barnum served as an honorary pall-bearer at Mr. Marshall’s funeral in 1923.) There is at least some evidence that this friendship benefited Mr. Barnum’s son, William Henry, as well. “William H. Barnum” seems to have been serving as a director of the American Locomotive Company in 1915 when a minority shareholder threatened suit against Waldo H. Marshall, the firm of Harvey Fisk & Sons who acted as bankers for the company and members of the board of directors.
The Deaths of William Milo Barnum and His Wife. William Milo Barnum died in Roosevelt Hospital on October 5, 1926 after a brief illness. He was 71 years old. A brief obituary appeared the next day in The New York Times. It read: “WILLIAM MILO BARNUM William Milo Barnum of 125 East Seventy-second Street, a former lawyer, died in Roosevelt Hospital yesterday at the age of 71. He was born in Lime Rock, Conn., the son of William H. and Charlotte Burrall Barnum. His father had been a United States Senator and had served as Chairman of the National Democratic Committee in the campaigns of 1880 and 1884. Mr. Barnum graduated from Yale in 1877 and from Columbia University Law School in 1879. He gave up his law practice in 1901 to devote his time to commercial activities as President of the Pacific Coast Company.”
It took about eighteen months to settle Mr. Barnum’s estate. He left a life interest in the bulk of his estate to his wife with the remainder interest bequeathed to a grandchild. A brief item describing the settlement of his estate published on April 1, 1928, read as follows: “William Milo Barnum, retired lawyer and financier, of 125 East Seventy-second Street, who died Oct. 5, 1926, left an estate of $825,187 gross and $745,933 net. The appraisal filed yesterday showed that his widow, Anne T. P. Barnum, got a life interest in $684,794, which goes to her grandson on her death, and the income from $50,000 went to Marie Branch Kimber, companion of Mrs. Barnum. Mr. Barnum owned stock in the Barnum and Richardson Company, valued at $168,039, and shares of the American Locomotive Company worth $86,631.”67 Mr. Barnum’s wife, Anna T. P. Barnum, died two years later on October 7, 1928. Her brief biography appeared the next day in The New York Times. It read: “Mrs. Anna T. P. Barnum. Mrs. Anna T. P. Barnum, widow of William M. Barnum, lawyer, who died two years ago, died yesterday at her residence, 125 East Seventy-second Street, at the age of 72. She was a daughter of the late Colonel Walter Phelps, whose command was part of the famous Iron Brigade in the Civil War. Mrs. Barnum is survived by a sister, Mrs. William H. Jacob, and by four children, William Henry and Walter Barnum of this city and Mrs. Laura Levering and Phelps Barnum of Greenwich, Conn. Funeral services will be held at 10 A. M. tomorrow in Saint Thomas’s Church, Fifth Avenue and Fifty-third Street.”
US Passport Applications, 1795-1925 about William Milo Barnum. Name: William Milo Barnum; Birth Date: 25 Jan 1856; Birth Place: Lime Rock, Connecticut; Residence: New York City, New York; Passport Issue Date: 22 May 1922; Father Name: William H Barnum; Father's Birth Location: New York State; Father's Residence: Deceased; Passport Includes a Photo: Y; Source: Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 - March 31, 1925 (M1490). Description: Age 35; Stature 5 ft 8-3/4 in; Forehead high; Eyes black; Nose straight; Mouth medium; Chin oval; Hair black; Complexion olive; Face oval. Applicant has resided outside the US in France, Switzerland, England, West Indies and the Canal Zone. The purpose of this passport is for travel to France, Belgium and England, departing from New York aboard MS Aquitania on July 4, 1922.
A US Passport was issued to William Milo Barnum on 11 Oct 1924. The purpose of the passport was given as travel to France, England and Belgium, departing from New York aboard MS Majestic on November 8, 1924.
The Barnum Family, 1350-1907 gives his birth date as 15 Jan 1856.
From the New York Times of October 6, 1926: William Milo Barnum of 125 East 72 Street, a former lawyer, died yesterday in Roosevelt Hospital at the age of 71. He was born in Lime Rock, Connecticut, the son of William H. and Charlotte Burrall Barnum. His father had been a United States Senator and had served as Chairman of the National Democratic Committee in the campaigns of 1880 and 1884. Mr. Barnum graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1879. He gave up his law practice in 1901 to devote his time to commercial activities as president of the Pacific Coast Company.
A Research Guide to the Genealogy of the Barnum/Barnam/Barnham Family Worldwide
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