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Woodhull & Claflin open the first women's brokerage firm on Wall Street...
Woodhull & Claflin open the first women's brokerage firm on Wall Street...
Item # 673606
February 06, 1870
NEW YORK HERALD, Feb. 6, 1870 Near the top of page 3 is an intriguing report of a very notable--yet widely unknown--Wall Street "first".
Under the column heads: "THE QUEENS OF FINANCE" "The New Furore in 'The Street'--First Levee and Business Reception of Victoria and Tennie C.--,--A Sensation Among the Panicky 'Bulls'--The Ship Afloat" is the report of Victoria Woodhull and her sister, Tennessee (Tennie) Claflin, being the first woman to open a brokerage firm on Wall Street.
The report is terrific. A few bits within include: "...People of all classes thronged yesterday at No. 44 Broad Street, spinsters, elderly and sedate, with a large experience of the world...The ladies received their visitors with a coolness and an eye to business that drew forth the plaudits & the curses of old veterans...There was nothing of the novice in the manner & movements of the ladies..." and so much more.
As the website "Bumped" notes, Cornelius Vanderbilt helped Victoria and Tennessee with the finances needed for them to open Woodhull, Claflin, & Co., the first for-women-by-women brokerage firm in the United States.
On February 5, 1870, Victoria and Tennessee, then 31 and 24, officially opened the doors of Woodhull, Claflin, & Co. for business. Despite a sign stating, “Gentlemen will state their business and then retire at once,” most of the estimated four thousand visitors on that first day were men, presumably shocked by the women now working in their midst.
Opening a successful brokerage wasn’t the whole plan. As Victoria later said, “We went unto Wall Street, not particularly because I wanted to be a broker…but because I wanted to plant the flag of women’s rebellion in the center of the continent.”
And in some ways, that’s exactly what she did. Later in 1870 the sisters used the profits from the brokerage firm to launch Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, one of the country’s first publications published by women.
Woodhull, Claflin, & Co. proved to be a huge success. According to some versions of the story, Victoria and Tennessee supposedly made $700,000 in the first six weeks (that’s more than $13 million today).
Page 4 has nearly 2 columns taken u with: "MORMONISM" "Practical Operations of the New Schismatic Movement" "The 'Church of Zion' Organized on Earth--Informal Adoption of Its Constitution--A Herald Correspondent Receives a 'Revelation' ".
Twelve pages, some older & crude mends near the bottom of some internal leaves causes a few small holes and some loss of text. Fortunately, no affect to the mentioned articles.
Category: Post-Civil War
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