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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 # 673607
February 05, 1870
NEW YORK HERALD, Feb. 5, 1870
* Historic 1st female Wall Street brokerage opens
* Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin sisters
* "The Bewitching Brokers" shatters tradition
The top of the back page has an intriguing report of a very notable--yet widely unknown--Wall Street "first".
Under the column heads: "THE QUEENS OF FINANCE" "The Palace of the Female Sovereigns of Wall Street--Commodore Vanderbilt as Prime Minister--Establishing the Connections--Telegraphy and Woman's Finesse" 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, dealing with the opening of their brokerage firm which happened on this very day. One bit notes in part: "...In one field alone have the triumphs of woman been miserably meagre. For some cause best known to society it has allocated commerce almost exclusively to man, and not commerce only, but all its kindred professions...".
Part of the article is a verbatim interview with Tennie Claflin. See the photos for the full article & the interview.
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).
Eight pages, very nice condition.
Category: Post-Civil War
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