was a manufacturer of wood working machinery and worked as a paymaster in the federal army during the Civil War, the Collection of the Internal Revenue and the General Agency of the Western Cement Association. His mother, the former Emma Keats, was the daughter of George Keats, a lumber merchant, and the niece of John Keats, the English poet. Speed was also related by marriage to the Henning family. His uncle, Joshua Fry Speed, who was a guarantor of the A. D. Hunt firm, was James W. Henning’ s brother-in-law. Joshua Speed and James Hennings were also business partners and engaged in real estate and banking business.
A month after Hunt died in May 1885, Speed, who was the cashier of the firm, suddenly left the city; rumors spread that he had taken the firm’ s funds and fled to Canada. An investigation ensued that showed Speed had overdrawn his account and determined that his mind had been“ unbalanced by everwork.” According to The Courier-Journal, Speed had realized that he had to settle his account with the firm because Hunt’ s death meant that the firm would dissolve. His brother, Thomas, an officer in the Kentucky National Bank, brought him back to Louisville, and the overdraft was covered by a mortgage that Speed and his wife filed“ in favor of Mrs. A. D. Hunt and Mr. J. J. B. Hilliard, representing the firm of A. D. Hunt & Co.”
The day after the papers reported that Speed had been brought back to Louisville, Hilliard placed a notice in The Courier-Journal, which stated that A. D. Hunt & Co. had been dissolved, that“ the affairs of the firm will be settled by J. J. B. Hilliard,” and that“ all depositors [ would ] be paid in full on demand at their banking office.” George Keats Speed died in 1887.
J. J. B. Hilliard,“ Bond, stock and money broker and banker”( 1885)
In September 1885, Hilliard announced that he would go into business for himself. Though various sources state that he initially opened his own firm, it appears that he was in business on his own name as a broker. In his notice in The Courier- Journal that year, Hilliard states,“ As successor of A. D. Hunt & Co. I will attend to all matters pertaining to the investment of money and the purchase and sale of securities. All business intrusted( sic) to me will have my personal attention, and
Robert Worth Bingham and Aleen Kithgow Hilliard aboard the Mauretania, 1930.
I respectfully solicit orders from parties both in and out of this city. J. J. B. Hilliard.”
In 1893, his son, Byron Henning Hilliard, who studied at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, joined him in business. The firm was then called J. J. B. Hilliard & Son.
J. J. B. Hilliard & Son( 1893)
In 1901, J. J. B. Hilliard died and later that year, his son Byron was shot and seriously injured in an accident while on a quail hunting trip. Another of Hilliard’ s sons, Isaac Hilliard, who was then in his senior year at Princeton University, left school to take his brother’ s place at the firm in 1902. In 1906, another son, Edward Hobbs Hilliard, who entered Princeton in 1901 and graduated in 1905, also joined the firm as partner.
Isaac returned to Princeton and graduated in 1903, after which he re-joined the firm. He became senior partner in 1905. Byron Hilliard recovered his health enough to return to the firm in 1916, but he died in 1922. In 1924, Byron’ s widow, the former Aleen( also spelled Aline) Lithgow Muldoon Hilliard, married Robert Worth Bingham, owner of The Louisville Times, who had also been the mayor of Louisville and the owner of The Courier- Journal since 1918.
Despite the death of Byron Hilliard, the 1920s marked a period of growth for
Photographic Archives, Ekstrom Library, University of Louisville the firm led by senior partner Isaac Hilliard. In 1921, Andrew Jackson Howard, an Indiana native, became a partner in the firm. He was the first partner without the Hilliard name. He had previously worked for the Fidelity Trust Co., and he started at the Hilliard firm as a bookkeeper in 1906. Howard retired from the firm in 1952 and died in 1967. In 1922, Morgan O. Hughes also became a partner. He retired around 1945 and died that year.
In 1924, Isaac Hilliard bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The firm also continued to grow by adding new partners including Marion H. Caldwell, Andrew P. Gies, Robert J. Theobald and Harold W. Walton, who were made partners in 1929. Gies had been with the firm for 14 years; he retired in 1950 and died in 1952. Cardwell, a Kentucky native and the son of a country banker, had been a cashier at the Citizens Union National Bank and was also a veteran of World War I. Walton, an Ohio Wesleyan College graduate and a former bank cashier, and Theobald, who had been with the German Bank and Fidelity & Columbia Trust Co., had both been with the firm for seven years. Theobald left the firm in 1943 to create his own tax consultancy. Walton also left the firm around World War II, and he died in 1983.
In 1934, the third generation of the family joined the firm when Isaac Hilliard’ s son, Richard Donigan Hilliard, joined J. J. B. Hilliard & Son upon his graduation from Princeton University that year. He served in the Field Artillery during World War II, but he was tragically killed in a car accident in 1948. That year, Isaac Hilliard’ s other son, J. Henning Hilliard, joined the firm to take his brother’ s place.( Edward Hilliard’ s oldest son, Theodore Irwin Hilliard, was also educated at Princeton, but he left to enlist in the US Army during World War II. He was killed in action in 1943. His other son, Edward Hobbs Hilliard Jr., joined the firm but withdrew in 1949. He died in a mountain climbing accident in 1970.)
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, James Henning Hilliard was a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Virginia Law School. Known as Henning, he served in the Army Air Force during World War II and worked as a lawyer before joining the family firm in 1948. Henning became a partner in 1951. A. J. Howard, the managing partner, retired
18 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Summer 2018 | www. MoAF. org