Charles Dennis Barney was an Americanstockbroker and founder of Charles D. Barney & Co., one of the predecessors of the brokerage and securities firm Smith Barney.
Early life
Barney was born in Sandusky, Ohio on July 9, 1844. He was the son of grain merchant Charles D. Barney and Elizabeth Caldwell Barney. His younger sisters were Sarah Amanda Kieffer, Helen Elizabeth Barney, and Susan Caldwell Butler. After his father died in 1849 during a cholera epidemic, his mother remarried to Rev. Moses Kieffer, a minister and the former president of Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio. His paternal grandparents were Throop Barney and Sarah Richmond Barney. His maternal grandparents were Eben Jacob Dennis and Amanda Gilmore Dennis, members of an old New York family. He attended the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan when the American Civil War broke out. Barney's older brother, Henry Caldwell Barney, was killed and at the end of 1862, Barney was permitted by his family to enlist in the Union Army, serving as part of Company B, 145th Regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry at the rank of Corporal. He helped man fortifications along the Potomac which protected Washington from the cavalry of Gen. Jubal Early.
Career
After the war, Barney worked briefly as a clerk at a bank in Sandusky. After two years, Barney moved to Philadelphia, where he married the daughter of prominent financier Jay Cooke, joining the firm of Jay Cooke & Company. Following the collapse of his father-in-law's Philadelphia banking house, in 1873, Barney reorganized the firm as Chas. D. Barney & Co. Barney's brother-in-law, Jay Cooke, Jr., joined the new firm as a minority partner. Barney retired from day-to-day control of the firm in 1907, but remained involved through the 1930s. The business continued, under the same name, Henry E. Butler, J. Horace Harding, Jay Cooke III, and Charles S. Phillips. In 1938, Charles D. Barney & Co. and Edward B. Smith & Co. merged to form Smith Barney & Co.
Personal life
In 1868, Barney was married to Laura Elmina Cooke, the daughter of prominent Philadelphia financier Jay Cooke and Dorothea Elizabeth Cooke. Together, the Barneys were listed on the Social Register, and were the parents of six daughters, including:
Barney was a director of the Union League of Philadelphia. After reaching the age of 100 in 1944, Barney died the following year on October 24, 1945 at the age of 101 at Eildon, his mansion in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania near Philadelphia. At the time of his death, Barney was among the oldest living veterans of the American Civil War.
In 1878, Barney and his wife purchased an old farmhouse named "Eildon" at the northwest corner of Spring Avenue and Old York Road, on land that adjoined Ogontz, his father-in-law's estate in Elkins Park near Philadelphia. The farmhouse, which had previously been rented to Rachel Carr as Miss Carr's Ladies Seminary, had been owned by Frederick Fraley. Shortly after acquiring the home, however, it was destroyed by a fire. In 1881, the Barneys built a Queen Anne-style mansion in its place, which was considered "one of the finest and most complete residences at Chelten Hills". The large stone mansion designed by Isaac Harding Hobbs and trimmed with brick. In 1947, two years after his death, the home was demolished and in 1956, the Elkins Park House apartments were built in its place.
