Early life and education

Morgan’s family had deep roots in the Northeast, predating American independence. His
great-great-great-great grandfather, Miles Morgan, sailed to the Massachusetts Bay colony
from Wales in 1636. A few generations later, Joseph Morgan III foreshadowed his
grandson’s business savvy by buying up notes of the Aetna Fire Insurance Company—the
ancestor of Aetna, Inc.—when a fire caused most stakeholders to panic. He made a small
fortune as a result. Other family members included a founder of Yale and the author of
“Jingle Bells,” originally a song about Thanksgiving.

J.P. Morgan was born to Junius Spencer Morgan, a banker, and Juliet Pierpont in Hartford,
Connecticut in 1837. He witnessed his father’s rise into the upper echelons of the banking
industry and evidently learned a great deal from it. His family moved to Boston when he
was a teen, and he spent a year in the Azores after high school, due to poor health.

He went on to study in Switzerland and then at the University of Göttingen. There he

impressed a math professor, who was disappointed that Morgan did not go into academia.
Years later, when Morgan had become a banking colossus, the professor told him, “You
might have become my assistant, and perhaps at my death even succeeded me as
professor.”

After graduating, Morgan went to London to join his father’s partnership, Peabody, Morgan
& Co. That year saw the Panic of 1857, which threw the financial system into turmoil.
Peabody was forced to seek a bailout from the Bank of England when its American partner
failed to pay its debts. The next year, Morgan went to New York to work as an accountant
and represent his father’s interests at that firm, Duncan, Sherman & Co.

He paid $300 to a substitute to avoid fighting in the Civil War, during which time he worked
as his father’s agent in New York. Ensuring he got through the war not just unscathed, but
with a profit, he flipped 5,000 old rifles and netted $92,500 The rifles turned out to be
faulty and dangerous, but Morgan won the ensuing court battle.

Morgan’s father considered his son’s ventures to be overly speculative, and urged him to
take on a senior partner. The resulting company was known as Dabney, Morgan & Co. in
1864. In 1871, Morgan partnered with Anthony J. Drexel (founder of the eponymous
university) to form Drexel, Morgan & Co. This company would eventually become
JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The company became a major source of financing for the booming railroad industry and
the federal government, aided by its links to Britain through Morgan’s father. When
Congress refused to underwrite the Army’s pay in 1877, Drexel, Morgan & Co. stepped in.