LeGrand Lockwood

Life

LeGrand Lockwood's family moved to New York when he was twelve years old. At the age of 18 he got into the banking business. In 1842 he married Ann ( a) Louise Benedict. From this marriage several children were born, including the sons of LeGrand Lockwood Jr., Williston B. Lockwood, Henry B. Lockwood and Edward Eugene Lockwood, of which the three oldest professionally with his father merged. Lockwood, who had been director of a steamship line to San Francisco, which had created the Empire of Vanderbilts after the California gold rush, founded in 1857 his company Lockwood & Co., is also operated in the railway business and became one of the first millionaires of the country.

A few years before his death, LeGrand Lockwood was in Norwalk a house with 62 rooms built according to plans by Detlef Lienau, as the Lockwood - Mathews Mansion is now known and already in his time was considered "finest residence in this country ."

No sooner was this " cottage" based from which Lockwood was able to control a part of the company through which he had come to wealth, - the route of the Norwalk - Danbury Railroad about ran along the property line of the property and the Horse Railroad in Norwalk, the the West Avenue took advantage on the other side of the property, he himself had founded in 1862 - when, on September 24, 1869, Black Friday, gold prices fell drastically. Lockwood was forced to sell the value of ten million dollars to Vanderbilt to get his own business alive his share of the Lake Shore and Michigan Railroad.

1872 LeGrand Lockwood fell ill with pneumonia and died within a few days at the age of 52 years. 1873 had the first continuing operations of his older sons company Lockwood & Co. liquidate and by 1874 was the time of the Lake Shore & Michigan Railroad completed. Lockwood's widow sold his first art collection. Even the estate in Norwalk they could not keep; it came first in the hands of the Vanderbilts and was sold in 1876 to Charles Drelincourt Mathews.

The heritage

After Lockwood's death kindled fierce debates about the legacy that lasted for decades. In an article in the New York Times of April 6, 1895 reported that Lockwood's son, Edward Eugene, who was at that time destitute in Austin (Texas ) tried to process the way his uncle James H. Benedict and the widow of his brother LeGrand Lockwood Jr., Kate H. Lockwood to prosecute. Lockwood's widow Ann Louise was heir and legal representative of the then underage Edward Eugene been when his father died. When Ann Louise Lockwood died in 1882, their rights were given to her son LeGrand Lockwood, Jr., and her brother James H. Benedict. He explained during the trial that he had never had to manage assets for Edward Eugene, for such was never enters into his hands. This, however, he became entangled in contradictions, because when he had taken over its function as the legal representative Edward Eugene, he apparently had spoken of the need for management of the money. On the other hand, it is pointed out in the newspaper article that LeGrand Lockwood, who had just heard about the victims of the Black Friday of 1869, spent more than a million dollars for his estate in Norwalk shortly before the crisis, and apparently had really lost the rest of the assets: "It is Claimed [ ... ] did the elder Lockwood what caught in the panic prior to his death and left nothing but debts. "