Episode 31: Money in the Bank: Irish Managers of Risk and Money

From benevolent or mutual help societies in the 1860s and 1870s, Irish immigrants took the next step--establishing building loan associations and commercial insurance companies in Cleveland. Fenian supporters and Irish community leaders helped to form such groups as The Forest City United Land and Building Association in 1867 and the Hibernia Insurance Company in 1870. People of Irish birth and descent moved more slowly into the higher status ranks of banking and stock brokering. Several came to banking through their success in retail business, others through political connections. It was an Irish immigrant, Jeremiah Sullivan, President of Central National Bank, who chaired the committee that secured the Federal Reserve Bank for Cleveland in 1914.