Standard Oil Trust Issued to J.B. Clews and Signed - Stock Certificate

Stock issued to J.B. Clews and signed on back. Also signed by H.M. Flagler and W.H. Tilford.

James Blanchard Clews (August 4, 1869 – December 17, 1934) was an American railroad executive and banker.

Clews was born in Dunkirk in Chautauqua County, New York on August 4, 1869. He was a son of John Clews (1826–1862) and Sabina (née Dayman) Clews (1830–1912). His older brother was John Henry Clews, who also became a banker.

His uncle was the prominent financier and author Henry Clews. Among his many cousins were Elsie Clews Parsons (wife of U.S. Representative Herbert Parsons) and artist Henry Clews Jr., who lived at the Château de la Napoule in France. His paternal grandparents were Bessie (née Kendrick) Clews and James Clews, a prosperous manufacturer of Staffordshire ware.

He graduated from Chamberlain College in Randolph, New York in 1888.

He received his business training in the general offices of the Red Line Transit Company and of the Union Steamboat Company of Buffalo, New York where he learned the railroad and transportation business. He later became president of the Toledo, Ann Arbor and Northern Michigan Railway Company during its reorganization. He served as chairman of the Ontario and Western Railroad Stockholder's Committee, which succeeded in dissolving the Voting Trust after years of failed attempts. He served as chairman of the board of the Standard Cordage, president of the Cannabis Manufacturing Company, director of the Irving Publishing Company and the New Amsterdam Casualty Company. He was also a trustee of the East River Savings Institution and a governor of the Northwest Dispensary.

He became a partner in his uncle's financial firm known as Henry Clews & Co. After the death of his uncle Henry in 1923, he succeeded as senior partner of Henry Clews & Co., located at 15 Broad Street in lower Manhattan.

In November 1908, Clews was married to Leta Alicia (née Nichols) Livingston (1865–1919) at Bernardsville, New Jersey. Leta, the widow of Oscar Frederick Livingston (1824–1901), was a daughter of Washington Romaine Nichols and Alicia (née MacKay) Nichols and a great-granddaughter of General Benjamin Romaine of prison ship martyr fame. Together, James and Leta lived at 1039 Fifth Avenue, and were the parents of:

• Leta Clews (1912–1991), who married Seymour LeGrand Cromwell Jr. (1902–1965), a son of Seymour L. Cromwell (a former president of the New York Stock Exchange), in 1936.

After the death of his first wife, he married Mary Ann Payne (1890–1973), a daughter of Mrs. Edward Raphael Payne of Baltimore, in the White and Gold Room at the Plaza Hotel in New York City on October 2, 1926. Mary Ann was a direct descendant of Sir Robert Payne, one of the first settlers of Virginia. They owned a summer home, La Lanterne in Brookville on Long Island.

Clews died at his home, 1 East 62nd Street in Manhattan on December 17, 1934. After a funeral at St. Bartholomew's in New York, he was buried at Locust Valley Cemetery in Locust Valley, New York. After his death, his widow married George Blumenthal, a banker and president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After Blumenthal died in 1941, she married Gen. Ralph K. Robertson. After Robertson died in 1964, she married Russian Baron Charles P. von Wrangell-Rokassowsky in 1968 before her death in 1973 at the age of 84.

Henry Morrison Flagler (1830-1913) Through the grain and distillery business, he met John D. Rockefeller, in Bellevue, Ohio. After a business disaster as a salt manufacturer in Saginaw, Michigan, he moved to Cleveland and soon joined Rockefeller and chemist and inventor Samuel Andrews in forming Rockefeller, Andrews & Flagler in 1867, which they were soon to develop into Standard Oil. By 1872, it led the American oil refining industry, producing 10,000 barrels per day.

In 1877, Standard Oil moved its headquarters to New York City, and Flagler and his family moved there as well. He was joined by Henry H. Rogers, another leader of Standard Oil who also became involved in the development of America's railroads, including those on nearby Staten Island, the Union Pacific Railroad, and later in West Virginia, where he eventually built the remarkable Virginian Railway to transport coal to Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Henry Flager's non-Standard Oil interests went in a different direction than Henry Rogers', however, when in 1878, on the advice of his physician, Flagler traveled to Jacksonville, Florida for the winter with his first wife, Mary (née Harkness) Flagler, who was quite ill. Two years after she died in 1881, he married again. Ida Alice (née Shrouds) Flagler had been a caregiver for Mary Flagler. After their wedding, the couple traveled to St. Augustine, Florida. Flagler found the city charming, but the hotel facilities and transportation systems inadequate. He recognized Florida's potential to attract out-of-state visitors.

He returned to St. Augustine in 1885 and began construction on the 540-room Hotel Ponce de Leon. Realizing the need for a sound transportation system to support his hotel ventures, Flagler purchased the Jacksonville, St. Augustine and Halifax Railroad, the first railroad in what would become known as the "Flagler System" or the Florida East Coast Railway.

Flagler completed the 1150-room Royal Poinciana Hotel on the shores of Lake Worth in Palm Beach and extended his railroad to its service town, West Palm Beach, by 1894. The Royal Poinciana Hotel was at the time the largest wooden structure in the world. Two years later, Flagler built the Palm Beach Inn (renamed The Breakers Hotel in 1901) overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Palm Beach.

Flagler originally intended for West Palm Beach to be the terminus of his railroad system, but during 1894 and 1895, severe freezes hit the area, causing Flagler to rethink his original decision. Sixty miles south, the town today known as Miami was reportedly unharmed by the freeze. To further convince Flagler to continue the railroad to Miami, he was offered land in exchange for laying rail tracks from private landowners, including Julia Tuttle, who ran a trading post on the Miami River, the Florida East Coast Canal and Transportation Company, and the Boston and Florida Atlantic Coast Land Company.

Flagler's railroad, renamed the Florida East Coast Railway in 1895, reached Biscayne Bay by 1896. Flagler dredged a channel, built streets, instituted the first water and power systems, and financed the city's first newspaper, The Metropolis. When the city was incorporated in 1896, its citizens wanted to honor the man responsible for its growth by naming it "Flagler". He declined the honor, persuading them to use an old Indian name, "Miami". He became known as the Father of Miami, Florida.

Wesley H. Tilford (1850-1909)  was born in Lexington, Kentucky, on July 14, 1850.  He went to Columbia College where he studied for a couple of years, but the call of business was too strong to allow him to wait for his bachelor's degree.  Attracted by the prospects of petroleum, Wesley gave up his college course, and entered as a clerk in the firm of his brother, Bostwick & Tilford, then doing business in Pearl Street. When the firm dissolved the two brothers joined in a partnership of their own under the title of John B. Tilford Jr. & Co., which did well from the start and continued to prosper until, at the period of the Eastern oil amalgamations, a substantial offer from the Standard Oil Company induced them to cast their fortunes with that vigorous organization. As has been said, those were busy formative times in the oil business, and the new recruit proved his mettle by the splendid success of his visit to the Pacific slope in 1878. He there organized the oil trade in California, Oregon, Colorado and the surrounding States. On his return to the East he was welcomed to a high place in the home office, taking charge of the vast transportation problem with vigor and effectiveness. And so, strong in the esteem and confidence of all his co-workers, he continued to the end.

Tilford, one of the Vice Presidents of the Standard Oil Company, left behind him a notable record of over thirty years in the service of the Company and of some years before that in a petroleum business with which his family was connected. ln his time he had passed through all grades of the merchandising of petroleum, filling post after post with loyalty, credit and acumen. For nine years before his elevation to the Vice Presidency in 1908, he had filled the office of Treasurer of the Standard Oil Company, and from 1892 onward he had been a Director. Despite this long and prominent career, few outside the oil business knew him, so unobtrusive was he by nature. He was a man of few words but of great grasp of affairs, particularly strong in organizing qualities, and gifted with fine and accurate judgment. ln addition he was a man of wide information and varied reading. He was courtly, kind-hearted and charitable. Ordinary qualities sharpened by business experience may carry a man safely through the details of an established business easily filling its place in the commercial economy; but to win and retain a leading place in a business ever growing, ever reaching out, ever conquering new worlds and gaining and holding new markets, called for qualities far beyond the ordinary, and it is the testimony of his associates that he always deserved his promotions. This is high praise from men themselves the peers of the giants of business in all ages and all times.

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