As a young man, Barney went to Sacketts Harbor, New York, where he was cashier in a bank. In 1842, Barney and his brother, Ashbel, went to Cleveland, Ohio, and engaged in business as forwarding and commission merchants as Danford N. Barney & Company. Barney resided in Cleveland at 24 Public Square and later 169 Euclid Street.
In 1849, Barney moved to Buffalo, New York, where he was a commission merchant and proprietor of a bank. When Edwin Barber Morgan resigned as president of Wells Fargo & Company on November 26, 1853, Barney was elected to succeed him. He was also elected to the board of directors, of which he remained a member until 1870.[3]
In 1856, he moved to New York City. Besides serving as president and a director of Wells Fargo, Barney was also a director of John Butterfield's Overland Mail Company, organized in 1857 to provide government mail coach service from Tipton, Missouri, to San Francisco, California, by way of El Paso, Texas, and Yuma, Arizona.[4] On April 15, 1863, Danford Barney, Benjamin Pierce Cheney and William Fargo were appointed a committee in New York to go to California "in the best interests of the company". Traveling by stage, they spent most of July, all of August, and most of September 1863 in California looking after the company's affairs.[5] Similarly, on February 8, 1865, Barney was asked to visit London "in reference to a financial agency of the California Railroad" (i.e., the Central Pacific Railroad, the western portion of the transcontinental railroad then under construction).[6]
Barney was President of Wells Fargo until the company was merged into the Holladay Overland Mail and Express Company on November 1, 1866. The surviving company was thereupon renamed Wells Fargo & Company. Barney resigned as president of Wells Fargo to devote more time to his own business, the United States Express Company;[7][8] and Louis McLane was elected president on November 1, 1866.[9]
In 1870, Danford Barney retired from the board of directors of Wells Fargo.[10] He was one of the incorporators of the New York Elevated Railroad in 1871,[11] serving as president upon his death.[12]
Personal life
On October 8, 1833, he married Cynthia Maria Cushman, daughter of Peter Newcomb Cushman and Sally (née Kellogg) Cushman. Before Cynthia died on August 5, 1843, the couple were the parents of three children:[13]
On January 26, 1847, Barney remarried to Azubah Latham (1817–1875), the daughter of William Harris Latham and Azubah (née Jenks) Latham. Azubah was a sister of Charles F. Latham, later treasurer of Wells Fargo & Company, and a first cousin of Milton Latham, a U.S. Senator from California. Barney and his second wife were the parents of three more children:[13]
After the death of Azubah's father in 1868, she purchased the Latham family home in North Thetford, Vermont. After Azubah died in 1875, the house passed to her daughter Lucy, who owned it until her death in 1940.[17]
Barney died at the Windsor Hotel in New York City on March 8, 1874.[18] His widow died December 4, 1875. In her will she left $5,000 to start a library in Thetford named for her father.[17]
Descendants
Through his eldest son Danford Jr., he was a grandfather of Danford Newton Barney III (1859–1936),[19] a former Connecticut State Senator and treasurer of the Hartford Electric Light Company,[20] and the great-grandfather of poet Danford Newton Barney IV (1892–1952).[21][22]
^Some writers have incorrectly rendered Barney's given name as "Danforth", but his brother Ashbel H. Barney spelled it "Danford" in a notice to Wells Fargo shareholders in 1869, and D.N. Barney himself signed the articles of incorporation of the New York Elevated Railroad in 1871 as "Danford N. Barney".[1]
Sources
^Noel M. Loomis, Wells Fargo, p. 43. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1968.
^Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr, The Panic of 1907. Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm, passim. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2007. ISBN978-0-470-15263-8
