August Belmont

Origins and early life

August Belmont was born Aaron Schönberg on 8 December 1813 in Alzey, in Hesse, into a Jewish family, and figures in this directory by that Jewish birth — this fiche also says plainly that in America he left the faith of his fathers, married Caroline Perry, daughter of the commodore who opened Japan, in the Episcopal church, and raised his children in it.

Work and career

Apprenticed at thirteen to the Rothschilds in Frankfurt, he arrived in New York in 1837 in the middle of a financial panic, and instead of sailing on to Havana as ordered, set up on his own as the Rothschilds' American agent; the house of August Belmont & Co. became one of the great banks of the United States, and its founder one of the richest men of the Gilded Age. He served as American minister to the Netherlands, and from 1860 to 1872 chaired the Democratic National Committee — one of the longest tenures in the party's history — through the Civil War, working to keep European governments from recognizing the Confederacy.

A lover of horses, he presided over the American Jockey Club, and the Belmont Stakes, run since 1867 and the third leg of the Triple Crown, carries his name. He died in New York on 24 November 1890.