James Talcott

Talcott began his business career in 1854 in New York as a selling agent for a knitting mill in New Britain, Connecticut. The mill was managed by his brother, John Butler Talcott.[1][2] In 1859, he became a dry goods merchant, surviving the Panic of 1873, just as he had done in 1857.[1]

Towards the end of the 19th century, Talcott became a textile factor, later branching into coal.[1]

Talcott's son was Harvard graduate James Frederick (1866–1944), who joined his father's business full time in 1879. Two years after his son's birth, Talcott moved his dry goods business into what is now known as the James Talcott Company Building, at 108–110 Franklin Street in Manhattan.[3] The business remained there for about fifty years, before moving to Park Avenue in 1911.[3] In 1890, J. Frederick married Frank Vanderbilt Crawford, who was the niece and namesake of Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt, the second wife of New York railroad businessman Cornelius Vanderbilt.

In the late 1930s, J. Frederick's son and James Talcott's grandson, James Talcott Jr. (1893–1983), was an officer of the company. This expansion was necessary, for the company's volume had grown from $11.2 million in 1926 to $82 million a decade later. Nearly a quarter of this volume consisted of refactoring (that is, receivables purchased from other factoring establishments).[1] Talcott Jr. succeeded his father as president of the company upon his death in 1944, having joined in 1916. He became its chairman in the 1950s.[4][1]

Henrietta E. Francis Talcott's name above a window on the Church of Sweden in New York at 5 East 48th Street

Talcott was born on a thousand-acre farm in West Hartford, Connecticut, on February 7, 1835.[2][5] He attended Williston Seminary, where he studied philosophy.[2] He married Henrietta E. Francis, and they had four children.[5]

He died at Lake Mohonk, New York on August 21, 1916, at the age of 86, and was buried at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Hartford.[2][5][6]

In 1921, a year after a donation of around $250,000 from Henrietta, the Church of Sweden in New York, on East 48th Street, was rebuilt in a Gothic style. The new building was the work of architect Wilfred E. Anthony (1878–1948).[7][8] Henrietta died in December 1921, aged 79; it is not known whether she got to see the finished building.

Talcott's nephew was Allen Butler Talcott.