MILLIONAIRE'S DEATH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20113, 26 November 1928, Page 9

MILLIONAIRE'S DEATH.

MR. THOMAS F. RYAN.

ESTATE WORTH £60,000,000.

(Received November 23, 6.5 p.m.)

United Service. NEW YORK, Nov. 24. The death has occurred of Mr. Thomas Fortune Ryan, financier, aged 77. Ho has left an estate estimated to be worth moro than £60,000,000.

Tho late Mr. Thomas Fortune Ryan was once one of tho greatest forces in American finance. His name was known to millions of persons throughout the world. A man of myriad activities—banker, railway director, tobacco king, insurance genius—his strong hand and his genius made themselves felt in almost every line of business in tho United States. His personal life was quiet; most of his time in recent years having been passed on his estato in Virginia, developed in and around tho country where he was born and brought up. An orphan at the age of five, a clerk in a dry goods store in Baltimore when ho was fifteen, Mr. Ryan came to be one of the wealthiest and most useful of American citizens. lie was born in Nelson county, Virginia, October 17, 1851, and had Scottish and Irish blood in his veins. After a youth spent in modestoccupations he went to New York, entered a banking house, and three years later became a member of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1885, in partnership with William C. Whitney, he reorganised tho street railways of the city. That was the first of a long series of railway consolidations lie effected. One" of Mr. Ryan's greatest achievements was the consolidation of tobacco industries into tho American Tobacco Company. That was followed by several years of activity in banking. 1 hen Mr Ryan went heavily into insurance, purchasing £500,000 worth of tho stock of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, which lie later turned into a trust, with Grover Cleveland, Morgan J. O'Brien and George Westinghouse as trustees. In his railwav labours tho greatest single feat of Mr. Ryan was the consolidation of the Interborough and Metropolitan Street Railway companies. Mr. Ryan for manv years was a powerful factor in politics. He never held or aspired to public office, but he attended several national conventions of the Democrat Party as a delegate. Mr. Rvan was a Roman Catholic and was noted for his many charities and splendid gifts to the Church.