Robert Winsor (May 28, 1858 – January 7, 1930) was a leading American financier, investment banker, and philanthropist who, as head of the Boston investment banking firm Kidder, Peabody & Co., was at the forefront of industrial consolidation during the period leading up to the Great Depression. After beginning his career at Kidder, Peabody in 1880 as a lowly clerk just out of college, Winsor was quickly promoted because of his business acumen, and was held in such great esteem by the 1920s that newspaper articles would refer to him as the "J.P. Morgan of Boston" and "one of the country's leading bankers."
Serving on the board of directors of several major corporations in various industries, particularly city railroads, mining, and utilities, Winsor was widely praised as a man of remarkable foresight, a man who had anticipated America's need for improved transportation, utilities, banking, and communications. Under Winsor's leadership, Kidder, Peabody developed from a local investment bank to one of the most powerful banking institutions in the world. He dominated his firm's operations until his sudden death in 1930, which nearly drove the firm out of business just after the Stock Market Crash.
Just after his death, a front-page story in the Boston Sunday Post declared Winsor “perhaps the greatest” of a group of same-aged business and political leaders (many of them classmates in the Harvard class of 1880), including Theodore Roosevelt, Josiah Quincy, Richard Saltonstall, Robert Bacon, and William A. Gaston, who had been responsible for building the country's banking, telephone, and transportation industries: “Winsor had the insight that saw the transportation needs of the last four decades. He saw the needs of and the demand for illuminating and heating gas. He saw the demand for communication.... He grasped their importance and he...found the men to develop them. Not only did he find the men, but he found the money, millions of money, for the developments. Robert Winsor, self-effacing, publicity-shy, hiding his activities under a firm name, that of Kidder, Peabody & Company, was one of those extraordinary men whom professors of biological sciences will tell you happens only when nature wishes to create a Gladstone, a Wilson, or a Morgan.”
Childhood and education
Robert Winsor was born in Salem, Massachusetts to Dr. Frederick Winsor, a Civil War surgeon descended from renowned shipbuilder Samuel Winsor, an early settler of Duxbury, Massachusetts, and teacher Ann Bent Ware, daughter of well-known Unitarian minister, professor and abolitionist Henry Ware Jr.
He was one of seven children, each of whom went on to great achievements — his brother Paul was chief engineer of Motive Power and Rolling Stock for the Boston Elevated Railway and was awarded a patent for a railway braking device he invented, sister Mary Pickard Winsor founded the Winsor School for girls in Boston, sister Elizabeth Pearson started the innovative Eliot-Pearson School for nursery school teachers at Tufts University, sister Annie Ware Winsor Allen founded the Roger Ascham School in White Plains, New York, sister Jane Gale directed the Friendly Society and founded the Toy Theatre in Boston, and youngest sibling Frederick Winsor founded the prestigious Middlesex School, of which he was headmaster for 37 years.
Robert Winsor grew up in a home that doubled as his mother's school, and was later educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating from Harvard University in 1880. At Harvard, he played football (he was called "the prince of goal kickers") and was captain of the baseball team (famed for playing catcher against Yale without a mitt or mask, simply biting a piece of rubber between his teeth), but was by more than one account not the most rigorous of students.
Career
Early years
After graduation, Winsor joined the Boston investment banking firm Kidder, Peabody & Co. as a clerk, but was quickly recognized for his business acumen, earning the highest Christmas bonus in the company in his first year as a result of his success. He worked his way up to the title of partner in just 14 years (1894), and later senior partner, the title he held at his death. This role also had him director of the Kidder companies of Lowell, Springfield, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, Kidder-Peabody Trust Company, and divisions of Kidder Participations, Incorporated.