J. Borden Harriman

Jefferson Borden Harriman (September 20, 1864 – December 2, 1914) was a New York financier who belonged to the Gilded Age's "hunting set" and a member of the wealthy Harriman family. He was best known as the supportive husband of Florence Jaffray Harriman, a socialite who became a progressive social activist and (after his death) a United States Ambassador to Norway during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was a cousin of railroad tycoon Edward Harriman, who was the father of statesman and diplomat W. Averell Harriman. A lingering gastrointestinal problem led to his early retirement and death.

Early life J. Borden Harriman was born on September 20, 1864. His father, Oliver Harriman, was a partner of a dry goods commission house, which evolved into Low, Harriman & Co. (and then Harriman & Co.), an investment banking firm located on Worth Street, and later 111 Broadway, in Manhattan. Laura was the daughter of James Low, Oliver's business partner. Later that year, he and his siblings successfully petitioned a New York court to declare their 70-year-old father incapable to manage his affairs due to senile dementia. At the time, his father's wealth was estimated at over $5 million. His father died the following year.

He and several brothers and cousins were founding directors or officers in the Day and Night Bank, established in 1906 as the world's first 24-hour bank. Once open, the owners added further innovations—a separate branch reserved for women customers, and an automobile "safe on wheels" that would pick up cash and valuables from depositors' homes. In 1910, after four years of 24-hour operations, it began to restrict its weekday hours, closing from midnight to 8 am.

Harriman left the bank's board of directors in January 1911, when the Day and Night Bank developed an intimate relationship with Merchants' National Bank of New York but changed its name to the Harriman National Bank (reflecting the continued influence of other members of the Harriman family in the bank's ownership and management). Twenty-two years later, after the bank failed in the financial crisis of 1932–1933, its longtime president Joseph Wright Harriman, formerly of Harriman & Co., was convicted by a federal jury of misappropriating bank funds, and served 25 months in prison.

U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations Harriman retired the next month, at age 48, from Harriman & Co. Later that year, newly elected President Woodrow Wilson appointed Mrs. Harriman as a member of the first U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations. After President Wilson's appointment, the couple moved to Washington D.C., keeping a residence in New York City while donating their Mount Kisco, New York estate for use as a tuberculosis sanitorium.

Harriman, his wife and daughter found themselves in the middle of Europe as World War I erupted in the summer of 1914. Hoping that the healing waters in the Bohemian spa in Karlsbad would benefit his health, the family traveled to Europe in June 1914. they eventually returned, without their belongings, to New York on an armed British vessel, the . Together, they had one child:

Ethel M. Borden Harriman (1897–1953), who worked on Broadway and in Hollywood, as an actress and writer (as Ethel Russell or Ethel Borden).

Harriman became seriously ill in January 1913 with what newspapers described as a lingering "digestive troubles." and he died in Washington on December 1, 1914. His widow immediately resumed her public and political service, which continued for several decades. She survived her husband by over fifty years (living 97 years until her death in 1967), but never remarried.