Rogers Caldwell

Rogers Caldwell (January 25, 1890 – October 8, 1968) was an American businessman and banker from Tennessee. He was known as the "J. P. Morgan of the South." His mother was May Winston. He grew up at the Longview mansion.

Caldwell was educated at the Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville. He attended Vanderbilt University from 1908 to 1910, but he dropped out before graduating.

Career Caldwell started his career by working for his father's insurance company in the early 1910s.

Caldwell founded his own insurance company, Caldwell and Company, in 1917. The firm invested in bonds throughout the Southern United States. His marketshare grew after World War I by insuring construction company engaged in building infrastructure and roads in the South. The firm was a depository bank for insurance bonds.

Caldwell acquired "insurance companies, banks, textile mills, oil companies, department stores" throughout the 1920s. With politician Luke Lea, he acquired banks and two newspapers, Memphis Commercial Appeal and the Knoxville Journal. (Lea also controlled the Nashville Tennessean.) When Henry Horton, Lea's friend and business associate, became Governor of Tennessee in 1927, Caldwell and Lea received no-bid contracts to build highways in the state with their Kentucky Rock and Asphalt company. This became known as the "Kyrock Scandal." However, the company was declared insolvent later that year in the wake of the Wall Street crash of 1929.

Caldwell was sued in the Chancery Court of Davidson County, Tennessee in December 1930. He was also criminally indicted by the states of Tennessee and Kentucky in 1931. but this ruling was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court, and he was never extradited to Kentucky. Nevertheless, his estate, Brentwood Hall, was taken from him by the state of Tennessee in 1957.

Caldwell co-founded a new investment banking firm, Rogers Caldwell and Company, in 1932, with only US$1,000.

Personal life Caldwell married Margaret Trousdale in October 1913.

The Caldwells resided at Brentwood Hall in Brentwood, Tennessee, near Nashville. From 1957 to 1968, they resided in Franklin, Tennessee. home to the Tennessee Agricultural Museum.