Clement Melville Keys - Financier and corporate organizer

Clement Melville Keys (April 7, 1876 – January 12, 1952) was born in the small town of Chatsworth, Ontario, Canada. Keys graduated from Toronto University (BA 1897) and taught classics at Ridley College, St. Catherines, Ontario, for three years before coming to the US in 1901 (naturalized, 1924).

In 1901 he worked as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal where he became railroad editor, then moving on to become the financial editor of the monthly journal World's Work.

He went to work for the Wall Street Journal, first as a reporter (1901-1903), then as railroad editor (1903-1905) before becoming financial editor for World's Work (1905-1911). In 1911 he founded C. M. Keys & Co.which soon afterward became an investment banking house.

In 1916 he came to the aid of the financially troubled Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Co. and was made an unpaid vice president. Keys accompanied the American Aviation Mission to Europe in 1919, returning to purchase a controlling interest in Curtiss in 1920.

The company merged with Wright Aeronautical in 1929 to form Curtiss-Wright Corporation and he was the new company's president.

In June of 1929, Keys personally bought all shares of Pitcairn Aviation for 2.5 million dollars and resold them two weeks later to North American Aviation, which was renamed to Eastern Air Transport, and finally Eastern Airlines.

At the same time, Keys expanded his own holdings until he was at the head of twenty-six corporations, including aviation holdings companies, such as North American Aviation and National Aviation Corp., as well as the first American transcontinental air service, Transcontinental Air Transport (later Transcontinental & Western Airline).

In January 1932, Keys withdrew from all his aviation interests, citing ill health. In 1942 he went back to the aviation business establishing the C.M. Keys Aircraft Service Company and after WWII helped organize the Peruvian International Airways in 1947. He was also chairman of the board of the Mackenzie Muffler Company of Youngstown, Ohio, and a subsidiary, the Buffalo Pressed Steel Company.
Clement Melville Keys - Financier and corporate organizer

Henry Wells (December 12, 1805 – December 10, 1878)

Henry Wells was descended from Thomas Wells, who came from England to America in 1635. His father Shepley Henry Wells was Presbyterian clergyman in Thetford, Vermont who moved the family to New York when Henry was quite young.

At sixteen Henry Wells was apprenticed to Jessup and Palmer, tanners and shoemakers at Palmyra, New York. In 1836, young Henry took a job as a freight agent on the Erie Canal.

In 1841, he started a shipment service for the transportation of cash and other valuables between the eastern states of America. He envisioned that as the United States continued to expand across the continent, there would be a need for a company that could make deliveries.

Two years later Wells established Livingston, Wells and Pomeroy Company, operating express lines between Albany and Buffalo, New York and was himself a messenger, making a weekly trip on five or six railroads and two stage lines.

Wells joined forces with William George Fargo and formed the Wells and Fargo Express Company.

It turned out that he was a master of logistics and was able to shop letters and packages faster and cheaper than any of his competitors, including the United States Post Office.

In 1850, he formed American Express alongside the partnership of a new other competitors of the day and he was the first president.

Accordingly, by 1862, the company had nearly 900 offices and more than 1500 employees.
Henry Wells (December 12, 1805 – December 10, 1878)