John Stewart Kennedy (January 4, 1830 – October 30, 1909) was a Scottish-born American businessman, financier and philanthropist. He was a member of the Jekyll Island Club (also known as The Millionaires' Club) on Jekyll Island, Georgia along with J.P. Morgan and William Rockefeller among others. Early life Kennedy was born at Blantyre in Scotland on January 4, 1830. He was the fifth son of nine children born to John Kennedy and Isabella (née Stewart) Kennedy. While a child, his family moved to Glasgow where he was educated until the age of thirteen before entering a shipping office as a clerk while still attending morning and evening classes in an attempt to complete his education. Career From 1847 until 1850, he was a salesman with the Mossend Iron & Coal Company. In 1850, at age twenty, he was asked by William Bird, of the iron firm William Bird & Company of London, whom Kennedy had met during Bird's visit to Glasgow, to become the firm's representative in the United States and Canada. He arrived in the New York on June 29, 1850 and spent the next two years traveling to all the major cities in Canada and the United States, including Quebec and New Orleans. In Autumn 1852, he returned to Glasgow to lead the branch office of the firm following the accidental drowning of his brother who had led the office. Kennedy remained in Glasgow until 1856. M.K. Jesup & Company Kennedy returned to New York in December 1856, and formed a partnership with Morris Ketchum Jesup known as M.K. Jesup & Company that began with a focus on railroad iron and materials but eventually shifted to banking. From this partnership he retired in 1867 and spent a year traveling abroad. During his partnership with Jesup, he spent a year in Chicago where he established a branch of the firm under the name Jesup, Kennedy & Co. J.S. Kennedy & Company In 1868, he formed J.S. Kennedy & Company, a banking firm, and spent the next fifteen years devoting himself to "financial affairs of magnitude and importance." He aided in the reorganization of various financial concerns, notably in 1888, when he acted with J. S. Harris as receiver of the New Jersey Central Railroad, and served as president of the International & Great Northern Railroad Company of Texas as well as a director, and vice-president, of the Indianapolis, Cincinnati