Jekyll Island is a small, narrow island off the coast of the state of Georgia. Today it has golf courses, small hotels and B&Bs, a quaint village district, and a historical society. People from both north and south go there to vacation and relax. At about the turn of the nineteenth century, East-coast Americans did the same things on Jekyll Island as they do now. However, back then, another attraction of the island existed, and it accommodated some of the richest men in the world.

In 1733, General James Oglethorpe founded Georgia as a British colony and named the island after his financier, Sir Joseph Jekyll. Decades later, Cristophe DuBignon fled the French Revolution and landed on Jekyll Island, purchasing much of the property. In 1879, DuBignon’s descendant, John Eugene DuBignon and his brother-in-law Newton Finney turned Jekyll Island into a private hunting club for the wealthiest men in America. Munsey’s Magazine called it “the richest, the most exclusive, the most inaccessible club in the world”. In 1888, the club officially opened its doors, and by 1896, J. P. Morgan owned much of it – building the six-unit, “Sans Souci”, which would be one of the first condominiums in the United States.

Future membership was by inheritance only and the only non-members allowed were servants. The club comprised splendid mansions called “cottages” where the members would stay, dine, socialize and conduct business. The club’s membership was so exclusive and steeped in such astounding amounts of international wealth, that after one of its members, George F. Baker, founder of the First National Bank of New York, and very close associate of Morgan’s, died in 1931, The New York Times noted, ”… the Jekyll Island Club has lost one of its most distinguished members. One-sixth of the total wealth of the world is represented by the members of the Jekyll Island Club”.

It was on this island at the Hunt Club where six men – four Wall Street bankers, an economist and one politician – would plan and draft the first blueprint for the United States Federal Reserve System: an all-controlling central bank that has overseen the currency, monetary system, and economic policy for the United States for over a century.