Notable New Orleanians: A Tricentennial Tribute

J AMES
R OBB
(1814-1881)
Antebellum banker James Hampden Robb was the most important promotor of railroads in
Louisiana. His persistence led to his greatest accomplishment, the opening of the New Orleans,
Jackson and Great Northern Railroad in 1858. Robb’s business leadership during the 1840s led the
way for Louisiana to redraft its law of incorporation, which freed corporations from ad hoc decisions
of the legislature. In politics, Robb was also the principal spokesman for the reunification of
New Orleans in 1852, following its sixteen years of division into three municipalities.
Born in Pennsylvania, Robb migrated to New Orleans during the 1830s and entered banking.
He survived the nationwide financial Panic of 1837, and throughout the next decade his business
grew as he built a chain of banks. Early on, he noticed that New Orleans’ dependence on exporting
foodstuffs from the Midwest was not a sufficient economic anchor. The city needed imports, and
for imports to be feasible it needed railroads to send goods north in exchange for foodstuffs that
floated down the Mississippi River. Although the city’s first short line railroad linked the city to
Lake Pontchartrain and by coastal vessels to easterly markets, going north internally required traversing
the entire state of Mississippi to reach northeastern markets. A railroad to Nashville had
been planned during the 1830s, but was never executed. Robb took over that project and launched
the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad.
Political support had to proceed hand in hand with business development. The city’s 1836 division
into three municipalities had paralyzed attempts to put its full support behind that development.
Robb thus entered politics with the two-part objective of reforming state corporation laws
and re-combining the municipalities into one. He won election as a state senator in 1851, from
which post he persuaded the legislature to remove the cap on incorporations as well as removing
a one-million dollar capital limit on banks. He also led the movement to merge the neighboring
city of Lafayette into the city of New Orleans.
In April 1851, Robb hosted a major railroad convention at which he challenged the city to unify
and tax itself to finance the northern railroad. The populace strongly opposed his property tax proposal,
but in 1852 Robb ran for the post of city alderman, from which post he successfully passed
the tax. The reunification of the city and its new tax permitted the commencement of the Great
Northern Railroad, completed in 1858.
That same year, at the height of his accomplishments, Robb’s fortunes failed to survive a second
widespread national banking panic. His empire collapsed as his chain of banks suffered unsustainable
losses following the panic. Robb then lost his Garden District mansion and left New Orleans.
When he returned briefly after the Civil War, memories of his tax and pro-Northern sentiments
made him unwelcome.
James Robb.
THE HISTORIC NEW ORLEANS COLLECTION, 1988.43.
D ANIEL H ENRY H OLMES (1816-1898)
Daniel Henry Holmes introduced the department store to New Orleans and made it a success.
He learned the business at a young age, having been sent by his father at twenty to New York to
work for Lord & Taylor, founded just ten years earlier by Samuel Lord and George Washington
Taylor. Recognizing the opportunities available in a New Orleans branch, the partners searched for
and found in Holmes a willing clerk who could speak fluent French.
Arrived in the city, Holmes instead joined Taylor, Medley & Co. Dry Goods on Chartres Street,
the city’s most prominent commercial artery. In 1842, at the age of twenty-six, he decided to go
out on his own, opening D. H. Holmes Department Store. By 1846 he was importing goods directly
from Paris, where he opened an office. Holmes’ Parisian bonnets, garments, and frock coats suited
BIOGRAPHIES
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