Joseph Seligman (1819 - 1880) was a prominent U.S. banker and businessman. He was born in Baiersdorf, Germany, emigrating to the United States when he was 18. With his brothers, he started a bank, J. & W. Seligman & Co., with branches in New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, London, Paris and Frankfurt. In the post-Civil War Gilded Age, J. & W. Seligman & Co. invested heavily in railroad finance, in particular acting as broker of transactions engineered by Jay Gould. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Joseph Seligman. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Seligman
The Seligman brothers, through their international banking firm, J.&W. Seligman and Company, were able to break this "no credit" wall when their Frankfurt, Germany, branch sold over 200 million worth of bonds. www.fau.edu/library/brody33.htm
