Rogers Caldwell

Rogers Caldwell (January 25, 1890 – October 8, 1968) was an American businessman and banker from Tennessee. He was known as the "J. P. Morgan of the South."^[1] He was the founder and president of Caldwell and Company and its subsidiary, the Bank of Tennessee. He was the president of the Tennessee Hart-Parr Company, which sold tractors in the Southern United States, mechanizing agriculture, and the president of the Kentucky Rock and Asphalt company, which built infrastructure and roads in Tennessee. With his friend and business associate politician Luke Lea, he owned newspapers in Tennessee.

In the wake of the Wall Street crash of 1929, Caldwell and Company went bankrupt, leading up to nearly 100 bank failures across the Southern United States, in what was called the "greatest financial disaster which Tennessee has ever experienced" by the Tennessee General Assembly, and resulting in the loss of over $6 million in funds to the Tennessee state treasury, equivalent to about $72 million in 2016.^[2] Caldwell was indicted for breach of trust in Tennessee and Kentucky, and sentenced to prison in Tennessee but this verdict was overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court and he was never extradited to Kentucky. His Hogan Road mansion south of Nashville was later seized by the state of Tennessee and turned into what is now the Ellington Agricultural Center.^{[citation needed]}