All About the People: 100 Years of JonesTrading

All About the People: 100 years of JonesTrading is the story of a family and a firm. It begins in Ottawa, Canada, the name of the town being derived from an Algonquin word, Odawa, which means “to trade.”

“Go West, Young Man,” said Horace Greeley in 1865 and William H. Jones did just that, leaving Canada in the mid 1880s as a teenager to head west for Pocatello, Idaho, where he worked for the Union Pacific railroad. William later married Sarah “Sadie” Kelley and they went on to have three boys: George, Frank and Burt.

The life of George Jones would change dramatically when the family moved to Los Angeles in 1911. Over the next decade, he would attend the University of California at Berkeley, serve as an officer in World War I, marry a woman who came from a long line of trailblazing California women, and in 1920 start his own investment firm with several classmates: Mitchum, Tully & Co.

“Honest George” was so humble that he did not need or want his name on the door, but that would change in the early 1950s when his sons Dick and George Jr. became partners in the firm, and it became Mitchum, Jones & Templeton. When the firm was sold to Paine Webber in 1973, George E. “Bud” Jones Jr. set off to form his own firm, Jones & Associates in 1975, and under the leadership of Bud’s son Packy, that firm was rebranded in 2004 as JonesTrading.

From Pocatello to Hanalei Bay, follow along on this fascinating journey of the American West, the history of the financial markets and of one family and firm that impacted the lives of so many over the last century.

Kevin M. Callahan is the author of All About the People: 100 Years of JonesTrading (Dec 2020). Kevin grew up in Elgin, Illinois and, in 1991, received a B.A. in History from Yale University, where he also played football. Kevin started his career as a freelance journalist and started writing corporate histories to earn some extra money. This led to an interest in business, an MBA, and a 25-year career in business before returning to his love of history and writing. In 2020, Kevin published Brothers in Arms: Remembering Brothers Buried Side by Side in American World War II Cemeteries, which won the Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book (nonfiction) from the IBPA. Since then, Kevin has taken on other corporate and family history projects, including All About the People  Kevin also has an MBA from the MIT Sloan School and a Master’s in International Affairs from the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. He lives in New York City with his wife, three sons, and two dogs.