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How did a jaw-breaking, right-handed punch save Shenandoah Life Insurance Company?
Courtesy of The Virginia Room
The Day and Night Bank Building was Shenandoah Life Insurance Company’s first location.
Roanoke’s remarkable population boom in the early 1900s caught the attention of Colonel John T. Boone of Long Island, New York. Boone was a professional promoter, who traveled to growing towns and counties selling the idea of raising capital for new, get-rich-quick schemes. The typical modus operandi was to organize some new venture by selling stock, knowing a hefty commission would be earned. The promoter never troubled himself with the actual development of the business venture, leaving that to others. Instead, his main talent was to exude affluence, be knowledgeable and have the gift for easy conversation. Boone was such a man.
Boone’s specialty was stock insurance companies, raising local interest and then undertaking the sale of stock necessary to capitalize a new company prior to its actually conducting business. Stock insurance companies at the time were largely unregulated, providing men like Boone the flexibility they needed to operate.
Boone settled in at the Jefferson Apartments on the corner of Jefferson Street and Mountain Avenue, a very reputable address that overlooked the city and conveyed to others that Boone was a man of means and taste, living within a few blocks of some of the wealthiest citizens of the city.
For his proposal of organizing a stock insurance company to succeed, Boone needed a leading businessman to lend his name and treasure to the effort. It would be upon that person’s shoulders that the eventual operation of the company would rest, as Boone would serve as a kind of fiscal agent selling the stock to raise the capital. With this kind of scenario, such a venture had the ring of authenticity, legitimacy, and most important profitability.
Boone approached a man of wide reputation and proven ambition – Robert Henderson Angell. Angell had run away from home in Callaway at the age of 16 and got his first job as a farmhand in Cave Spring earning $12 per month. By 18, Angell moved to Roanoke and obtained a job in a brickyard, always saving his money and eventually making his way into varied, small business enterprises. By the time Boone had arrived, Angell, now 46, was a respected member of Roanoke’s wealthiest and most prominent business class, a truly self-made man with a wife, family and large home on Mountain Avenue.
Angell’s interests involved the Colonial National Bank, Liberty Trust Company, Roanoke Iron Works and several manufacturing companies. Angell’s neat appearance of a receding hairline and well-trimmed mustache belied a man who had risen from poverty, forgone higher education and knew the physical and psychological rigors required for success. Thus, on a cool Sunday afternoon in the late winter of 1914, Angell sat in Boone’s apartment just three blocks from his own home and brought into being the Shenandoah Life Insurance Company. Both envisioned the possibilities, as no one else in the city was launching a homegrown life insurance company.
The first step Angell took was to assemble a group of local businessmen to confer with Boone. The agreement was that Boone would operate as the Colonial Organization Corporation, promoting the sale of 50,000 shares of stock at $20 par value. Boone’s commission on each share of stock was $5, a rather high premium. When sufficient funds were raised, Boone’s corporation would hand over the funds to the Shenandoah Life Insurance Company. Boone and his agents would then depart, leaving the locals to conduct the respectable enterprise.
Shenandoah Life Insurance Company was chartered on December 23, 1914, by the State Corporation Commission. Those who lent their name to the venture were notable men from Roanoke and Southwest Virginia that included a future governor, bank presidents, real estate developers and a congressman.
As Boone and his men sold stock, Angell and others were busy organizing the company, spending long hours researching policies, insurance practices and procedures and methods of investing. Their labor was intensive, often frustrating and never mediocre. With Angell at the helm, all were giving their best. The same could not be said about Boone and his men. The first to notice was the company’s secretary William Andrews, who shared his concerns with Angell. The two men began keeping a keener eye on Boone’s agents and noticed a significant drop in sales as compared to the first few months. Sales reports were missing or contained only partial information, and Boone offered little, if any, explanation.
Andrews and Angell decided to investigate and hired a man with whom Andrews was familiar, a stenographer at the Norfolk & Western Railway by the name of Fred C. Collings. Collings had been around the railroad for many years, working with payroll shipments and dealing with many who had succumbed to their base natures when delivering payroll, ferreting them out and handing them over to his superiors. He was just the man needed to conduct an investigation with effective discretion.
Within a few weeks, Collings revealed that Boone and his men were selling stock, but not in accord with company policy. They were selling fractional shares, shares to persons who had no intention of paying, bartering and trading shares, altering shares, and taking other liberties. The most popular scheme used by Boone was the promise of a choice price for life insurance once policies were written. Some stock buyers were promised positions in the company from financial agents to general counsels to medical examiners.
As the investigation continued, the situation worsened. Boone and his agents, ignoring the reprimands of Angell and Andrews, had found more devious means to peddle stock. Licensed to conduct business only in Virginia, Boone’s Colonial Organization Corporation had sold stock in at least six states using altered forms and on a deferred payment basis. Pressure mounted. Stockholders wanted dividends, the public wanted the launch of the company and the actual writing of policies and others were looking to be hired.
Angell and Andrews were doing everything to control the chaos and maintain a proper business reputation for the fledgling company befitting their reputations. Their valiant efforts had limited success.
Angell learned of one particular agent who was selling stock for an illicit profit and confronted the agent at Shenandoah’s office. Angell was brutal in his candor as he laid out for the agent his knowledge of the man’s activity. While Angell spoke, the agent withdrew a pistol from his desk, pointed it at the company president and threatened to pull the trigger. Months of frustration, hard work, long hours and utter disdain for Boone and his men coursed through Angell’s five foot, 10-inch frame as he looked at the gun amid insults and insubordination. Knowing not whether the agent would actually shoot, Angell threw a right upper cut that shattered the agent’s jaw, propelled him backwards against the wall and dropped him unconscious to the floor. Angell, the former bricklayer, had had enough. The agent was carried to Lewis-Gale Hospital and spent seven weeks recovering.
Angell and the directors promptly dismissed Boone, all agreeing not to litigate but to rectify any of Boone’s activities through their own personal wealth to avoid public attention. In time, the directors recovered their losses. Such was the birth of the Shenandoah Life Insurance Company.
Boone packed his bags and took a train to New York. His agents did the same, but one agent heading north could not resist pawning some remaining shares of stock left in his coat pocket to 36 unsuspecting Catholic priests as he left the state.
The story above is from our March/April 2021 issue. For more stories, subscribe today or view our FREE digital edition. Thank you for supporting local journalism!