Free US shipping over $150

A free sticker on orders $35+

New: The Illuminati Comic

Conspiracy file · November 1910

Jekyll Island

A millionaires' island club off the Georgia coast where, in November 1910, a senator, a Treasury official and a handful of Wall Street bankers secretly drafted the plan that became the Federal Reserve. They said they were going duck hunting.

Also known as Jekyll Island Club · The Jekyll Island meeting · The duck hunt · The Aldrich Plan

On the recordTimelineFrom the comicsIn Paranoid American comicsSources & further reading

Jekyll Island, a panel from a Paranoid American comic
From Time Samplers #1

The story

Jekyll Island is a barrier island on the Georgia coast. In 1886 a group of very rich Northerners bought it and built the Jekyll Island Club, a winter retreat whose members included J.P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, Joseph Pulitzer and the Vanderbilts.

In November 1910 Senator Nelson Aldrich brought a small party there: A. Piatt Andrew of the Treasury, Henry Davison of J.P. Morgan & Co., Frank Vanderlip of National City Bank, Paul Warburg of Kuhn, Loeb, and Aldrich's secretary Arthur Shelton. They boarded Aldrich's private rail car one at a time, used first names only and told everyone it was a duck hunt. On the island they drafted the Aldrich Plan for a central bank. Congress never passed it, but its machinery came back in the Federal Reserve Act, which President Wilson signed in December 1913.

B.C. Forbes first revealed the trip in 1916, and the men involved denied it for years. In 1935 Vanderlip admitted he had been "as secretive, indeed as furtive, as any conspirator." G. Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island (1994) made the island shorthand for a bankers' cartel. In 2010 the Federal Reserve went back for a centennial conference.

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Jekyll Island

On the record

  1. Wealthy Northerners bought the island in 1886; the Jekyll Island Club officially opened with the 1888 season.
  2. Members included J.P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, Joseph Pulitzer and AT&T president Theodore Vail.
  3. In November 1910 Sen. Nelson Aldrich, A. Piatt Andrew, Henry Davison, Frank Vanderlip, Paul Warburg and Arthur Shelton met there in secret, posing as duck hunters.
  4. Aldrich presented their plan to the National Monetary Commission in January 1911. The Federal Reserve Act, signed in December 1913, closely followed its technical design.
  5. On January 25, 1915, Theodore Vail joined the first transcontinental telephone call from Jekyll Island, with Alexander Graham Bell in New York and Thomas Watson in San Francisco.
  6. The club closed after the 1942 season. Georgia bought the island in 1947, and the club district became a National Historic Landmark in 1978.

The theory

  • A handful of bankers created a private cartel to control America's money and dressed it up as a public agency (G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyll Island).
  • The Federal Reserve was built to profit its member banks at the public's expense, through debt and inflation.
  • The secrecy proves the intent: if the plan served the public, why the false names and the duck-hunt cover story?
  • Some versions tie the meeting to the Morgan and Rockefeller empires and to a wider plan for world government.

Timeline

  1. 1886Millionaires buy Jekyll Island and found the Jekyll Island Club
  2. 1907The Panic of 1907 sets off the push for banking reform
  3. 1908Congress creates the National Monetary Commission, chaired by Aldrich
  4. 1910The secret meeting on Jekyll Island (November)
  5. 1911Aldrich presents his plan to the National Monetary Commission
  6. 1913President Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act (December 23)
  7. 1915Theodore Vail joins the first transcontinental phone call from the island
  8. 1916B.C. Forbes first reveals the meeting in print
  9. 1935Vanderlip tells the story in The Saturday Evening Post
  10. 1942The club closes
  11. 1994The Creature from Jekyll Island is published
  12. 2010The Federal Reserve holds a centennial conference on the island

From the comics

Panels straight from the page. Click one to read it full size.

From Time Samplers #1: Escape from Jekyll Island · Pages 10, 15

Jekyll Island, 1913

Bell's backers, as the comic imagines them: the Jekyll Island set of 1913, Morgans, Rockefellers and young Bonesmen. Then a toast "to business" while the grounds go up in flames. The real secret meeting happened three years earlier, in November 1910.

Jekyll Island, 1913, 1 of 4
Jekyll Island, 1913, 2 of 4
Jekyll Island, 1913, 3 of 4
Jekyll Island, 1913, 4 of 4
  1. The guest list mixes real club members (J.P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, Theodore Vail, Frederick Bourne of the Singer company) with real Bonesmen: Percy Rockefeller (1900), Averell Harriman (1913) and his brother Roland (1917). J.P. Morgan Sr. died in Rome on March 31, 1913.
  2. Nelson Aldrich was the senator behind the real secret meeting on the island in November 1910. The plan drafted there fed into the Federal Reserve Act of December 1913.
  3. "Reinvest in Bell": Theodore Vail ran AT&T, the company built on Bell's telephone. In January 1915 Vail joined the first transcontinental phone call from Jekyll Island, with Bell himself on the line in New York.

Get the evidence

In Paranoid American comics

More conspiracy files