Francis Warren Pershing (1909-1980)
Stockbroker, of 771 Park Avenue, New York City
He was born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and was named for his maternal grandfather, U.S. Senator and Governor Francis Warren, of Wyoming. When he was six years old, he lost his mother and all three of his siblings in a house fire in San Francisco. His father being in Europe as Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, he was brought up by two paternal aunts in Lincoln before graduating from Yale in 1931. In 1938, he founded Pershing & Co., which was listed on the New York Stock Exchange the following year. He paused his career shortly afterwards to fight in Europe, enlisting as a private he retired as a Major in 1945. In 1979, his stockbroking firm merged with the Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette Securities Corporation, and although he then retired, he remained Chairman Emeritus of its Pershing division. He was married twice. His first wife (the mother of his two children), Muriel Richards, was a niece of Broadway Producer Gilbert Miller and a maternal granddaughter of the art collector, Jules Bache. His second wife, Eleanor Grant, was the mother of four children by J. Douglas Auchincloss. He was survived by one son, Col. John W. Pershing, having lost his other son in Vietnam.
