The Snowball_ Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder [513]
Chapter 5
1. Warren’s sister Doris Buffett, the family genealogist, has done extensive research on the Buffett family tree. This abbreviated account of the early ancestors is drawn from her research.
2. Either Nathaniel or Joseph.
3. This was the largest and finest of the livery stables in town, with seventy horses at its peak, boasting sleighs, buggies, a circus bateau, and even a hearse. It prospered for a number of years but disappeared sometime around the early days of the automobile. “Six Generations Prove That Buffett Family Is Really Here to Remain,” Omaha World-Herald, June 16, 1950.
4. Orville D. Menard, “Tom Dennison…The Rogue Who Ruled Omaha,” Omaha, March 1978. John Kyle Davis, “The Gray Wolf: Tom Dennison of Omaha,” Nebraska History, Vol. 58, No. 1, Spring 1977.
5. “Dry Law Introduced as Legislators Sing,” Omaha World-Herald, February 1, 1917.
6. “Omaha’s Most Historic Grocery Store Still at 50th and Underwood,” Dundee and West Omaha Sun, April 25, 1963.
7. Zebulon Buffett, letter to Sidney Buffett, December 21, 1869.
8. Sidney’s store was originally named Sidney H. Buffett and Sons, where both brothers, Ernest and Frank, worked. The store originally sat at 315 South 14th Street downtown, where it stayed until its closing in 1935. Frank took over as sole proprietor after Sidney’s death in 1927. In 1915, Ernest opened a branch store, which moved west to 5015 Underwood Avenue in Dundee in 1918. (At the time Dundee was a separate town, eventually annexed by Omaha.)
9. A third child, named Grace, died in 1926. Three more, George, Nellie, and Nettie, died at young ages in the nineteenth century.
10. Warren Buffett quoting Charlie Munger.
11. According to Doris Buffett, she was born Daisy Henrietta Duvall and began to call herself Henrietta (after her mother) rather than Daisy by the time she arrived in Omaha.
12. Charles T. Munger letter to Katharine Graham, November 13, 1974.
13. Ernest Buffett letter to Barnhart & Son, February 12, 1924.
14. Interview with Charlie Munger. His mother told him this story, although, he notes, “she may have been garnishing it just a bit.” But others recall the notebook.
15. In letters like one to his son Clarence in January 1931, he analyzed the effect of railroad automation on unemployment and suggested that the best solution for the Great Depression was a great public-works project. It seems ironic that he and his son Howard became such foes of Roosevelt when he initiated the Works Progress Administration after the next election.
16. Ernest Buffett letter to Fred and Katherine Buffett, undated, “ten years after you were married,” circa June 1939.
17. He died young, in 1937, in an auto accident in Texas.
18. Coffee with Congress, radio interview with Howard, Leila, Doris, and Roberta Buffett, WRC Radio, October 18, 1947, Bill Herson, moderator. (Note: This description is based on a tape of the broadcast.)
19. Interview with Doris Buffett.
20. Based primarily on family files.
21. Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech, delivered on July 9, 1896, has been called the most famous political speech in American history. Bryan is best remembered for opposing the gold standard and for getting involved in the Scopes case, where the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow made him look foolish for testifying against teaching evolution in schools. In fact his interests were broader and less extreme and his contemporary influence greater than he is generally remembered for today.
22. Family files. Bernice blamed her father for marrying into a family with genetic mental defects, begetting children who would suffer the result.
23. Leila was a freshman at Nebraska during the 1923–24 academic year, according to the Cornhusker yearbook, when Howard was a junior. On Coffee with Congress, Howard noted that they met in the fall of 1923, when Leila was 19. Because students usually entered college at 17, this suggests she worked for about two years before starting. She pledged Alpha Chi Omega as a freshman in the 1923–24 school year, but was still classified as a freshman in 1925, suggesting