Striking out from his home in Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1822, Sturges obtained a clerk position in a merchant firm in New York City and rose to become the lead partner of the largest coffee and tea trading house in New York. For five decades he rode the American wave of growth and ingenuity from the opening of the Erie Canal, through the Civil War, to the dawning of the Gilded Age--when robber barons such as his son-in-law, J.P. Morgan, were taking...