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He was born on May 12, 1826 at Astoria (later part of the borough of Queens, New York City, New York, United States), the only son of Robert and Jane A. (Ingraham) Seney. His grandfather was Joshua Seney, member of the Continental Congress and of the first Congress under the Constitution, and his grandmother was a daughter of James Nicholson of the Revolutionary navy.
He graduated the University of the City of New York in 1846.
He was first employed in a Brooklyn bank and later in the Gallatin Bank and the Bank of North America in New York. Becoming paying teller in the Metropolitan Bank in 1853 and within four years cashier, he thereafter retained a place of prominence in New York financial circles for more than a quarter of a century.
In the late seventies, at the time of his promotion to the presidency of the bank, he began to take an important part in railroad financing, at first in the construction of the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railway and later in a project for connecting the Ohio Central Railroad with Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia roads in a system to be known as the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia Railroad. In furthering this enterprise Seney, who had built up a reputation as a conservative banker, resorted to "stock-watering" and other reckless methods common in the railroad financiering of that day and thereby incurred the hostile criticism of so astute an observer as Henry Clews. His rashness brought his own fortunes and those of some of his associates to the brink of ruin.
By 1884 several of the affiliated roads were bankrupt, and in May of that year, the month of the Grant-Ward episode in Wall Street, the Metropolitan Bank, seriously involved in the railroad failures through loans, was forced to close its doors. Seney at once resigned the presidency and transferred to the bank property valued at $1, 500, 000, including his art collection and a costly residence in Brooklyn. The Metropolitan reopened for business but only for a few months. Seney, however, retrieved a large part of his personal estate. The depositors were paid in full.
For many years he was a trustee of Wesleyan University, to which he gave more than $500, 000. He gave about $100, 000 to Emory University, where he erected the building known by his name and added to the endowment. During the four years prior to the closing of the bank he gave $410, 000 for the Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn.
In 1890 he headed the subscription list for the erection of the Washington Memorial Arch.
He dead from angina pectoris in New York City.
As president of the Metropolitan Bank (New York City), George Seney financed Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad, developed real estate in the Upper Peninsula of the U. S. state of Michigan. Seney's financial career reached its height when the Seney Syndicate sold the Nickel Plate to New York Central interests for $7. 2 million in gold. When his Bank failed, he was forced to sell most of his art collection in auctions. The total of his benevolences was estimated at $2, 000, 000. Seney endowed the construction of what is now Seney Hall at Oxford College of Emory University. He also was a key founder and backer of what became the NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in Park Slope.
(Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)
As a man of wealth he had become known for generous giving even when his growing family demanded additional sums of money.
In 1849 he had married Phoebe Moser, of a well-known Brooklyn family; with three sons and six daughters.
