Background
Joseph "Diamond Jo" Reynolds was born on June 11, 1819, in Fallsburg, New York, United States to a large Quaker family being the youngest of the six children.
Joseph "Diamond Jo" Reynolds
McGregor, Iowa, United States
Joseph "Diamond Jo" Reynolds Office Building and House
Dubuque, Iowa, United States
Diamond Jo Boat Store and Office, also known as the Dubuque Tank Terminal Co. and Inland Molasses Co. Operations Office. This building housed the headquarters of the Diamond Jo Line from the mid-1880s until it was sold to the Streckfus Line in 1911.
The Reynolds Club, University of Chicago
Joseph "Diamond Jo" Reynolds was born on June 11, 1819, in Fallsburg, New York, United States to a large Quaker family being the youngest of the six children.
Joseph Reynolds only completed a grade school education.
Throughout his professional life, Joseph Reynolds engaged in various businesses, including butchering, general merchandising, flour milling, and tanning. Joseph Reynold's first venture was in the meat business. With an older brother, Isaac, he opened a "general store" in the village of Rockland. After that, he purchased a custom flour-and-feed mill which later was totally consumed by fire. Not having no means for rebuilding it, Joseph Reynolds formed a stock company and enlisted a number of the businessmen of the place in the new enterprise. He immediately proceeded to erect a mill of the most modern type which became the most perfectly equipped mill in the area and proved a great financial success. This business led to Mr. Reynolds’ growing prosperity. He had, before he was thirty years old, a well-established and profitable business that was quite certain to make him one of the leading financial men of the place.
In 1855 Joseph Reynolds disposed of his businesses profitably and moved to Chicago, where he established a tannery on Water Street, west of the Chicago River. Customarily, he supplied his business with hides and furs by touring Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. During those years he developed his distinctive trademark of a diamond shape enclosing his nickname "Jo".
About the year 1860, Joseph Reynolds disposed of his Chicago business and engaged in the grain trade exclusively, with headquarters at Prairie du Chien, at which point transshipment was made from steamboat to the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad. To provide adequate transportation for his rapidly growing business, Reynolds in the spring of 1862 built the steamboat "Lansing", a stern wheel boat of 123 tons. In the winter of 1862-1863, Joseph Reynolds built a stern wheel boat of 242 tons, which was named "Diamond Jo" at Woodman, Wisconsin, on the Wisconsin River. Two barges for bulk grain, the "Conger" and the "Fleming," were also built and placed in commission.
Joseph Reynolds began very conservatively, buying in 1867 a small boat of only 611 tons, the "John C. Gault," and a few barges. The new line was fully established in 1868 and named the Chicago, Fulton, and River Line, with four boats, the "John C. Gault," the "Ida Fulton," the "Diamond Jo," and the "Lady Pike," together with the necessary towing barges. In 1871 the "Bannock City " was added to care for the rapidly increasing business, and the title of the line was changed to the Diamond Jo Line steamers. This soon became and remained for forty years, till long after Mr. Reynolds' death, the most famous name on the upper Mississippi. The second boat Joseph Reynolds built he called the "Diamond Jo". The name pleased the river and when he entered seriously on the task of establishing a new line of steamboats, the public began to call it the "Diamond Jo Line." The newspapers used the name in preference to the first real name of the company, the Chicago, Fulton, and River Line, and, yielding to this demand of the public, Mr. Reynolds, three years alter the company was formed, formally changed the name to the Diamond Jo Line steamers. When about 1880 Joseph Reynolds extended his business to St. Louis he built the "Mary Morton," named after his wife, a boat 210 feet long and of nearly 500 tons. This was followed by the " Sidney," of about 618 tons, and the "Pittsburg", of 722 tons, all large stern-wheel boats. Others of still larger size were added later.
Joseph Reynolds was not only a steamboat but also a railroad, magnate. Soon after his sixtieth year, in the early eighties, the partial failure of his health led him to seek relief at the Arkansas Hot Springs, the medicinal qualities of which were beginning to attract large numbers of seekers after health. Displeased with the stagecoach service between Malvern and the health resort town of Hot Springs, Arkansas, he had a 22-mile narrow-gauge railroad built between the towns in 1875. Later J. Reynolds replaced the line with a standard gauge.
In the mid-1880s Joseph Reynolds together with his son Blake got involved in gold and silver mining in Colorado and Arizona. Reynolds’ most successful investment was the Congress Mine, which produced both gold and silver, at Congress, Arizona.
In connection with the other lines of business in which Joseph Joseph Reynolds was engaged - dealing in grain, the Diamond Jo Line of steamers, the Hot Springs Railroad, etc., Mr. Reynolds continued his activity in mines and mining to the end of his life. Conducting this part of his business with the same ability and energy which had made him so successful in other lines, he made it exceedingly profitable.
Reynolds died of pneumonia at the age of 71 in his room at the Congress Mine in Congress, Arizona.
Joseph Reynolds established an endowment with the University of Chicago to build the Reynolds Club, which as of October 2017, is still used as a student union. This endowment included a scholarship fund. Construction started on the Tudor-style building in 1901 and was designed by the firm of Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge. Originally planned as a library, the Reynolds Club included a billiard room, a bowling alley, and a theater.
Joseph Reynolds was often described as quiet, patient, not easily provoked to aggressive self-assertion.
Joseph and Mary Reynolds had one son named Blake who was born in McGregor their first year of residence there. Blake died during his late-twenties. Joseph and Mary Reynolds gifted a fountain and a park to the town of McGregor in memory of Blake.
