The secret expedition that formed America’s central bank

BY SCOTT FREEMAN

Just before Thanksgiving in 1910, U.S. senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island invited six members of America’s banking elite to a covert retreat on Jekyll Island. This was before the first transcontinental call (placed by the president of AT&T from a phone on Jekyll in 1915). It was before the internet and cable news. Secrets could be taken to the island and secrets would stay there.

Wishing to avoid public scrutiny and pesky reporters, the group—dubbed the “First Name Club” because no one used last names during the rail trip down—agreed on the cover of a gentlemen’s duck hunt. (One attendee even toted a borrowed shotgun.) Instead, they holed up for nine days at the Jekyll Island

Clubhouse to discuss how to prevent another Panic of 1907, when a run on banks nearly collapsed the United States economy. J.P. Morgan (a Jekyll Club member) personally bailed out banks, New York City, and the New York Stock Exchange.

Out of those clandestine meetings emerged a draft of legislation that would eventually form the Federal Reserve Banking System, the country’s central bank network and a financial safety net that remains in place today. “It was absolutely an epoch-making event,” says the Jekyll Island Museum’s Andrea Marroquin. The reward for their labors? A robust Thanksgiving feast and a day off for that duck hunt.

BY CANDICE DYER

When she was eighteen years old, Kristen Pickett spotted a classified ad that intrigued her. “It said: ‘Glassblower wanted, will train.’ I thought why not? There weren’t many women in that medium at the time.”

The Long Island native learned to sculpt Pyrex with a torch while also studying pottery, painting, and drawing at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina. She set aside those hobbies for twenty-five years, though, to work as a nurse in cardiac care and hospice. “At night I was always dreaming about glassblowing,” she says. “I couldn’t wait to go to sleep so I could dream some more.” Her family owned a summer house on Jekyll, which she had visited every year before moving to the island in 1981. There, she met her musician husband, Eddie, and fired up her torch full time.

At first her glass business grew modestly, at festivals and on merchandise tables she shared with Eddie’s band, the WharfRatz. Today, Pickett operates Gypsea Glass, a combination gallery, gift shop, and art studio on Pier Road. Customers can schedule demonstrations to watch her craft jewelry, marbles, and abstract sculptures. After work, she unwinds at the Wee Pub, where she and Eddie are part owners.

A nurse’s sure-handedness has served her well.

“Burns and cuts are an occupational hazard,” Pickett says, explaining that she typically dons eyewear, Kevlar sleeves, and a leather apron before wielding a flame that reaches 3,000 degrees. “One of my flames is the size of a needle, which I use for detailing on jewelry, but I also have the big, bushy flame for larger projects.”

“When I got a chance to watch her work, she was making an angelic cupid,” says fellow glassblower Erik Anders. “The strings on the bow and arrow were so tiny and delicate that it really opened my eyes to the world of glass.”

After concocting her colors with tubing, rods, powdered glass, and crushed glass (called frit), she puts her final designs in a kiln to anneal, which relieves the stress of the glass and helps its jumpy molecules settle and strengthen.

Pickett draws inspiration from her island surroundings. “I make seashell pendants and wildlife sculptures such as fish, birds, deer, and alligators,” she says. “Right now I’m doing a series of women representing each element: earth, wind, fire, and water. The wind figurine is shaped like the windswept trees on Jekyll, and the water figurine is a mermaid.”

Does she still dream of glass? “Absolutely,” she says. “In this medium, you never stop learning, and there are always new ideas, new designs, new things to make.”

“David knew I wanted to get married here one day. My family has been coming to Jekyll for fifty years, ever since my grandmother drove her six kids down every summer from Elmira, New York. I remember my mom and aunts doing French braids and putting sunscreen on fourteen little girls— that’s how many of us there were . . . We wanted our wedding to be all about family, and when we think about Jekyll, we think about family.” —Jessica Ivey

As told to JENNIFER SENATOR • Photograph by BROOKE ROBERTS

Jessica and David Ivey live in Washington, D.C., and were married on Jekyll Island in 2015.