Samuel Zemurray — business ("banana king") with roots in the Russian Empire
Samuel Zemurray was born Schmiel Zmurri on 18 January 1877 in Kishinev, the capital of the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire, now Chișinău in Moldova, into a poor Jewish family that farmed a small plot near the town. After his father's death he emigrated to the United States in 1891, at fourteen, travelling with an aunt by one account; another has him landing in New York bound for Selma, Alabama, where a relative kept a small grocery. He had no formal education.
In 1895, at eighteen, he went into the banana trade in the port of Mobile, buying the 'ripes' that the large importers regarded as worthless, because they would spoil before reaching distant markets, and selling them quickly in town markets across Alabama and Mississippi. The trade made his first fortune and the nickname 'Sam the Banana Man'. He moved to New Orleans, went into partnership with Ashbel Hubbard and, in 1910, bought some 5,000 acres along the Cuyamel River in Honduras, founding the Cuyamel Fruit Company; in 1914 he moved its headquarters to New Orleans and bought out his partner.
In 1911 he financed the return to power in Honduras of the former president Manuel Bonilla, whose government then granted Cuyamel land and tax concessions. In November 1929 United Fruit, his principal competitor, acquired Cuyamel for 300,000 of its shares, worth about $31.5 million, and Zemurray retired from the banana business. When the Depression hit United Fruit's stock, he returned and, in what was described as a boardroom coup, took control of the company in the 1930s (in 1933 by most accounts, 1938 by another), leading it until 1951; at its height it worked some three million acres in ten countries and employed more than 70,000 people.
He and his family gave generously to Tulane University, which received his mansion on Audubon Place, now the residence of its president, and to the Zamorano agricultural school in Honduras. He also supported Zionist causes through a long acquaintance with Chaim Weizmann. He remained chairman of United Fruit's executive committee after 1951, and died in New Orleans on 30 November 1961, aged eighty-four.
"Emigrated to the United States in 1891, aged fourteen, and joined relatives in Selma, Alabama; entered the banana trade in Mobile in 1895."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Kishinev, Bessarabia Governorate (now Chișinău, Moldova)
Born Schmiel Zmurri in Kishinev, in the Bessarabia Governorate, in 1877 into a poor Jewish family, he grew up on a small farm near the town and emigrated to America at fourteen, after his father's death.
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Kishinev, Bessarabia Governorate (now Chișinău, Moldova). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.