Clarence Walker Barron (July 2, 1855 – October 2, 1928) was an American financial editor and publisher who founded the Dow Jones financial journal, Barron's National Financial Weekly, later renamed Barron's Magazine.
He was one of the most influential figures in the history of Dow Jones. As a career newsman described as a "short, rotund powerhouse", he died holding the posts of president of Dow Jones and de facto manager of The Wall Street Journal. He is considered the founder of modern financial journalism.
Early life and education
Barron was born in Boston and graduated from Boston English High School in 1873.
Career
Barron began his journalism career as a reporter for the Boston Daily News from 1875 to 1878 and the Boston Evening Transcript from 1878 to 1887.
Barron also established the financial advertising agency Doremus & Co. in 1903. In 1921, he founded the Dow Jones financial journal, Barron's National Financial Weekly, later renamed Barron's Magazine, and served as its first editor. He priced the magazine at 10 cents an issue and saw circulation explode to 30,000 by 1926, with high popularity among investors and financiers.
Personal life
Barron married Jessie Maria Bartauex Waldron in 1900 and adopted her daughters, Jane and Martha. Jessie was born in Nova Scotia in 1852, and was married to a man named Samuel Waldron, twenty years her senior, in New York City in 1873. She was no longer living with him by the 1880 census, when she was located in Boston with her two daughters, living in the household of her aunt, Sarah J. Bartauex, who was a dressmaker. Samuel Waldron died in 1882. In the 1900 census, taken in Cohasset, MA on June ninth, Jessie Waldron appears in Clarence Barron's household as a "housekeeper" though her daughters are already listed as adopted daughters of Barron. The two would marry later that month on June twenty-first, in Boston. Considering the wide gulf between their class backgrounds, it is likely that their relationship began while she was employed as a housekeeper in his household. A significant collection of hers and her daughters' garments are housed at the Cohasset Historical Society. Jessie Barron died on May 23, 1918.
After Jane married Hugh Bancroft in 1907, Jane Barron became a prominent member of the Boston Brahmin Bancroft family. Martha Barron married H. Wendell Endicott, heir apparent to the Endicott Shoe Company. Mr. and Mrs. Barron and the Endicotts are buried in a joint family plot at the historic Forest Hills Cemetery in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston.
Barron was a prominent lay member of the Massachusetts New Church (Swedenborgians).
Barron died in 1928 in Battle Creek, Michigan.