Albert C. Simmonds Jr.

Albert Carleton Simmonds Jr. was an American banker.

Early life

Simmonds was born on June 21, 1963, at Simmesport in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. He was the eldest child of Albert Carleton Simmonds and Nonie Adela Simmonds. His paternal grandparents were Henry Simmonds and Mary Eliza Simmonds. His maternal grandparents were Confederate soldier Thomas Callaham Butler and, his first wife, Jane Butler.
After graduating from Bolton High School in Alexandria, Louisiana in 1917, Simmonds attended Vanderbilt University, graduating in 1922. He taught history for a year at the high school in Thomasville, Georgia before attending Harvard University, where he graduated with a Master of Business Administration in 1925.

After Harvard, Simmonds joined the Texas and Pacific Railway Company in New York City. In 1930, he joined the Bank of New York and after subsequent stints as assistant treasurer, assistant vice president and vice president, he was elected to succeed John C. Traphagen as President of the Bank of New York in 1948. In 1957, he became chief executive officer and chairman of the bank, serving until his death in 1963. In 1960 and 1961, he was president of the New York State Bankers Association.
Simmonds also served as a trustee, or director, of the Greenwich Savings Bank, the North American Reassurance Company, the Celotex Corporation, the American Casualty Insurance Company, North American Reinsurance Corporation, the Borden Company, the Valley Forge Life Insurance Company, and the Valley Forge Insurance Company.

On February 28, 1931, in Chicago, Illinois, Simmonds married Mary Adelaide Harding, a daughter of lawyer Victor M. Harding of Hubbard Woods, Illinois. They lived together at Indian Trail in Harrison, New York and were the parents of:

Albert Carleton Simmonds III, who graduated from Yale University in 1959 and served as vice president of the Wyatt Company, an actuarial consulting company in Washington, D.C.; he married Barbara Smith.
Diane Deblois Simmonds, who died in infancy.

Simmonds died at the Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan on August 15, 1902, and was buried at Greenwood Union Cemetery in Rye, New York. After his death, his widow married insurance executive Duncan M. Findlay of Huntington, New York, in 1964.