J. P. Morgan Trivia
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50 free J. P. Morgan trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This J. P. Morgan trivia quiz covers the Gilded Age banker who bailed out the US Treasury twice, built the world's first billion-dollar company and once had the whole of Wall Street stop for his coffin. The easy questions ask what his initials stand for, where he was born, which company he made from Carnegie's steel, which giant bank carries his name and which doomed liner he had booked a suite on. From there it moves through his railroads, his 1895 gold deal with President Cleveland, the Panic of 1907 he ended in his library and the Pujo Committee that grilled him months before he died. The hard end is for people who have read Chernow: the Civil War carbine deal that dogged his name, the guano contract, the $300 substitute, the yacht that became a gunboat, the London tube line he lost to Charles Yerkes, the disease behind his famous nose, the uncle who wrote Jingle Bells, the gemstone named for him and the Monopoly mascot he inspired. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on J. P. Morgan, JPMorgan Chase, the Panic of 1907, U.S. Steel, Northern Securities, the Pujo Committee, Wardenclyffe Tower, the Morgan Library and Rich Uncle Pennybags before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Gilded Age, Wall Street history and Titanic quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What did the initials in J. P. Morgan's name stand for?
John Pierpont
John Pierpont: Pierpont was his mother's maiden name and the name he actually went by, which is why his own library still calls him Pierpont Morgan.
Q 02In which New England city was J. P. Morgan born and, 75 years later, buried?
Hartford
Hartford: he left at 14 and died abroad, but his funeral procession passed the Asylum Street house where he was born on its way to the family plot in Cedar Hill Cemetery.
Q 03J. P. Morgan's uncle James composed which famous American song in the 1850s?
Jingle Bells
Jingle Bells: his mother's brother published it in 1857 as 'One Horse Open Sleigh', possibly as a drinking song, and it took decades to become a Christmas standard.
Q 04In 1901 Morgan merged Andrew Carnegie's business with others to form which company, the world's first billion-dollar corporation?
U.S. Steel
U.S. Steel: Morgan paid $480 million for Carnegie's company without haggling and congratulated him on becoming 'the richest man in the world'.
Q 05During which crisis did Morgan gather New York's bankers in his library and force them to agree a rescue?
The Panic of 1907
The Panic of 1907: Morgan locked the bankers in until they agreed to a rescue, and the sight of one private citizen saving the system led Congress to create the Federal Reserve.
Q 06Morgan had booked a luxury suite with a private promenade deck on which ship's maiden voyage, but changed his plans?
RMS Titanic
RMS Titanic: his shipping trust owned the liner's parent company, and he cancelled at the last minute, reportedly because of illness.
Q 07Which inventor did Morgan give $150,000 to build a trans-Atlantic wireless station at Wardenclyffe?
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla then scaled the scheme up to wireless power for the whole world, Morgan refused to put in another cent, and the site was abandoned by 1906.
Q 08The 1920 bomb that killed 38 people outside J.P. Morgan & Co.'s Wall Street headquarters arrived in what?
A horse-drawn wagon
A horse-drawn wagon carried the dynamite and iron sash weights; the crime was never solved, and the bank refused to repair the shrapnel scars, which still pit the building's wall.
Q 09Morgan avoided serving in the Civil War by doing what, as the law then allowed?
Paying a substitute $300
Paying a substitute $300: the 1863 draft law let any drafted man buy his way out, which is why critics called it a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.
Q 10The Hall Carbine Affair of 1861, which dogged Morgan's reputation, involved a loan used to buy rifles resold to which Union general?
John C. Frémont
John C. Frémont: the government had sold the carbines off as surplus for $3.50 each, and within months his army was buying them back at $22 apiece.
Q 11Morgan's career leapt forward when he quietly sold 250,000 New York Central shares for which railroad heir?
William Vanderbilt
William Vanderbilt wanted the sale made without driving down the price; Morgan managed it and took a seat on the New York Central board, an early step toward dominating the railroads.
Q 12Which Philadelphia financier became Morgan's mentor and partner in 1871, forming the firm that became J.P. Morgan & Co.?
Anthony Drexel
Anthony Drexel: the firm bore his name first, as Drexel, Morgan and Company, and took Morgan's alone only after his death; the Philadelphia university he founded still carries it.
Q 13Morgan's father Junius made his career in London as a partner of which American-born merchant banker?
Q 21Which institution stayed shut until noon on the day of J. P. Morgan's funeral?
The New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange: flags on Wall Street flew at half-staff too, a farewell to the private banker who had twice come to the rescue of the US Treasury.
Q 22Which English painter's 'Duchess of Devonshire', stolen in 1876, did Morgan buy when it resurfaced in 1901?
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough: the thief kept the portrait for 25 years, then handed it back through Pinkerton detectives in Chicago to the dealer he had robbed, who promptly sold it to Morgan.
Q 23Morgan's bulbous purple nose, a condition called rhinophyma, was the result of which common skin disorder?
George Peabody
George Peabody: born poor in Massachusetts, he became the model for later philanthropists, and the trust he founded still houses thousands of Londoners.
Q 14Which electrical giant did Morgan create by merging Thomas Edison's company with its rival Thomson-Houston?
General Electric
General Electric: it was the first of Morgan's great industrial mergers, and it took Edison's name off the company the inventor had founded.
Q 15In 1895 Morgan and the Rothschilds supplied gold to rescue the US Treasury under which president?
Grover Cleveland
Grover Cleveland was sceptical until Morgan cited an obscure 1862 statute that let the Treasury buy gold with bonds without going to Congress.
Q 16Which president ordered the antitrust suit that broke up Morgan's Northern Securities railroad combine in 1904?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt stunned Wall Street by turning a little-used antitrust law on Morgan's combine; business leaders had counted on the hands-off approach of earlier presidents.
Q 17Morgan suffered a rare defeat in 1902 when transit magnate Charles Tyson Yerkes blocked his plan to build a line on what?
The London Underground
The London Underground: Yerkes's backers quietly bought out Morgan's tramway partner, sinking the bill, and Morgan called it 'the greatest rascality and conspiracy I ever heard of'.
Q 18Morgan belonged to which exclusive Georgia island club, where bankers secretly drafted the Federal Reserve plan in 1910?
Jekyll Island
Jekyll Island: the six men travelled there under cover of a duck hunt, and the Fed's own historians think it was most likely Morgan who arranged the use of the club.
Q 19In December 1912 Morgan testified before which congressional inquiry into the 'money trust'?
The Pujo Committee
The Pujo Committee reported that Morgan's circle held 341 directorships in 112 corporations worth over $22 billion, findings that fed demands for a central bank and tougher antitrust law.
Q 20Morgan died in his sleep in March 1913 in which city?
Rome
Rome: he was on his way home from a trip to Egypt, taken soon after he testified to Congress, when he died in a hotel there; his body crossed the Atlantic on the liner France.
Rosacea
Rosacea: Morgan was so self-conscious that he had his official portraits retouched, and one famous photograph shows him raising his cane at a cameraman.
Q 24Morgan's son-in-law believed he avoided surgery on his nose for fear which childhood ailment would return?
Seizures
Seizures: Morgan had suffered them as an infant, and although surgeons of his day could have pared the growth away, Herbert Satterlee guessed that this fear held him back.
Q 25Morgan's first wife Amelia Sturges died four months after their 1861 wedding of what?
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis: Memie was already so ill at their 1861 wedding that Morgan carried her to the ceremony, then took her to Algiers hoping the warm air would save her.
Q 26Morgan's succession of steam yachts all bore what name?
Corsair
Corsair: the second yacht fought at Santiago in 1898 as the Navy gunboat USS Gloucester, and an 1885 railroad truce struck on board the first became known as the Corsair Compact.
Q 27Morgan, a commodore of the New York Yacht Club, led the syndicate behind Columbia, twice winner of which trophy?
The America's Cup
The America's Cup: Columbia beat Sir Thomas Lipton's Shamrock in 1899 and Shamrock II in 1901, the first two of the tea magnate's five failed challenges.
Q 28When New York's Union Club blackballed his friend, Morgan founded a rival club and had which architect design it?
Stanford White
Stanford White gave Morgan an Italian Renaissance palazzo on Fifth Avenue, and the rejected friend, railroad president John King, was invited in as a founding member.
Q 29Morgan served as president of which New York institution from 1904, having been a founding member?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art received thousands of his objects in 1917, four years after his death, when his son Jack gave it about two-fifths of the collection.
Q 30Who did J. P. Morgan Jr. appoint as first director when he made his father's library a public institution in 1924?
Belle da Costa Greene
Belle da Costa Greene had run the collection since 1905, spending millions on rare books while concealing that she was a Black woman passing as white.