John Stewart Baker (August 6, 1893 – September 5, 1966)[1] was an American banker who served as the first president of the Chase Manhattan Bank.
[2] His father served as president and chairman of the board of the Bank of the Manhattan Company, the earliest predecessor of Chase Bank, and was an associate of John D. Rockefeller Jr.[3] His paternal grandparents were Anna Mary (née Greene) Baker and Stephen Baker, a Republican U.S. Representative from New York during the Civil War who made a fortune as an importer of woollen goods and was a son of Stephen Baker, a merchant who was one of the original stockholders in the Manhattan Company, founded by Aaron Burr in 1799.
In 1922, he was elected a director of the Bank and moved to the main office at 40 Wall Street, serving in the Trust department.
Baker became president and chairman of the executive committee of the merged institution, which started out with deposits in excess of $6.8 billion.
[19] Together, they were the parents of: After a short illness, Baker died at the Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey on September 5, 1966.