In the event of one of their deaths, the partnership would lose a large amount of money to estate taxes and might be forced to dissolve.

Anderson had enlisted in the Confederate States Army, but had been captured in March 1864 as he returned home to visit his young family in McNairy County (south of Jackson, on the Mississippi border), then was held at Camp Chase near Columbus, Ohio, in part because his uncle James M. Anderson of Glasgow, Kentucky traveled to Washington, D.C. to secure his release.

(as the boy was often called) worked for his father at the bank, where learned about finance and prepared for his later business success.

On August 1, 1904, they launched their business, Anderson, Clayton and Company, during the era of the Jim Crow economy.

Will had also worked at the same company, and between them, they had learned about international banking and establishing shipping networks (both by rail and by sea).

With the completion of the Houston Ship Channel in 1915 and the onset of World War I in 1916, the demand for (and price of) cotton was booming.

In the summer of 1938, while Monroe was eating lunch at the Majestic Grill with some of his business associates, one of his arms went numb.

He was rushed back to his hotel room, where his physician gave him a sedative and sent some nurses to monitor his condition until he could be moved to Baptist Memorial Hospital.

He remained in the hospital for a month, while he bought a house on Sunset Boulevard (near the Texas Medical Center site).