Last week Ferris, Baker Watts, the century-old, Baltimore-based stock broker, announced it would sell itself to RBC Dain Rauscher. The Sun ran several stories, including a retrospsective on Page D1 in the business section that was illustrated with portraits of firm founders William G. Baker (1874-1948) and Sewell Watts (1871-1929). Several readers noted that Watts died in 1929 and wondered if his demise had anything to do with that year's stock market crash.

Sure enough, it turns out that Watts committed suicide three months after stocks crashed in October. As The Sun's Fred Rasmussen wrote a few years ago:

Baltimore's business community was shocked when Sewell S. Watts, senior partner in Baker, Watts & Co., shot himself in his garage at the rear of his home at 1615 Park Ave., on Dec. 27, 1929.

W. Bladen Lowndes, a friend of the family, explained to reporters, "There was absolutely no reason, business or personal, why Mr. Watts should have committed suicide. He had been in a nervous state recently and had been worrying about the losses of his customers in the recent collapse of prices in the New York stock market."

This is from a history of Baker Watts (which later merged with Washington-based Ferris) commissioned by the firm in 1975 and written by John Redwood Jr.

Suffice it to record that the new partners of Baker, Watts & Co., along with the seniors, were subjected to extreme tests of intestinal fortitude, working late into the night and sometimes into the early morning hours in the face of collapsing stock prices, necessitating the sending out of repeated margin calls, although margin accounts were a relatively small part of the firm's business.

During the stresses of the closing months of 1929, Mr. Baker and Mr. Watts Sr. frequently remained in the office until the very late hours, in general supervising the work and lending encouragement to the hardworking staff. One more than one occassion, Mr. Watts brought over sandwiches and hot coffee from the nearby Southern Hotel. The two senior partners were great stabilizing influences at this very trying time. Thus the organization, as well as the entire financial community and his wide circle of friends, was greatly shocked and saddened by the sudden death of Mr. Watts on Dec. 27, 1929.

No hint about what might have caused Watts to take his life, except this:

... Mr. Watts Sr. had built up a large volume of business in the 1920s in the shares of banks and insurance companies. He had employed a specialist in this field of investment in the person of Paul Zachary, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, who organized and for several years was manager of the firm's Bank and Insurance Stock Department. This activity was discontinued during the Great Depression.