Perry Randall and Arthur F. Hall — the men who founded Lincoln Life

founded 12 June 1905

Lincoln National Life was organised out of a wreck: the Fraternal Assurance Society of America had failed in 1902, and on 12 June 1905 — the articles of incorporation were drawn on 29 May — four Fort Wayne men founded the new company in its place. Perry Randall, a Fort Wayne attorney and entrepreneur, was the company's manager and its moving spirit; it was Randall who suggested the name "Lincoln," and reference accounts list him as the founder outright. In August 1905 Robert Todd Lincoln authorised the use of his father's name and likeness. Arthur F. Hall was lured in as the first president, on pay tied to the company's growth — and the growth came: a million dollars of insurance in force by 1907, fifty-three million by 1921. Hall led the company thirty-seven years. In 1928 he hired Dr. Louis A. Warren to build the company's Lincoln research, and in 1929 the company acquired the great Lincoln collection that made Fort Wayne, for a time, a capital of Lincoln scholarship. The fourth founder's stake belongs to Daniel B. Ninde, the company's largest stockholder and first chief financial officer, who is profiled in the People longtail and is cross-referenced here rather than retold. The company's course — the tower, the merger years, the departure — is the Business section's.

Sources:

1. Businesses — "Lincoln National Life Insurance Company" (the 1905 founding out of the Fraternal Assurance Society, the growth figures, the 1928 Warren hire and the 1929 collection).
2. Lincoln National: The Story of An American Company, the published company history — Hall's thirty-seven years at the head of the company.
3. Notable People — the Daniel B. Ninde profile, cross-referenced.