It Happened Here--The Expressmen

Part 2

Gold was discovered in California in 1848 and by 1851 Henry Wells and William Fargo were itching to get a piece of the express business that resulted from the $60 million of gold that was dug from the hills or panned from the streams east of Sacramento and needed to be forwarded1   by express companies to miners families and banks in the east. But John Butterfield and several of the other directors of American Express were not so sure. Managing an enterprise from 3000 miles and several months away in an environment where there was little stable civil government and often no law enforcement was risky at best. When the issue of expansion into California was debated in March 1852 Butterfield was able to get the proposal voted down. In ten days, Wells and Fargo assembled a group of new investors and formed a new company, Wells, Fargo and Co., to exploit the far-western market. The old teamster was furious and used all the language he had acquired over the years of encouraging recalcitrant horses and mules over torturous turnpikes and trails. Henry Wells remembered in later years Butterfield’s reaction: ‘All the profanity that one head could hold, or one tongue could utter, was used to express his friendship toward me and Fargo' (Fradkin, 7.)

Within the first year, twelve offices, sporting the bright green iron security shutters that would become a hallmark of Wells Fargo offices, sprang up in California. Samuel P. Carter who had run Wells’ American Express office in Albany came to run the express operations while Reuben W. Washburn, a Syracuse banker came to oversee the banking aspects of the business.

The phenomenal growth of population in California from the gold rush caught the U.S, Postal Service unprepared. The San Francisco post office was flooded annually with 2.6 million letters. As mining camps sprung up by the score throughout gold country the post office was at a loss as to how to provide service. Express businesses, Wells, Fargo and Co. included, stepped in to fill the void. The higher rates that express companies charged enabled them to search out the often-transient miners among the myriad of camps. The Wells Fargo office in Auburn in Placer county, California, for example, had a somewhat typical service area for Wells Fargo offices in gold country. Express riders went to ‘Spanish Flat, Millertown, Junction bar¹, New York bar, Louisiana bar, and Murder’s bar on the Middle fork of the American River; Kelly’s bar, and Barnes bar on the North Fork; Illinoistown, all bars on the North Fork and Bear River, between Illinoistown and Cold Springs, and all points between the two rivers.’ By 1877 Wells Fargo was even providing their own bright green letter boxes in San Francisco, and a special route staffed by three Chinese mail sorters served San Francisco’s Chinatown. Though Wells Fargo’s delivery of the mail remained technically illegal for many years they were able to avoid a government crackdown by buying Post Office stamped envelopes—thus paying the Post Office’s delivery charge, then adding their own Wells Fargo frank and delivering them at two to three times the government’s price.

Wells Fargo grew, in part by buying out its California competitors, one each year in 1852, 1853 and 1854. In 1855 a bank panic occurred. Though its causes were many and complex, a dry year in the Sierra Nevada’s resulted in less gold being taken from the gold bearing sands. (Large quantities of water were needed to flush the lighter sands from the heavier gold particles.) With the decline in gold, businesses became over extended. Reduced sales meant they were unable to pay on loans or were forced to withdraw savings to pay their bills. Panic spread as depositors rushed to withdraw their money, fearing the banks and express companies would not have enough assets to cover all the withdrawals, and would close. One hundred and ninety seven business houses failed in San Francisco, among them Adams and Company Express, the largest express company in California, and one of the largest in America. But Wells Fargo remained solvent with sufficient reserves and became the only major express company in California.

Despite John Butterfield’s anger at Fargo and Wells for creating a new express company the three had multiple business interests together, and “business was business”. In 1857 Congress proposed a $600,000 subsidy for a contractor to develop a route and carry the mail from Missouri to San Francisco. Butterfield turned to William Fargo to help him develop a proposal. The contract would not necessarily go to the low bidder but would go to the contractor who could impress the Postmaster General of his ability to carry out the contract. Butterfield and Fargo made an impressive proposal, and it probably did not hurt any that Butterfield was a close personal friend of President James Buchanan. The route, itself, was specified by Postmaster General Brown. Brown, a Tennessean, chose a southerly “oxbow” route through Arkansas, Indian Territory, Texas, Arizona and southern California. Northern critics howled that this was a ploy of the southern slaveholders to develop southern territories so they might eventually enter the union as slave states. Butterfield himself was reportedly unhappy with it, but this route had the decided advantage of being snow-free all year long.

The Butterfield Overland Mail Company was a gigantic enterprise that put all of Butterfield’s impressive organizational and leadership skills to the test. The contract specified he had one year to get the stagecoach line, the longest in the United States, up and running. Almost $1 million would be invested. One thousand horses, 500 mules, 800 hundred harnesses, and almost 500 wagons needed to be purchased, ready and in place. More than 800 employees had to be hired to drive the teams and maintain the way stations. Over time 200 stations would be built. For his main stagecoach, Butterfield chose the “Concord” nine-passenger coach manufactured by Abbot Downing Company of Concord New Hampshire. The Concord coach featured a unique suspension that supported the coach body on leather straps causing it to rock when it went over bumps. The manufacturer maintained this made for a smoother ride than spring suspensions that could bottom out when a coach went over severe bumps and was easier on both passengers and horses. Less well known were Butterfield’s “Celerity” wagons that Butterfield, himself, was said to have designed. Built on a Concord frame the Celeritys were lighter and with a canvass roof had a lower center of gravity that made them less likely to turn over on some of the worst trails. Pulled by mules, they would be used on some of the roughest sections of the route. Butterfield contracted for one hundred of these “mud” wagons to be built by James Goold’s factory in Albany. Freight and utility wagons built in Troy to carry hay and supplies were also purchased.

The government lost money on the Overland Mail delivery, but Butterfield, through good management, was able to operate at a profit within the $ 600,000 per year government subsidy enhanced by some passenger fares and regular express business from Wells, Fargo and Co.. Twice a week, from 1858 to 1861 both eastbound and westbound stages came and went despite occasional Apache raids on way station horse corrals and much more infrequent Indian attacks on the stage coaches themselves. The succession of Texas from the Union and the beginning of the Civil Was brought the southern route to a close. In 1861 Wells, Fargo Company bought out and reorganized the Overland Mail. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, transcontinental stagecoach service came to an end.                                 

Wells College Campus,  Aurora

Henry Wells and William Fargo remained on the board of Wells, Fargo Co. for several more years but others ran the company as Fargo and Wells became interested in other projects. Henry Wells’ health declined after 1853 and he retired from Wells Fargo in 1867 and from American Express, the following year. In 1868 he founded Wells College for Women in his hometown of Aurora New York, one of the first colleges exclusively for women. John Butterfield became mayor of Utica in 1865. He died in 1869. William Fargo invested heavily in railroads and became a director of both the New York Central and Northern Pacific Railroads. Fargo, North Dakota, created by the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad was named for him. Involved in Democratic Party politics, Fargo was elected major of the city of Buffalo from 1862 to 1868. He was president of American Express from 1868 to his death in 1881.

1Typically, miners would deposit their gold dust with Wells Fargo (or other express companies) and be issued a bank “sight” draft that the express company would deliver to their families out east. Shipments from San Francisco of gold bullion were made by steamship, on a regular basis.  

2 A“bar” refers to a sand or gravel bar of gold bearing sediments.

 
Sources: 

               Fradkin, Philip L. Stagecoach, Wells Fargo and the American West, New York. 2002.

               Loomis, Noel M. Wells Fargo. New York. 1968.

Marker of the Week -- The "Coffin Man"

Early America saw a proliferation of itinerant merchants, tradesmen and craftsmen servicing the remote farms and tiny communities across New York and most of the United States, as well.  One of the stranger sights must have been that of the itinerant stone carver with his heavy wagonload of cut slabs of stone,  inquiring at local farms and country crossroads if anyone knew of any families who had buried a loved one in recent months, or even years, and needed a tombstone for their grave. When he found a customer he might set up shop along the road, in a side yard or barn and begin personalizing the family's choice of a tombstone with the deceased's name, dates, perhaps some particulars of his life or death, and most certainly a personalized epitaph.
    

NY Rt. 41, Coventryville

Most stone carvers labored in obscurity with their work no more recognized than the average carpenter, wheelwright, blacksmith or cooper, but in south central New York and northern Pennsylvania one itinerant stone carver distinguished his work by carving small coffin shapes at the bottom of his stones to represent the people buried there.  A man and his wife would have two coffin shapes; a parent and child a large and a small coffin; a mother and her infant, one large and one tiny coffin. For over 30 years, local researcher, Mary Dexter of Cortland was obsessed with locating as many works of the "Coffin Man" as she could, and attempting to discover his identity.  She found over 200 of them, likely carved between 1811 and 1822. And finally she discovered his identity in the estate papers of one of his 'customers.'  Jonas W. Stewart (II), of Coventryville, Chenango County, New York was paid $5 for a stone he carved.  Son of a New Hampshire stone carver, he and his brother were both itinerant tombstone carvers, each traveling separate territories and producing, on the spot, memorials for bereaved families.  Ironically, no headstone for J.W. has ever been found.


Source:  "Mystery in Stone," in Tin Horn, Blog of the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown, Delaware County,
                2016. Margretville, NY.