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.

It Happened Here--The Expressmen

Part 1

 

One of the enduring images of the American “Old West’ is the image of a nine passenger stagecoach speeding across the prairie or racing through the desert southwest in a cloud of alkali dust, pulled by a team of six horses, guided by a driver perched high on the drivers’ box. He is accompanied by a Wells Fargo “messenger”, “riding shotgun” with a sawed off double barreled weapon, thoughtfully provided by the Wells Fargo Company. Beneath them sits the green iron clad “strong box”, likely filled with bundles of banknotes, bullion or even bags of gold dust, direct from the mining camps of the California Gold Fields. Who would guess that a trio of entrepreneurs that created the companies behind this image started as farm boys from small towns in upstate New York State?

 

Up until the 1830’s there was no organized way to ship parcels in the United States. Though the postal service began early in colonial times to handle letters, and commercial carriers of merchandise and raw materials came into being almost as soon as roads were cut through the wilderness or docking facilities were built along riverside and coastal towns and cities, there was no easy way for an individual or a business to ship a package. One was faced with the choice of finding a friend who was going to the desired destination, sending an employee, or relative, or putting one’s package in the care of a stranger. A ship captain or a business associate might be able to vouch for, and connect one up with, a passenger who would be willing to make sure a package arrived where it was intended. A stagecoach driver might look after a package if given a sufficient tip. Rather large financial transactions were sometimes made by giving a top-hated coachman a bundle of bank notes, admonishing him to “keep this under your hat.” Though thefts and losses under these sorts of arrangements appear to have been remarkably infrequent, it was inconvenient for everyone and a cumbersome and haphazard way of doing business. And it became increasingly risky as the needs of business grew. By the end of the 1830’s the odd keg of nails, the imported bolt of cloth, the gunsmith’s firelock mechanism and the wealth landowner’s custom cast brass hinges for his front door were regularly joined by bundles of banknotes, promissory notes, stock and bond certificates, and even specie and bullion. The situation was aggravated by the closing of the Bank of the United States, in 1836, which, while it operated, had transported currency and financial instruments between itself and regional banks and customers.

In 1839 William Harnden open the first successful “express” business running between New York and Boston. (Perhaps a half dozen others had begun businesses before him, but he was the only one to succeed for any length of time.) Harnden was the first to use the term “expressman” to refer to himself, conveying the idea of rapid personalized delivery service. Having negotiated a special rate for himself with a railroad and a steam ship company between these two cities he began to offer a regular service of delivering packages to their destinations. But beyond this he advertised additional services. “Particular attention will be paid by W.H. to purchasing goods, paying and collecting (bank) drafts, notes and bills. He will promptly transact any and all business which may be entrusted to his charge.” (Loomis, 6)   Harnden was anticipating the banking functions that many express companies would soon find themselves drawn into.

Cor. NY 31 and Canal St (38), Port Byron

Other companies were soon formed to enter the express business while Harnden expanded his area of operations into upstate New York and began hiring employees, “messengers” who would accompany packages entrusted to them. Henry Wells was working as a freight agent on the Erie Canal when William Harnden hired him. Henry had been born in Thetford Vermont and moved to Fayette, New York as a boy, with his family where he balanced helping out on his family’s farm with receiving a basic one-room school education. At sixteen he had been apprenticed to a tanner/shoemaker in Palmyra. Harnden hired him as a messenger from his Albany office. Before long Wells was urging his boss to expand into the regions to the west. The man who had pioneered the express business was unwilling to risk his business in such an undeveloped area and untested market. Harnden suggested Wells strike out on his own to develop his own company to the west. It is unclear whether this was a supportive suggestion, or a sarcastic challenge intended to redirect an over enthusiastic employee, but in any event the ambitious Wells had soon lined up a group of partners and in 1841, under the name Pomeroy and Co. (with partners George Pomeroy, and Crawford Livingston) Henry Wells was going into business for himself. Within a year the partnership was realigned and became Livingston, Wells and Pomeroy and then, Livingston, Wells and Co when George Pomeroy retired from the business¹. The Albany to Buffalo run was an arduous trip that involved taking three train from Albany to Auburn, a stage coach from Auburn twenty five miles to Geneva, the Auburn to Rochester Railroad to Rochester, a stage sixty miles to Lockport, and private transport (wagon, or horseback) to Buffalo. The business grew rapidly, however. Starting with a single carpet bag, on weekly trips he soon had to use a trunk, which was replaced by a larger trunk and then an even larger trunk, prompting a railway superintendent to quip ‘of all the wonderful growths he had seen in the west, none equaled the growth of Wells’ trunk!’ 

In 1842 Wells hired William George Fargo who had been employed as a freight agent, and sometime conductor, on the Auburn and Syracuse Railway. Like Wells, Fargo had grown up on a family farm, in Pompey New York, fitting in schooling between seasons of farm labor. But unlike Wells he had been the oldest in a family of twelve children, and had been supporting himself since he was thirteen years old—mostly working as a clerk in a several grocery stores, but also delivering mail on a thirty mile circuit for a local mail contractor working out of Pompey. Hired as an express messenger, by 1843 Fargo became the resident agent in Buffalo, for Livingston, Wells and Company. 

 

WM. G. FARGO

MAY 20, 1818-AUG. 3, 1881

ORGANIZER OF WELLS-FARGO
EXPRESS

COMPANY
SERVED HERE AS
FIRST FREIGHT AGENT

Location: ON 2ND STORY FACE SCHRECK BROS. STORE, 16 E. GENESEE ST., AUBURN

(This sign appears to have disappeared with the Schreck Bros. Store, The lot is now 

occupied by a Dunkin Donut shop)

 In 1844-5 Wells with another pair of partners, Daniel Dunning and William Fargo, opened “Wells and Company’s Western Express”, the first express company operating west of Buffalo. Service was extended to Cleveland and Detroit, and later, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis.

About this time Henry Wells decided to take on the United States Post Office. (It would not be the last time.) Wells began to offer to deliver a letter for $.06. At this time The Post Office was charging $0.18 to $0.25, depending on the distance. A local newspaper noted that while it cost $0.18 to ship a letter from New York City to Troy, a whole barrel of flour could be shipped the same distance, via the same route for only $0.12! Wells’ service was immensely popular, and soon letters could travel from Detroit Michigan to Bangor Maine for this low rate. But then the Post Office struck back. The Constitution gave the federal government the right to operate a post office and Postal officials believed that it was their exclusive right. Wells messengers were regularly arrested at Utica and other places. There were public rallies in support of Wells. Bail was raised for the messengers and became immediately available in cases of future arrests so that the messengers could continue on their way without delay. In several places the Government brought suites, but in every case juries rejected them. Backed by a group of investors, Wells presented a proposal to the Postmaster General. Wells offered to take over the entire delivery of the mails for $ 0.05 a letter! Postmaster General Hobbie was aghast and rejected it out of hand, as it would mean the end of 16,000 postmaster patronage jobs! Finally Congress stepped in². The six cent postal rate was adopted and the law concerning the federal government’s exclusive right to maintain a postal service was strengthened. Wells companies and their competitors left (for the time being) the delivery of mail.

In 1846 the restless Wells sold his interest in Wells and Company to the other partners and moved to New York City to pursue, full time, the transatlantic express trade through his other company, Livingston, Wells, and Company. He would open express services in England, France and Germany. As America approached the mid century, in the turbulent express business, Livingston, Wells and Co. controlled a large share of the market in eastern New York, New England and the mid-Atlantic states; the Wells and Company’s successor, Livingston, Fargo and Co. continued preeminent in the western New York, the Great Lakes and Ohio valley to St. Louis. But a strong competitor was emerging in New York. Many small railroads had merged into the New York Central Rail Road by 1850, and the new competitor, Butterfield, Wasson and Co. had secured an exclusive contract with the N.Y.C. to carry their express business

                                 Perhaps the only NYSHM 
                                          reference to John Butterfield
                                          NY Rt. 22 Essex

 John Butterfield was born in the Helderberg “hilltown” of Berne, New York in 1801. By age 19 he was a professional coachman driving stagecoaches from Albany for Thorpe and Sprague Express Co. Three years later he moved to Utica to help manage an Albany to Buffalo stagecoach line. Like Fargo and Wells he was an aggressive entrepreneur and he was soon an owner in nearly all the stagecoach lines in western New York. In Utica, Butterfield built a street railway, a grand hotel, and a commercial block. In the mid 1840’s he was the driving force behind the New York, Albany and Buffalo Telegraph System. Butterfield also became part owner of a line of steamboats operating on Lake Champlain, Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River.

Early in 1850 Henry Wells bought into Butterfield’s express company, succeeding James Wasson. Later that year, in what would be known as “the great consolidation” Butterfield proposed a merger. Though a fierce competitor, Butterfield realized cutthroat competition benefited no one and he hoped that a merger of his express company, Livingston, Wells and Co., and Livingston, Fargo and Co. could dominate the industry. A new company, American Express, was formed with Wells, president, Fargo, secretary and John Butterfield, line superintendent.

 

1In the early 19^th century a convenient way to delineate a new relationship between partners, recruit new investor-partners or engage in a new enterprise and protect one’s other interests in the event the enterprise did not thrive was to simply form a new partnership, under a different name. Both Henry Wells and William Fargo would form many such partnerships, both together and separately throughout their careers. These partnerships were joint stock associations, not corporations which meant that the shareholders, often called “directors” were personally involved in running the business and could operate secretly without reporting to the government or a body of stockholders.

2Congressman Zadock Pratt, the subject of the previous post (11/2/14) had successfully presented a bill a half dozen years before that rolled back postal rates, but they had risen since. 

Sources: 

               Fradkin, Philip L. Stagecoach, Wells Fargo and the American West, New York. 2002 
               Loomis, Noel M.  Wells Fargo.  1968.

Marker of the Week -- Big Crime in a Small Town

NY Rt. 20, West of Buell Ave, Lima

One hundred and one years ago a masked man wearing blue glasses and a long black beard walked into the Lima, NY bank with two revolvers and a coil of telephone wire. He forced the bookkeeper to tie up the cashier with the wire and then he tied up the bookkeeper. He then proceeded to steal nearly $10,000 in bills and gold coins from the bank. A 20 year old seminary student, Cezlaw Gaczdnski was arrested, having bought telephone wire not long before.

Despite several days of "sensational" court hearings the Grand Jury refused to indict him, on the circumstantial evidence presented them. Witnesses said the young man presented a very sympathetic appearance and his jailer even bought him a couple bottles beer when he was in custody.  Upon his release Gaczdnski "sued everyone in sight" for $25,000.

Despite a $ 500 reward posted by the bank and its insurance company, no one was ever brought to trial, so the mystery of who robbed the Lima Bank remains. For me, another mystery is, How did they fit nearly $10,000 into that tiny vault?

Source: Mendon, Honeoye Falls, Lima Sentinel. April 30, 2009. Letter to the editor by Joyce Rapp, former Lima Historian.