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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Colonial America gave little thought to life insurance selling. The colonists secured protection against marine risks from private underwriters, first in London, eventually at home. It has been asserted that Philadelphia had no fire insurance until 1752; Boston none before 1795. The first corporations formed in this country for insuring lives were those of the Presbyterian Ministers Fund (1759) and a similar company organized for the benefit of Episcopal ministers (1769). Neither of these corporations offered insurance to the general public. In the last decade of the eighteenth century many insurance companies were formed in the United States. At least five were chartered to underwrite life risks, but only one, The Insurance Company of North America, appears to have accepted any. There is no basis for saying that any of these early companies tried to sell life insurance.
page 66 note 1 The materials for this article were secured from a study of the Company's own record books, letter books, and accounts, which were made available to the author by The Pennsylvania Company.
page 75 note1 There was, to begin with, the major problem of investing the Company's growing capital; there was the rapidly expanding trust business; and there was the commercial banking business which was gradually emerging from the Company's “Deposites in Trust” services. It was preoccupation with these relatively more important and more lucrative banking activities which persuaded the officers to let the life business “coast.” Today, after expanding the range of its own banking services, and after absorbing the oldest commercial bank in the United States (The Bank of North America, chartered by the Continental Congress), The Pennsylvania Company has achieved an important position in the financial fields which it has chosen to cultivate.