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Wells, Fargo & Company: The First Half Year

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Ruth Teiser  and
Catherine Harroun
Ruth Teiser
Affiliation:
Wells Fargo Bank & Union Trust Co., San Francisco
Catherine Harroun
Affiliation:
Wells Fargo Bank & Union Trust Co., San Francisco
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Extract

By the end of 1852, six months after the establishment in San Francisco of the principal office, Wells, Fargo & Company had spread its express and banking services well into California's gold-mining country. The most tangible evidence of the organization's growth was the rise in value of its gold shipments to New York. The first shipment, which left San Francisco on July 31 aboard the Pacific Mail Steamship Oregon, crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and was taken up the eastern coast of the continent aboard the United States Mail Steamship Ohio, amounted to only $21,717. The year's last shipment, almost tripling the first, was $61,615. The largest was sent on December 1 and amounted to $68,735. Total shipments by Wells, Fargo & Company for the five-month period between July 31 and the end of the year were $312,492. San Francisco's largest banking firm, Page, Bacon & Company, shipped during the same period $6,313,986, and Adams & Company, competitor of Wells, Fargo & Company in the express and banking business, $5,542,000.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1949 , pp. 87 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1949

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References

1 These figures are taken from lists of treasure shipments published every Steamer Day in the San Francisco Alta California. Ten regular shipments were made at semi-monthly intervals during the period from July 31 through December 31, 1852. No figures are given for Wells, Fargo & Company on three occasions, probably indicating that no shipments were made.

2 From a geological point of view, the Mother Lode is a narrow, gold-bearing vein at the center of the area described. Popularly, however, the entire belt is called the Mother Lode.

3 See Ruth Teiser and Catherine Harroun, “Origin of Wells, Fargo & Company,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, June, 1948.

4 Wiltsee, Ernest A., The Joseph W. Gregory Express, 1850-1853 (Federalsburg, Md., 1937Google Scholar; American Philatelist Handbook, Series 1937, No. 1); and Wiltsee, Ernest A., The Pioneer Miner and Pack Mule Express (San Francisco, Calif., 1931), pp. 57 and 64.Google Scholar

5 A poster in the Wells Fargo history collection (Wells Fargo Bank & Union Trust Co., San Francisco) announcing Wells, Fargo & Company's Placer County service, hereafter dealt with at greater length, is dated Aug. 25, 1852.

6 The manuscript letters of John Q. Jackson are in the Wells Fargo history collection.

7 My Playhouse Was A Concord Coach (Oakland, Calif., 1942), compiled by May Helene Bacon Boggs, p. 137. The advertisement quoted was taken from the Marysville Herald of Sept. 11, 1852, but the date of original insertion is given as September 1.

8 Todd's claim to having been the first regular expressman in California is credited by most historians. His company was purchased by Wells, Fargo & Company in Sept., 1853.

9 The San Francisco Directory for 1852–58 (San Francisco: James M. Parker, 1852), facing p. 102.

10 The San Francisco Directory, loc. cit.

11 San Francisco Alta California, Nov. 27, 1852.

12 State of California, Governor's Message and Report of the Secretary of Stale on the Census of 1852. (Senate Document No. 14, Session of 1853. [Sacramento]: George Kerr, State Printer, 1853.)Google Scholar

13 See footnote 5.

14 Advertisement, Sacramento Union, Dec. 22, 1852.

15 Bancroft, Hubert Howe, History of California, vol. vi (San Francisco, 1888), p. 457.Google Scholar

16 The company's advertisement did not appear in the Sacramento papers from the day of the fire until November 27. Its office had formerly been located at 45 Second Street. Now the address was given as “Tehama Block, J Street” (Sacramento Union, Nov. 27, 1852).

17 San Francisco Alta California, Nov. 5, 1852; Sacramento Union, Nov. 6 and 7, 1852.

18 Bancroft, op. cit., vol. vi, p. 458.

19 Dec. 17, 1852.