Finance History | Wells Fargo — California After the American Express Board Said No
· 1852-7
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Finance History | Wells Fargo — California After the American Express Board Said No
kevin
People treat Wells Fargo as the San Francisco tower at 420 Montgomery that always ran a stagecoach logo and a consumer branch from an S and P 500 book.
The first book was an express-and-bank shop the parent board refused to open.
On 18 March 1852 Henry Wells and William G. Fargo organized Wells, Fargo and Company after the American Express directors declined to extend the eastern express west to the gold fields.
The two men already sat on the American Express board they had helped form in Buffalo in 1850.
California was a separate company.
On 13 July 1852 the San Francisco office opened at 424 Montgomery Street, a two-story brick house on the same block as the museum visitors photograph today.
A Sacramento office opened the same day in the B. F. Hastings building at Second and J.
The mechanism was the combined book.
An express messenger could carry gold dust, letters, and drafts on one coach.
A teller in the same room could buy the dust, sell a paper draft payable in New York, and lend against a claim.
Adams and Company and Page, Bacon already held the Pacific Coast when Wells Fargo arrived.
Those rivals failed in the panic of 1855.
Wells Fargo kept paying and took the traffic.
Edwin B. Morgan of Aurora was the first president.
Wells and Fargo remained directors of both the California house and American Express.
The banking arm later split from the express, survived the 1906 fire with vaults intact, and merged with Nevada National.
The Charlotte combination with Wachovia and the nationwide consumer book are later still.
A board vote against California is the reason the 1852 Montgomery Street room exists as a separate listed name.
Photo: San Francisco Financial District, the city of the first Pacific office, via Wikimedia Commons.
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