Charles Riggs

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Charles Riggs

Tom Bennett is our Curator at the Alaska Heritage Museum at Wells Fargo, in Anchorage. He has been involved with museums for 29 years as a Museum Attendant to Director.

Tom is involved is also involved with the Alaska Zoo and is currently a Board Member with the Alaska Museum of Natural History.

"Line out!" "Gee!""Haw!" "Let's go!"

It's that time of year in Alaska: The "Last Great Race" is on, and dog mushers from around the world are competing to be first with their team of dogs to across the finish line in Nome. This year, 71 dog teams (each with at least 12, no more than 16 working dogs) will traverse the 1,049 miles, (give or take a few), generally following the Iditarod National Historic Trail and battling whatever nature decides to hand them along the way.

Wells Fargo is proudly supporting this year's Iditarod , as it has for 22 years.

The true champions of the "Last Great Race " — to me at least — are the dogs. Definitely not household pets, these are lean, lanky, Olympic-quality, calorie-burning racers. That's 10,000 calories a day, folks. The dogs train all year and get superb health care — they even get massages. (I'd take the massages. But I don't think I can eat the equivalent of 50 cheeseburgers a day.)

Huskies are born to run. Running is their job, their play and their place in the sun. I know this because my folks had a Siberian Husky, who relished digging under the three-foot fence she could have leapt from a standing start, then would run around town looking for the dogcatcher because they were the only ones who might chase her. She would stand in the middle of the street waiting for them. They never once got within 20 feet of her.

Siberian Inupiaq brought their dogs, descendents of a mix of breeds including wolf, to Alaska more than a thousand years ago to provide transportation, pulling sleds across the snow and ice.

Dog teams have played an important historical role in Alaska, hauling for gold seekers stampeding to the Klondike, then on across Alaska as each new strike developed Dog teams sped serum to the people of Nome during the 1925 diphtheria outbreak. They have carried mail, food and gear to many points along the Iditarod trail....

Charles Riggs

What better way to mark Women's History Month  and International Women's Day  than with a little music?

Now, maybe that's just me — I'm inclined to mark most days with music. I collect LPs as a hobby, and I got this one from Joycee.

25 years ago this month, Whitney Houston's  debut LP was issued. It was a smash, with consecutive hits and #1s, and it began Miss Houston's great career in music and films, that keeps going and going....

Whitney Houston is the daughter of soul and gospel singer Cissy Drinkard Houston.  With her sisters, Cissy made gospel records and sang backup on several others. One of her sisters, Lee Drinkard Warrick, managed the group and was herself mother to gospel and R&B singer Judy Clay  and pop legend Dionne Warrick. 

By the time she was in her teens, Whitney Houston had absorbed some serious musical training. She signed with Arista, and the rest is history.

Miss Houston's eponymous debut featured stellar songwriters, producers and players, including Julia  and Maxine  Waters, who released tons of records and sang with everybody. (Julia and Maxine sang as Supremes, sort of, on the 1969 hit "Someday We'll be Together,"  after the Motown legends had gone their separate ways.) Since that first record, the Whitney Houston sound has become the standard for so many pop singers. TV's "American Idol" is a stream of singers doing their best Whitney Houston  for better or worse.

Whitney Houston's career is 25 years old. She comes from a mighty female heritage and an amazing vocal heritage. She has worked in a business where many women have succeeded, in front and behind the scenes. She has inspired millions of women since.

Whitney Houston is our historical marker today.

Ryan Baum

Many bank historians and collectors of banknotes are fascinated with the variety of names that banks have used over the years. While in the most common varieties of names were "First National Bank of..." or "Farmers and Merchants National Bank of..." several banks incorporated "Federal" or "United States" in their names.

Over time, the US Treasury became concerned that customers could get confused, that banks with references to "Federal" or "United States" were actually branches of the national government. In order to limit this confusion, Congress banned the words "Federal," "United States," or "Reserve" in any private bank  as of May 24, 1926.

Banks with such a title, already incorporated before this date, were allowed to maintain their names unaltered. Today, collectors and historians consider these banks as "Forbidden Titles." Wells Fargo has several of these "Forbidden Title" banks in our lineage.

In 1855, the land agency of Joseph H. Millard & Company   opened for business in Nebraska. The Millard family withdrew from this firm in 1865, and it underwent a series of name changes, but the company continued and sought a national bank charter in 1883. On October 2, 1883, it received charter 2978 as the United States National Bank, Omaha.

This United States National Bank prospered as one of Nebraska's premier financial institutions for one hundred years. Then in 1983, it merged with national bank charter 7408.  Within four years, it merged with the older National Bank of Commerce, Denver, and then the younger Central National Bank of Denver in 1912. Several decades later, the firm changed its name to United Bank of Denver, NA, in order to prevent confusion. (And to allow for a holding company structure at the parent level. But that's for us experts.)

In 1992 this bank also merged with Norwest, and changed its name to Norwest Bank, Denver, NA. After a couple more name changes, it also merged Wells Fargo Bank, NA in November 2003.

Perhaps the most colorful of our forbidden title banks was the United States National Bank of San Diego. This bank was founded on May 9, 1913. Unlike most banks of the day, where not all its capital stock was paid up, its founding stockholders immediately paid up the full $100,000 of stock and contributed an additional $100,000 undivided profits. The bank opened for business on June 2, 1913, at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Broadway.

In 1933, C. Arnholt Smith  took control of the firm. He held control of this bank and other financial investments for four decades. During the recession of 1973, however, the bank failed in what was then the largest bank failure since the formation of the FDIC.  Crocker National Bank  assumed the deposits, but United States National Bank of San Diego lived on legally because of precedence and issues of FDIC absolution of contingent liabilities. (More expert stuff.)

Crocker merged with Wells Fargo Bank, NA in 1986.

It seems quant to think of single-branch institutions having "United States" in their name. But now that Wells Fargo is truly coast-to-coast  (PDF), and has the most retail stores of any bank, it is quite fitting that "United States" in the name is part of our heritage.

Bob

In 1899, a San Francisco assayer  wished to send a trunk to his wife, who was visiting friends in Murphy’s , Calaveras County.  He went to see William R. and Henry D. Morton, proprietors of Morton Special Delivery  at 404-408 Taylor Street, and 650 Market.

A personal touch, and a better price gave the job to Wells Fargo.

The assayer wrote his wife on May 31, 1899, and told her the story:

"Yesterday evening I went to Morton S.D. office about Granny’s trunk and they informed me that the Railroad would not accept a trunk as freight unless packed in a case. Morton’s would pack the trunk and carry to the depot for $2; probably the freight would have been $2 more.

"They told me Wells Fargo would send it as it was at a dollar a hundred or thereabouts, so I figured that was the cheapest way to send it and they promised to come after it later in the evening. I hurried home and put some chalk on the trunk, then roped it without locking and went upstairs to dinner. 9 o’clock, no delivery, ½ past and no delivery. I went to bed and I’d no sooner fallen asleep than I awoke wondering what crazy spell the alarm had taken.

"Finally it dawned on me that the house bell was ringing and I tried to get out of bed through the wall into Mother’s room. I got into the hall somehow with a faint idea that the fire engine was coming upstairs. I reached out for the electric button and stubbed my toe on the banister rail. Ah!! Then I was awake and Granny’s trunk went off.

"Of course, when I ordered them to prepay by Wells Fargo, I had to leave $3 on deposit, so I strolled round there this evening and got back 75 cents. $2.25 for the trunk."

That 75-cent refund meant something, he added. That evening he took a friend to dinner, which was only "35 cents for two."

Marianne Babal

I ride the bus to work almost every day. Because I board the bus at one of the first stops on the route, I have my choice of seats — usually up near the front of the bus. A couple weeks ago, as I sat down, I noticed a sticker  on the window commemorating the 10th Annual Rosa Parks Day  on February 8, 2010.

Of course I know the story of Rosa Parks , whose defiance of Alabama state law and refusal to give her seat on a city bus to a white man December 1, 1955 led to her arrest and sparked a year-long boycott of the Montgomery bus system.

It was during that 381-day boycott  that young Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to prominence as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement.  And it was in Montgomery that Dr. King eloquently voiced the determination  of the city's African American community, "to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Rosa Parks' courage and Dr. King's words inspired thousands of bus riders to walk and ride share, sending a powerful message about determination and human dignity to the powers that enforced Jim Crow laws. 

Rosa Parks  said she did not get on the bus to get arrested that day — she just got on the bus to go home. But seldom has an act by an average citizen had so much of an impact on our nation. In 2000, the State of California designated the first Monday after February 4 (Rosa Parks' birthday) as Rosa Parks Day every year. In 2010, that date fell Monday February 8, and I was proud and honored to have shared my seat with Rosa Parks on my way into work that morning.

Charles Riggs

Monday is Presidents Day , the annual sales event  throughout the entire mall. This is a good thing.

But it's also Black History Month, as you know. We can now combine the two observances in the person of Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States.

Presented to you via YouTube , 5 years old today. Triple play!

Charles Riggs

On February 10, 1946, Jack Roosevelt Robinson and Rachel Isum were married in a big ceremony in Los Angeles. A couple weeks later, the Robinsons were on their way to Daytona Beach, Florida, and spring training with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Four months earlier, the Dodgers' legendary president Branch Rickey had presented Robinson as the first African American to play in organized baseball. Robinson, Rickey and the Dodgers were breaking the color line in baseball and carving a new reality in American life.

There is a complex history of Blacks in baseball. Major Leagues had existed since the 1870s, and players with African American backgrounds had moments in the sport. But by the 1890s, with Jim Crow firmly entrenched in many parts of America, Blacks were barred from organized — White — baseball. African American players formed their own teams and toured, taking on all comers and making a fair living. Negro Leagues were formed and competed at a high level.

But Blacks would not crack the highest levels, the Major Leagues, as long as the game made excuses for discrimination.

Jules Tygiel was a Professor of History at San Francisco State University until his death in 2008. A gifted historian, and a very fine writer, Tygiel demonstrated that baseball is an excellent portal to historical inquiry. In Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and his Legacy, he wrote about baseball's impact on American society, and how the larger society had reflected baseball's changes as well. Published in 1983, Professor Tygiel's research included interviews with Rachel Robinson.

When Jackie Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, baseball and American society had taken a giant step forward. Robinson played very well for the Dodgers in his major league career — but the pressure he endured as a pioneer under universal scrutiny is the measure of his real greatness. His life with Rachel, Tygiel shows, was fundamental to Robinson's success.

Every history is a chronicle of human life as it plays out. Robinson is a genuine hero, and his story helps us all work to become heroic, or to understand how heroes become heroes. But Robinson's story (and Tygiel's wonderful history) also helps us understand that anyone might emerge as hero — but only when the opportunity is there.

Each of us might not ever be a Jackie Robinson, but we can all make sure the door is open. We can all develop the vision to see greatness, so that it can emerge when we need it. This helps everyone — and it may help everyone see you.

Ileana

Something that has always struck me when reading about the Civil Rights Movement is the courage of those individuals who fought for equal rights under such dangerous circumstances. (I wonder if I would have been as brave as they were if I had been in their situation!)

This week is of particular importance in Black History. Half a century ago, on February 1st, 1960, four Black college students in North Carolina went to a segregated lunch counter and asked to be served. They wouldn't leave until they were.

Though they never got their meal, this quiet incident became one of the most important moments in the fight for civil rights. It sparked a series of "sit-ins" that would take place throughout the segregated South in the early 1960s.

One of the most important aspects of these sit-ins was that they were non-violent. The rules were, dress in your best Sunday clothes, and:

Do show yourself friendly on the counter at all times. Do sit straight and always face the counter. Don't strike back, or curse back if attacked. Don't laugh out. Don't hold conversations. Don't block entrances.

Word about the sit-ins spread through many college campuses, and by August of 1961, over 70,000 people had participated in these demonstrations. The movement caught on even in the North. Supporters there picketed the stores and lunch counters of chains that had segregated locations in the South.

I love that something as simple as asking for a meal, and not leaving until you got it, stirred so many people to action and had such a tremendous effect. No violence, no angry words — just a demand to be treated the same.

Charles Riggs

Black History Month begins today, and it's my annual opportunity to stress the importance of it to us all.

Historians study the field from multiple directions, from uncountable sub-categories. All serve to add a piece to the structure of our understanding — the more histories to consider, the better the facts at hand. History is closer to real truth when there are lots of accounts that zero in on what really happened. The more bricks in a wall, you might say, the stronger it is.

(Or more like, ought to be. Sometimes history seems like dozens of bricks stacked one on top of the other, swaying, about to fall on your head, and you left your hard hat somewhere else. But enough of my grad school fussing.)

Black history is the story of a people who were denied history for generations. Their lives were not their own because they were literally owned by someone else. Routines we take for granted had to be "won": family, recreation, an occasional opportunity to trade possessions , or hiring oneself out to make a little extra. A personal history was denied them. Free African Americans living in colonies, States and territories were so often only tenuously free. Racism kept them separate, watched.

But African Americans carved out their own sense of themselves as people, as communities — as Americans.

That process is the subject of one of my favorite histories: Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America by Ira Berlin. Berlin tells of a great part of America that changed over time, and from place to place. African Americans' experiences were different in North Carolina than in New York, and different in 1710 than in 1860. Berlin posits that work, also, defines African Americans' experiences: gangs of field hands in one place, skilled artisans in another — sometimes living near each other and establishing their own ways of interacting. ("Pecking order" to us. "Hierarchies" to college professors.)

To learn Black History is to learn more history, which is good for you. You need to know different sides to any issue, so knowing more than one version helps you form your own. That's the basic value of Black History.

But the greater value is the wonder — the pride — you feel as you consider the astonishing path that people can carve in spite of their challenges. It's an opinion changer. ("Paradigm shift" to college professors.)

Read Black History. Dig it!

Ryan Baum

Over a century and a half ago, James Marshall's famous gold discovery, in the tailrace of John Sutter's recently completed lumber mill on the American River, easily ranks as one of the world's great events. While Concord's "shot heard round the world" was nearly instantaneous, the momentum of the gold rush actually took a while to gain momentum.

Here's a quick test: What year was that token nugget discovered?

Most people think 1849. The actual year was 1848. And it was even early in the year: January 24 to be precise! And technically this wasn't even the first gold discovery in California.

To understand the delay between the discovery and the actual rush, we need to study the speed of communication before Statehood, from California to the Eastern States. We also have to remember the skepticism of the people of news reports they read in the papers.

The time was ripe for migration, given California was in the process of being ceded to the United States following the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hildago, signed February 2, 1848 — a full week after Marshall's discovery.

First reports of the gold discovery arrived in San Francisco within a month and in the East during the summer. Few took notice, however. Even the military leadership in California was initially skeptical of the quantity of riches. Then a combination of marketing and bureaucratic reporting combined to ignite one of the greatest migrations in history.

The marketing started with the famous parade of Sam Brannan in May through the streets of San Francisco exclaiming gold on the American River while holding a bottle of gold. Since he had already cornered the market in mining supplies, the excitement he created drove up the prices of his goods many fold. Within weeks the town of San Francisco began to empty.