Yesterday, Pandiux wrote, "I have a question. Is there any stories in history of a Wells Fargo Stagecoach being robbed?" The answer is yes, there are several. I blogged about one here.

But we at Wells Fargo don't get all excited about robbery in history as many people do . The reason is simple: We're a bank, and banks are prime targets for robbers. Robbery is dangerous, terrifying and violent even when people aren't hurt. Wells Fargo is committed to a heritage of enforcement and protection and of throwing the creeps in jail – not the lore of the fearless bandit.

The heck with those guys. They are thugs.

I served on a jury several years ago, hearing a bank robbery case (I told 'em I worked at a bank and they picked me anyway). The main witness was the teller, of course, and she was still unnerved by the experience after several months. Robbery is crime against people I work with. No glamor in terrorizing people. I myself am not interested in spinning yarns about those darn bandits of yore. They're robbers and there's nothing cool about it.

So we don't focus too much on robbery narratives except to support the Company's drive to catch the bad guys. Many Western buffs are really into lawmen and bad men, guns and violence. Knock yourselves out, but you won't keep my interest.

Robbers sometimes kill people. It still happens .

Posted by Charles at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Found in At Work, Crime, Misc, Museums, Remember, San Francisco, Stagecoach, Wells Fargo Bank, Westerns

Wells Fargo has been musically inclined since the Gold Rush. In 1855, we advanced money for an Italian opera troupe. However they defaulted, so we seized their trunk of costumes and musical instruments as security.

Actually, we are really kind hearted. In 1869, Madame Camilla Urso   proposed a music festival to benefit the Mercantile Library, featuring school children and musicians from around California and Nevada. Wells Fargo offered to carry sheet music, letters, and other equipment far and wide throughout its lines on the Pacific Coast for free. The successful San Francisco festival ran for five days in February 1870.

If it could be sent by express, Wells Fargo carried it. In May of 1860, a future jazz musician in Columbia asked Wells Fargo to supply copies of Schatzman's Sax Horn Instructor. Up they came from San Francisco.

On occasion, Wells Fargo contributed to the Big Bang Theory  . Mariposa agent Julia Jones delivered a bass drum to complete a brass band at Whitlock's Gold Mine . In the spring of 1897, this band, splendid in their white uniforms, serenaded Mariposans with "Old Folks at Home," "The Man in the Moon," and the "Young Bandsman."

In the summer of 1917, Wells Fargo also carried "several valuable violin bows from Colorado Springs to Chicago. Accompanying these bows in a handsome, sturdy, brass-bound packing case were also a few violins – one made by Nicola Amati   in 1662, another by Carlo Bergonzi   in 1723, and a third, modern one produced by Joseph Guarnerius   in 1731.

Wells Fargo starred in the performance of express service. Meredith Willson drew on his boyhood memories in Iowa to write The Music Man  . That story revolves around the arrival of band instruments on the "Wells Fargo Wagon." The whole town turns out to sing: "O-ho the Wells Fargo Wagon is-a comin' down the street, Oh, Please let it be for me!"

Our relations with opera singers improved through the years — we even starred in an opera. In 1910, when Puccini's Gold Rush opera The Girl of the Golden West   appeared, Wells Fargo's agent was heroic.

Posted by Bob at 09:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Found in Artifacts, Branding, Broadway, Gold, Hollywood, Misc, Movies, Music, Opera, Perspective, Remember, San Francisco, The Music Man, Wells Fargo Bank, Westerns

It's sad to say, but sometimes I guess I have an inferiority complex. It's not because I'm short (let's just say my stature is Alice B. Toklas-esque ), but more because of the size of my native country, El Salvador.

Don't get me wrong, I'm proud to be Salvadoran. My country is beautiful , with black sand beaches, waterfalls, great weather. And we make some delicious food . But when your nickname is El Pulgarcito de America ("The Little Thumb of America"), that's got to have an effect. At only 8400 square miles – about the size of Massachusetts – El Salvador is the smallest country in America  and one of the smallest in the world.

With the arrival of Hispanic Heritage Month , I've been thinking more about my family's heritage. Thinking about my life back in El Salvador, I asked my mom, "Why do I remember coffee beans when I think of my grandpa?"

My grandparents lived in the country and earned a living by selling fireworks . Fireworks are a very important part of any type of celebration in El Salvador. But on the side, my grandpa sold coffee from trees that grew on his property. Grandpa's parents were coffee growers , and these trees were the remnants of the labor and subsistence of preceding generations. I wish I could travel back in time to experience my great-grandparents' lives, which were so very different from mine.

Though I'm disconnected from the world they lived in, I realized this month that working with Wells Fargo's history lets me make connections with this past – connections which bring a smile to face. During the 1890s, the British built rail lines in El Salvador  to transport coffee across the country. Wells Fargo used these railroads as the infrastructure for its express business in the country. By 1916, Wells Fargo offices had appeared on most of the rail lines in El Salvador. I imagine my great-grandparents beginning their lives as coffee growers right about that time. I wonder: Did Wells Fargo express their coffee at some point?

Now I believe the name Pulgarcito is quite apt for my country. Anyone familiar with the tale of Tom Thumb  understands Pulgarcito. Though tiny, he was smart, prudent, sly, and "all he did prospered." El Salvador was not overlooked by important businesses of the time such as Wells Fargo, and it produced the family I'm happy to be a part of.

El Salvador definitely has something in common with its tiny namesake.

Posted by Ileana at 06:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Found in Agriculture, Coffee, Farmers, Latin America, Misc, Railroads, Wells Fargo Bank

Hispanic Heritage Month begins mañana. Keeping in the spirit of this important commemoration, I present another story from our illustrious Archives.

Esteban Ochoa was a native of Sonora, Mexico , who immigrated to Arizona Territory  in the 1850s. A pioneer businessman in Tucson , Ochoa ran a mercantile and freighting firm that delivered goods to settlements in the southwest. In those years, much of the region was still quite remote: Ochoa's services brought news and goods from the outside to isolated pioneers.

Esteban Ochoa became Wells Fargo's Agent in Pantano in 1880.

Ochoa had been elected Tucson’s third mayor five years earlier. He eventually served three distinguished terms in the Territorial government of Arizona. As an early advocate for public education in the territory, he crowned his political career by introducing legislation that established Arizona’s first public school system.

Posted by Charles at 03:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Found in Holidays, Latin America, Misc, Remember, Wells Fargo Bank

On February 15, 1898, the battleship USS Maine  exploded in Havana harbor. Cuba was in the throes of a rebellion against its Spanish overlords, and the US was concerned about its safety, as Cuba is only 90-some miles from the US border. The Maine was dispatched to Cuba to demonstrate American force and presence.

Meanwhile, Americans were itching for a fight. There are whole libraries of materials  about why this was so, but you can just start here . Mostly, historians attribute that impulse to "expansionism," the desire by Americans to get a piece of colonial action and get out in the world. Also, the world Americans knew in the 19th century was disappearing: "Local" was losing significance as the center of people's experiences, and the larger world was encroaching on daily life. Trains took people to the edge of the world, and industrial growth changed how and what they consumed. Newspapers had become a quick medium of messaging, as well as the primary medium. Like TV today, news broke fast and loud and was available almost immediately. And like TV today, the news was often suspect in its source.

On the night of February 15th, there was an explosion on the Maine, and she sank. The US was outraged, blamed Spain because the ship was in their harbor, and went to war . An era of imperial adventures began with the Maine incident. The whole thing was one big blow-up, so to speak, and got everyone into a lather. Newspapers sold copies, politicians made careers, restless boys were issued guns and given uniforms, and the nation acquired territory.

Mostly, Americans got their ya-yas out .

Posted by Charles at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Found in Latin America, Misc, Perspective, Remember, Wells Fargo Bank

As if it wasn't bad enough losing Frankie Laine  last winter...

The great Luciano Pavarotti  died the other day. He'd been ill for a few years and hadn't performed well in the years prior. But Pavarotti was a lovable guy and had a killer voice. Tenors can burn out early due to stresses on the voice, but Pavarotti was spot on for 40 years.

I like opera. But I'll qualify that by pointing out I do only by a process of elimination. I've listened to lots of recordings and have seen a fair number of live performances. The result is an appreciation for Wagner only when live, and French opera only on disc. I'll stand in the rain to hear Puccini and Mozart, but I'll ignore Verdi even if the ticket's free. It's what I hear that determines what I like, and I like Pavarotti.

Anyway, Pavarotti was one of those artists who hit the note where it was supposed to be hit. If there was an absolute dead-center of a note, he’d nail it. That puts him in exclusive company to my ears, along with Louis Armstrong  on trumpet, and of course, the perfect-est of the perfect, Ella Fitzgerald .  Pavarotti's voice is just so clear, and he had great abilities with the subtleties of drama. He made the Italian part of the music, too.

Luciano Pavarotti was the dude, one of opera's few "pop" stars who get non-opera people to listen to a note or two. Even in a less-than-flattering obituary  in the New York Times, Bernard Holland writes, "(Pavarotti) made a strong case for what his fame could do for opera itself."

To that point, Holland cites a 1998 interview with the tenor, who noted:

“I was lucky enough to make the first ’Live From the Met’ telecast. And the day after, people stopped me on the street. So I realized the importance of bringing opera to the masses. I think there were people who didn’t know what opera was before.”

The very worst part is that the standard for tenors is now Andrea Bocelli. In any case, Pavarotti went on to say:

“I think an important quality that I have is that if you turn on the radio and hear somebody sing, you know it’s me. You don’t confuse my voice with another voice.”

Here's a fine discography   to start you off with his singular voice. And you can turn it up, too. Nobody laughs at Pavarotti making the windows buzz, because everybody likes it.

Posted by Charles at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Found in Misc, Music, Opera, Wells Fargo Bank

September brings the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month , and I'll probably write several posts about it. My reasons are simple: there's lots to write about, and it's a topic I like. So there.

Latinos have been in America since it became America . Each region and nation has developed its own distinctiveness, which continues today as people move about, settle and live in different — sometimes multiple — areas.

In the late 18th century, Mexicans were expanding northwest into California to try and exploit the Pacific Coast. A couple generations later, Mexico got its independence from Spain — the US came soon after, in 1846. In the interim, Mexican people in California developed a short-lived, but romantic society: Californios. After annexation by the US, Californios' prominence quickly waned as their vast ranchos were broken up. Most died in sad circumstances, but one Californio was able to train his position and status.

General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo  rose through army ranks to become commander of the Northern Frontier. Vallejo deftly handled relations with the Russian outpost at Fort Ross , and kept an uneasy balance with John Sutter  to the east. He personally financed northern forces when the Mexican and Californian governments were unwilling to do so.

Vallejo determined that annexation by the US was the best way to resolve all the problems he had to control . But in an unfortunate paradox, Vallejo's holdings in Northern California were lost to title challenges soon after he participated in the constitutional convention as California neared statehood. This was a fate shared by many of the Rancheros from Californio days.

Vallejo's son, Platón Vallejo, was educated in the East and became California's first native-born medical doctor. In 1872, Gen. Vallejo was in San Francisco on business. He wrote to Platón and asked him to send along money by Wells Fargo Express because "aquí cuesta mucho vivir" ("it is expensive to live here"). A year later, Dr. Platón Vallejo transferred funds again, this time from Vallejo, California — the city named for his illustrious family — to the General at his home in Sonoma.

Posted by Charles at 03:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Found in Artifacts, First-hand Accounts, Gold, Holidays, Independence Day, Latin America, Misc, Perspective, Remember, San Francisco, Wells Fargo Bank