Asian Pacific Heritage Month celebrates the histories of the many people from Asia and the Pacific islands who have built communities across America. May was chosen because in that month, in 1843, Japanese immigrants 
arrived in the U.S. And in May of 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed after Chinese workers succeeded in laying track through the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Historical and genealogical records show even earlier arrivals. Colonial records reveal indentured servants who came to the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries were East Indian. Filipino sailors aboard Spanish Galleons formed early Asian communities in America. In 1849, Chinese miners and merchants joined the gold rush across the Pacific to the land they called Gum Shan , "Golden Mountain." They soon became some of Wells Fargo's best customers.
Wells Fargo's financial services across the Pacific included Hawaii , still an independent kingdom in the 19th Century. By the early 20th Century Wells Fargo had Representative banking offices that connected U.S. and Asian business communities.
Wells Fargo had a large volume of telegraphic transfers of money with Hong Kong ($623,000 in 1909) and maintained correspondent relationships with banks in Canton, Hong Kong, Peking, Shanghai, and Tientsin.
In 1905, Wells Fargo staunchly advocated that financing international trade — the movement of merchandise — was among the soundest of banking principles. Frederick Lipman was the Cashier, the old-time equivalent to our modern CFO. He stated, "there was no other phase of banking which compared to it in the service it rendered and in the earnings it could generate."
