Circles of History

By now you know that Wachovia Securities has changed its name to Wells Fargo Advisors — we've written about it here previously. What you may not know is that the headquarters for Wells Fargo Advisors is St. Louis, Missouri , a city with a long tradition of new beginnings.

St. Louis has always been an important gateway to the frontier  and a jumping off place for western exploration and travel. In 1858 the first regularly scheduled cross-country stagecoach trip began in St. Louis, bound for San Francisco, 25 days and 2,800 miles away.

Wells Fargo helped organize and finance the Overland Mail Company , whose stagecoaches carried mail and passengers between St. Louis and San Francisco. The stage line became known as the "Butterfield Line"  after Overland Mail president John Butterfield.  Mail sent twice weekly by stage greatly improved mail service between eastern and western states.

On September 16, 1858, the first westbound mail left St. Louis by train to Tipton, where the mailbags were loaded aboard a stagecoach for the first leg of the stage journey west. The St. Louis mail arrived in San Francisco just after midnight on October 10. The first mail from California arrived in St. Louis on October 9, 1858, 24 days, 18 hours, and 26 minutes from San Francisco.

"A great fact is accomplished," proclaimed the Missouri Republican that day. "What hitherto has been regarded as a visionary and speculative enterprise has been established beyond all doubt, and St. Louis and San Francisco have been brought within 24 days' travel of each other."

The headquarters for the Overland Mail Company in St. Louis was located at 207 North Third Street. The three-story red brick building was less than a decade old when the stage company set up shop in 1858 in St. Louis' bustling riverfront commercial district. 

Eighty years later the building and its neighbors — over 37 city blocks in all — were torn down to clear land for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial  and its famous Arch.

I recently took another look at a photo of the old Overland Mail building in St. Louis, taken in 1936, shortly before its demolition. This time, something new caught my eye: a sign on the front of the forlorn building read "Hellman Bros."

The Hellman name is very familiar at Wells Fargo, where several generations of Hellmans served as bank presidents back to Isaias W. Hellman in 1905. And indeed, the Hellman Bros. of St. Louis were relatives of our banker I.W. His cousins Louis and Abraham Hellman engaged in the liquor business in St. Louis, while Isadore and Milton Hellman's fur warehouse occupied the historic building where so many stagecoach passengers had bought their tickets years before.

I'm constantly amazed at the intersections and intertwinings of history I uncover in our company's past. And I’m looking forward to learning even more as the integration of Wachovia and Wells Fargo continues.