Recently in History Category

Molly Murphy

With the official start to Hispanic Heritage Month  this week, Wells Fargo and Wachovia team members will be canvassing communities around the country to celebrate and recognize this important event.

The celebration of the month , from September 15 through October 15, is a time to recognize all the significant contributions of Hispanic Americans to the United States as well as to celebrate Hispanic heritage and culture. 

Why September 15? Because it's the anniversary of independence of five Latin American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. Mexico and Chile celebrate their independence on Sept. 16 and Sept. 18, respectively.

Wells Fargo and Wachovia have long and proud histories of serving Hispanic communities. Our heritage of more than 150 years includes services both for and by the Spanish-speaking settlers of the West and the Americas. Wells Fargo's people, places and business extended from the old ranchos of California, the rail lines of an emerging modern Mexico, and offices throughout Central America and the Caribbean.

As another way to celebrate, participating Wells Fargo and Wachovia stores are offering a free CD with the music of many popular Latino artists, including Enrique Iglesias , Cristian Castro , and Tito Nieves!  If you're a Wells Fargo customer, just open a new Wells Fargo Checking Package®. Wachovia customers can open a checking account, along with services including a debit card, savings account and online banking — all of which can help your finances keep up with the changes in your life.

We're so excited to share in the pride of celebrating this month with our Latino customers and team members!

Marianne Babal

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.

Marianne Babal

There has been a lot of talk on this blog about timing and names changes. Some folks think Wells Fargo should do name-change conversion faster — others favor a more gradual, deliberate approach.

No matter what your viewpoint, one major business group of our combined company has (as you know) already taken on its new moniker: Wachovia Securities officially became Wells Fargo Advisors on May 1.

Other recent blog posts have addressed the name change and goals of Wells Fargo Advisors, but I thought I'd share a little bit about the history of this group, based in St. Louis, and who are now representing Wells Fargo there — and around the nation — as Wells Fargo Advisors.

First of all, why St. Louis? Because in 1887, a prominent St. Louis businessman and banker named Albert Gallatin Edwards launched a new brokerage business there. The fact that Edwards embarked on creating a new firm at age 75 is remarkable in itself, but in reality, the founding of A.G. Edwards & Sons was merely a capstone in his outstanding career .

Born in Kentucky in 1812 and named with great foresight after a Secretary of the Treasury , Edwards grew up in Illinois, where his father Ninian  served as governor and U.S. Senator. Young Albert G. Edwards graduated from West Point, and while stationed near St. Louis, met and married Louise Cabanne, daughter of a prominent St. Louis family. Soon afterward A.G. resigned his military commission to enter the wholesale business in St. Louis.

Edwards' business acumen and family connections in Missouri and Illinois helped him succeed. In Illinois, Edwards' brother, Ninian W.,  became brother-in-law to a young ambitious lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, and Ninian's home in Springfield hosted the wedding of Lincoln and Mary Todd (sister of Ninian Edwards' wife Elizabeth ) in 1842.

The family connection to Lincoln, in part, prompted A.G. Edwards to fight for the Union cause in Missouri. As a reward, President Lincoln named A.G. Edwards Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in April, 1865, just six days before his assassination.

Edwards parlayed his Treasury and banking experience into instant credibility for his new St. Louis stock, bond and investment brokerage business, which became the first St. Louis broker to handle transactions on the New York Stock Exchange. A.G. Edwards & Sons — the sons being Benjamin Franklin Edwards, George Lane Edwards, and Albert Ninian Edwards — earned its customers' trust through conservative management, avoiding market failures in the volatile 1890s.

A.G. died in 1892, but his descendants ran the firm for the next century.

The A.G. Edwards firm bought a seat on the NYSE in 1898, and although it also opened an office on Wall Street, the management of A.G. Edwards remained firmly rooted in St. Louis and characteristic Midwestern values. A focus on individual customers and managerial and philosophical distance from Wall Street helped A.G. Edwards emerge from the great stock market crash of 1929 with relatively few losses. And after World War II, the company brought a new determination to make brokerage services directly available to individual investors through a series of branch offices.

Now, as Wells Fargo Advisors, the customer-centric values cultivated over generations bring new opportunities to join together and fulfill Wells Fargo's own long-standing visions and values: Satisfy all of our customers' financial needs and help them succeed financially.

Marianne Babal

Although stagecoaches are most often associated with dusty trails of the western frontier , stages played a starring role in early transportation in areas of the South and Northeast — Wachovia's back yard — as well.

"The finest vehicles in the world without any dispute are stagecoaches," a Boston newspaper declared in 1825. And at the time, they were. After all, these vehicles, the first public transportation, carried "the young and old, the rich and the poor, the great and small, male and female, of all ranks and conditions."

Stagecoaches also carried mail. The Post Office of the young United States encouraged mail delivery along newly-constructed post roads, and designed "United States Mail Stages" to carry out the job. A growing network of stagecoach lines covered mail routes from New England to Virginia and into the southern states.

In the 1820s, stagecoaches traveled the "Upper Road," on a regular schedule from Fredericksburg, Virginia, thru Greensboro, Salisbury, and Charlotte, North Carolina, en route to Laurens, South Carolina. Other stage lines connected Nashville, Tennessee, and Huntsville, Alabama; Charleston, South Carolina and Augusta, Georgia; Fayetteville and Wilmington, North Carolina; Louisville, Kentucky and Vincennes, Indiana; and hundreds of other towns and cities.

By the 1850s, early railroads added some new transportation options, but where the Iron Horse did not run, horse-drawn stagecoaches  still carried passengers and the mail to most towns. Stages traveled at an average speed of about five miles per hour. In 1858 the 197-mile journey by railroad and stage between Montgomery and Mobile, Alabama still took a grueling 33 hours. Horse teams were changed at relay or swing stations about every 12 miles, while taverns providing meals and beds were spaced approximately 40 miles apart.

According to my colleague Bob Chandler, taking a trip on a stagecoach was definitely "an experience." He gives one traveler's colorful description of an 1868 stagecoach journey from Georgia to Alabama on our sister blog, Guided By History. Another colleague, Charles Riggs, shares some nice 1860s packing tips for those traveling on a stage....

Marianne Babal

With Women's History Month  almost over, I thought I'd take one more opportunity to share some of Wells Fargo's history as it relates to women, who have been among the company's most valuable customers and team members since our early days.

Did you know that today, women make up more than half of Wells Fargo's banking team members? Actually, women have been the majority of the Wells Fargo workforce since World War II, but Wells Fargo's history of hiring women goes back much further.

Wells Fargo hired its first known female employee in 1873 in Palmyra, Nebraska, where Mary Taggart ran Wells Fargo & Co's express office and also worked as the town's railroad and telegraph agent. She was just the first of over 350 women who managed Wells Fargo offices from 1873 to 1918.

Wells Fargo's policy on hiring women was markedly different than one of its major competitors in the express industry, whose president actually stated that he preferred to close his company's offices in some locations if a suitable man could not be found to run the place.

Wells Fargo left the express transportation business in 1918, but at the Company's bank in San Francisco and financial institutions and industry around the nation, women began playing a greater role in the workforce.

In the day when entering a bank to do your banking business meant walking through cigar smoke and around cuspidors  on the floor, many banks — including Wells Fargo, Norwest, and Wachovia — opened special banking departments for the convenience and comfort of women customers. Not only that, female tellers were the ones who managed customer relationships.

During World War II, women entered the banking workforce in large numbers. At Wells Fargo, for example, in 1938 two-thirds of bank employees were male. But 1942 numbers had flipped to a workforce 65% female. Women filled agent, teller, clerical, and eventually management jobs.

Wachovia has its own great history of hiring and employing women too, as Wachovia archivists Sue Choate and Trudy Cox tell us on our sister blog, Guided By History. Sue tells the story of Miss Jay Spencer Knapp, Atlanta's first female bank officer, and Trudy writes about Wachovia's hiring of women as far back as 1909.

All in all, both Wells Fargo and Wachovia are proud of the many significant contributions of women in our past and, I'm sure, in our future.

Marianne Babal

On March 18, 1852, a group of businessmen gathered in the Astor House hotel  on Broadway in New York City. The purpose of their meeting? Forming a new company to conduct banking business and provide express transportation service on the Pacific Coast.

March 18 marks the 157th birthday of Wells Fargo & Company. Between them, Henry Wells and William G. Fargo had decades of experience as successful entrepreneurs, and both men saw great opportunity in the growing West.

But when they couldn't convince their fellow founders and directors of the American Express Company to expand the business out to the gold fields of California, Wells and Fargo assembled a group of investors who contributed $300,000 in start-up capital to form Wells, Fargo & Co.

Wells and Fargo chose experienced banker Reuben Washburn and express industry veteran Samuel P. Carter to represent their new company in San Francisco. It took the men a month to travel west by steamship, and three months more to set up shop before Wells, Fargo & Co. opened its doors on Montgomery Street July 13, 1852.

Nearly 4 million ounces of gold would flow from California's mines  that year, almost all of it shipped east. Miners wanting to send funds to families left behind on the East Coast came to Wells Fargo's banking counter to buy an exchange that could be cashed in New York, Boston, and dozens of other eastern cities, including Albany, Hartford, Cincinnati, Louisville, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Montreal and Toronto. The company's first customer on opening day purchased an exchange note sending $100 to Mrs. Sophie Parker of Buffalo, New York.

These exchanges and the gold to back them went east by steamer twice a month. On the night before the steamer sailed, Wells Fargo's office in San Francisco stayed open until midnight to accommodate customers' business. "Not a man sleeps the night before the steamer leaves," wrote Henry Wells, who in February, 1853 took a turn manning the late-night banking counter himself.

One hundred and fifty-seven years later, though the size of the building has changed, the company headquarters of Wells Fargo & Company is on virtually that same spot on Montgomery Street where Wells Fargo began in 1852.

And while I don't know if Henry Wells and William Fargo could conceive of their business (not to mention their names) growing as big as it is today, their commitment to helping our customers succeed financially remains the same as it did when a tired but satisfied Henry Wells wrote by oil lamp in 1853: "This is a great country and a greater people."

Matt Wadley

As a diehard NY Mets fan, I must admit that it pains me slightly to introduce a blog about the home of the 2008 World Series Champion Philadelphia Phillies. While not a rivalry on par with Yankees-Red Sox, the Phillies and Mets have battled for National League supremacy for the last few years...with the Mets recently ending up with the short end of the stick more often than not.

But I digress. As we've already done with Charlotte, San Francisco and Minneapolis-St. Paul, our Philadelphia blog continues our series on cities where Wells Fargo and Wachovia have significant histories. And as you're about to find out, Philly's got plenty of history. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to my colleague Jim Baum. While Jim now makes his home in the burbs of Philly, he's lived in and around the city for the last 22 years, loves the Phils, and knows all the good cheesesteak spots.

Being home to 42 Wachovia stores, with even more out in the suburbs, Philadelphia can now boast over 7,000 combined Wachovia and Wells Fargo team members in its metropolitan area. Truth is, we've been a part of the community here for over two centuries — some of our more notable financial ancestors are Fidelity Bank, Philadelphia National Bank, First Pennsylvania Bank and the Pennsylvania Company.

The deep roots laid down by our banking ancestors (some begun by the founding fathers of our country!) brought us expertise in commercial finance, maritime lending and international banking — a department that's still headquartered here in Philadelphia. And today, as Wells Fargo and Wachovia join together, we continue to use that expertise to help you.

Just as the United States got its start as a country in Philadelphia, so did our banking system. In fact, Wachovia's heritage stretches back to the first commercial bank in the United States — the Bank of North America  — which was founded here in 1781. In 1863, another bank, The First National Bank of Philadelphia, was the first to be granted a Federal Bank charter.  This isn't the first time Wells Fargo has been to Philadelphia, either. We opened our first express office here in 1914. So all told, you can say our family tree has a branch that started growing 228 years ago!

Philadelphia is really an incredible place. It's one of the world's most historic and walkable cities, and is also the hub of a region with almost 6 million people. The area has undergone an amazing transformation since World War II, as it's moved from being a center of heavy industry to becoming a place where the latest advances in biotech and pharmaceutical research are created.

There are also 88 colleges and universities  here, though I have to admit I'm partial to Temple University.  After all, it's where I earned my MBA and where I still have season tickets for one of the most...well, "character-building" football teams in NCAA Division 1.

See, for a long time Temple football wasn't just bad — it was mind-numbingly awful. Being on the losing end of scores like 56-7, 35-0 and 42-3 were common when they played a Big East schedule. Oh the memories...the pain! But I'm happy to report that, under head coach Al Golden and a member of the Mid-America Conference, we now play close to .500 football. I hope Temple football has turned the corner and that my long-suffering allegiance will someday be rewarded with a bowl game....

Marianne Babal

As Valentine's Day  approaches, we probably all think fondly of special people and role models in our lives. Or maybe we simply anticipate a special Valentine's card from a child who spent lots of effort and tons of glue making it for you.

Wells Fargo had its own special Valentine: John J. Valentine, president from 1892-1901.

This tall, lanky Kentucky native joined Wells Fargo in 1862 as the company's express and stagecoach agent at Strawberry, California. Valentine's job was to keep stages, mail, and valuable express packages moving over the mountain road to Nevada's Comstock mines — no easy task.

The snow fell so deep in February, 1867, that on one trip Valentine traveled all day and made just four miles along the shore of Lake Tahoe.  On March 24, The Daily Trespass of Virginia City reported that Valentine "has had a very rough time of it in the Sierras this winter, trying to keep the coaches of the company going, but he seems to thrive on labor and perplexities."

The indefatigable Valentine advanced to Wells Fargo's general superintendent in 1869. He engineered Wells Fargo's expansion nationwide in 1888, successfully negotiating contracts on the Erie Railroad that brought Wells Fargo into New York City and coast to coast by rail.

Valentine earned a reputation as a determined leader and a devoutly religious man and humanitarian, who personally led charitable efforts among employees collecting relief funds for victims of the Chicago Fire of 1871 , Yellow Fever epidemic at Memphis  in 1873, Mississippi Valley floods  of 1874 and other disasters.

His Rules & Instructions to Employees of Wells Fargo & Co's Express in 1888 read in part:

The most polite and gentlemanly treatment of all customers, however insignificant their business, is insisted upon. Proper respect must be shown to all — let them be men, women or children, rich or poor, white or black — it must not be forgotten that the company is dependent on these same people for its business.

Marianne Babal

We pride ourselves on the diversity of our team members who make up Wells Fargo, but that diversity also reaches back through time to our customers as well. And since today is Chinese New Year's, we thought we'd share with you a little about our commitment to and history with the Chinese and Chinese-American communities throughout the years!

The Chinese community in California was among Wells Fargo's earliest and most loyal customers. In fact, when Wells Fargo started in 1852, they were already in the state and a dependable clientele.

California's Chinese residents (some 10%  of the State's population in the 19th century)  worked in the mines , on the railroads , and in agriculture.  Others were merchants. All of them needed financial services. Wells Fargo was happy to serve, and their business was integral to the company's early success. In the 1860s, Wells Fargo employed Tam Tong, a Chinese interpreter, in its San Francisco head office to serve its Chinese-speaking banking customers. Additionally, three special messengers in its Letter Express Department delivered mail in Chinatown. 

Chinese-Americans  were a significant portion of the business in Wells Fargo offices in smaller towns too, such as Folsom, California , where a quarter of money transactions involved Chinese customers. In 1875, when Chinese publisher Wong Sam produced an English-Chinese Phrase Book to facilitate communication, he included a list of Wells Fargo offices.

In 1873, 1878, and 1882, Wells Fargo produced bilingual merchant directories to facilitate commerce with and within the Chinese community. These directories listed 675 Chinese-owned businesses in San Francisco, plus hundreds more in Sacramento, Los Angeles, Portland, and other West Coast cities. Merchant butchers, cigar makers, druggists, grocers, restauranteurs, tinsmiths, and laundry owners were all valued customers — or potential customers — of Wells Fargo.

Our long-standing relationship with the Chinese community means Wells Fargo participates every year in San Francisco's Chinese New Year Parade , the largest celebration of its kind outside Asia. On February 7, 2009 the parade will celebrate the Year of the Ox , and includes a float featuring Wells Fargo's stagecoach among 100 marching units, plus a 200-foot long Golden Dragon that requires 100 men and women to carry it over the parade route, accompanied by crackles of over 600,000 firecrackers and the cheers of a half-million spectators.

People born in the Year of the Ox (which include President Barack Obama) are calm, dependable and honest. The Ox represents success through fortitude and hard work. Maybe the Ox will help us pull through the challenging weeks and months ahead!

I'd like to thank my colleague, Charles Riggs, whose earlier blog post on Guided by History supplied some of the statistics on the 19th century Chinese community mentioned here.

Ann Marie Quinn

Wow, what a week it's been for us all!

Monday we paid tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King , celebrating  his birth and many achievements.  And on Tuesday — Inauguration Day  — my daughter took her first ever high school final exams, and she was thrilled. Really!

Why? Because her first final wasn't until 10:20am, so she was able to watch the swearing in of our 44th President, Barack Obama. And hear his speech! 

At 14 years old, I think this was the first Presidential election and Inauguration  she fully understood and will remember: from selecting the candidates, to voting for them, to swearing in our new President.

Sure, I suppose she could have studied a little more for her exams...but I'll cut her some slack this time. After all, it was truly history in the making! 

In sticking to that theme, it's a privilege for me introduce you now to Selma Fox, who served as director of Women and Minority Owned Businesses at Wachovia. In this video, she expresses her feelings about the significance of the week's events and the importance of both Wells Fargo's and Wachovia's commitment to diversity. Enjoy!