Philadelphia Stock Brokers: Bioren & Company

 

BIOREN & CO.

From Who's Who in Philadelphia in Wartime, 1920

Germania Half Dollar Savings Bank, Wheeling, West Virginia

GERMANIA HALF DOL SAV. BANK

MAR

21

1901

WHEELING, W. VA.

from The Wheeling Intelligencer, Tuesday, July 3, 1917:

 New Home of the Germania Half Dollar Savings Opens

FIFTEENTH AND MARKET STREETS, WHEELING, W. VA.

Public opening of our new bank this evening, July 3, 1917 from 6 to 10 P. M. 

A cordial invitation is extended to the public to attend and see our splendid new home.

Wheeling's new banking house, the home of the Germania Half Dollar Savings bank, corner of Market and Fifteenth street, city, is ready for business, and this evening the general public will be given an opportunity to call and inspect this fine new banking house, which is a credit to the Wheeling district. The bank was designed by Fred F. Faris, who has drawn the plans for many of the finest banks in the Wheeling district.

The bank is located on the southwest corner of Fifteenth and Market streets and extends back to Alley B in the rear. It occupies the site of the old Reymann brewery, which was later the Wheeling Majority building, and also the old building on the corner. It is the very latest in architecture and strictly modern in every respect.

The building is the regulation type, but one story in height, but this story of course is as high as two ordinary building stories. It is strictly fireproof throughout and is as modern as money and skill can make it. The front is of granite and terra cotta. The doors are of bronze and the entrance is very ornate.

The interior of the building is made up of one spacious room, extending from the street front to the alley in the rear. The room is finished in marble wainscoting. The ceiling is centered by a large dome skylight. The alley wall has no windows and the entire lighting of the bank will be furnished by the spacious dome in the ceiling.

In the extreme rear there is a large concrete vault, reinforced with railroad iron. It is strictly burglar and fireproof and includes scores of safety deposit vault sections. The vault is equipped with the latest type bank vault door, a massive circular affair of steel, and equipped with intricate mechanism.

Extending towards the front from this vault are the bank offices, the spaces for the cashier, tellers, president and secretary, directors' room, etc. These arc of marble walls with ornamental bronze grating. Desks and other conveniences for patrons are located throughout the main bank lobby.

The Germania Half Dollar Savings bank has an interesting history. It was founded in April 1897, by the late George Hook, George K. Stifel, the late F. C. H. Schwertfeger, the late H. F. Behrens, Sr., and Paul O. Reymann. The first board of directors was composed of George Hook, Paul O. Reymann, A. G. Hadlich, Chris Vieweg, Jr., F. C. Driehorst, L. S. Good, H. F. Jones, C. M. Oliver, Sr., K. M. Holliday, W. O. McClusky and James McCamic.

Through years of struggles the bank has risen to foremost ranks until it is considered one of the strongest financial institutions of the country, its deposits have grown with rapidity and its semi-annual dividends were received by stockholders as regularly as clockwork. The bank has been located temporarily, during the construction of its new home, in the adjoining former Quarter Savings bank room.

The present officers are: F. C. Driehorst, president; A. G. Hadlich, vice president; Val G. Gundling, cashier; John Metzger, assistant cashier; Carl Lang, teller; Thomas S. Thoner, bookkeeper, and J. W. Lashley, messenger. Some of the present directors served on the first board. The board is made up of George W. Lutz, C. F. Bachmann, John H. Clarke, William H. Pfarr, C. M. Oliver, Sr., F. C. Driehorst, A. G. Fladlich, Louis Berthschy, L. S. Good and H. F. Jones.

With the above named officers the Germania Half Dollar Savings bank is sure to grow and promises to be one of the leading banks of the state. Its depositors are the very best people in the Ohio valley and it has gained a wide reputation through honest dealings with all. It is another monument in the field of progress and advancement in the Wheeling district.

 

1898 Documentary Perfin Cancels

Front                                      Back

P & Co

+4

30

01

Perfin cancel with initials and date.  This is the most complex and interesting perfin cancel that I have seen on the 1898 revenue stamp series.

Perfins.  For the unitiated, they serve to cancel stamps by punching small holes in the stamp that encode information.  They are often used to precancel stamps.  In a few cases on the 1898 revenue series, period size holes might spell out the initials of a brokerage firm.  Perfins are somewhat scarce on the 1898 series of documentary stamps.  They became a common form of cancel from 1914 on, and entire collections can be built on those perfined stamps.  But today will highlight 1898 perfins.  This post includes 3 unidentified perfins, 7 different NYSE firms, and 2 insurance companies.

Unidentified perfins:

• P & Company (possibly Pearl & Co.)
• FB... (possibly Finley Barrell & Co. or several others)
• AN & Company

New York Stock Exhange firm perfins:

• Price, McCormick & Company
• Ladenburg, Thalmann Company
• Edward Sweet & Company
• DeCoppett & Company
• DeCoppett & Doremus
• Lazard Freres
• P. J. Goodhart & Company

Insurance company perfins:

• New York Life Insurance Company
• Metropolitan Life Insurance Company

For the purpose of this article and in general, perfins do not include punch cancel initials or large punch outs, shaped or not.    These types of cancels will be featured in a comprehensive post in the coming weeks.  This post will also not cover generic perfins like those that spell out Cancelled or Paid, include only numbers, or are shapes.

The upper left stamp and the pair on the right are perfin style generic cancels, not specific to the user.  Cancels in the same class include those that say PAID. The bottom left stamp has simple punch cancels, not perfins.

Letter punch cancel, not a perfin cancel

The first example, and the most complex type of perfin on the 1898s, is that shown at the top of this post.  The cancel remains unidentified but possibly comes from the New York Stock Exchange firm Pearl & Company.  

A similar type of cancel to that above was used by a firm with the initials FB; unfortunately this is only a fragment of the cancel and there may be additional initials we cannot see.  It is clear, however, that firm initials and a date was encoded in the perfin cancel.  

FB??

+1

16

??

Finley Barrell (with a seat on NYSE) out of Chicago is a possibility, but there are other fims that might also be possible, including F. B. Cochran & Co. of New York.

AN & CO

A final unidentified cancel.  This perfin uses an identical ampersand form as that for the firm Edward Sweet & Company below, so it might be a stock exchange firm, or a company based in New York.

The perfin using firms that follow have all been identified.  They all used a simpler form of perfin that included only the initials of the firm and no date.   

Price, McCormick & Company

Ladenburg, Thalman Company

Bill of exchange fragment.  Dollar values are perfined.

Edward Sweet & Company

The old Scott catalog number is penciled on back

DeCoppet & Company

DeCoppet & Doremus

Lazard Freres

Bill of exchange fragment.  Perfins on stamps 10 cents and up.

P. J. Goodhart & Company

The old Scott Catalog number is penciled on back.

New York Life Insurance Company

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company

Cotton Brokers: Mohr, Hanemann & Company

 

William Mohr was a president of the New York Cotton Exchange and a principle of Mohr, Hanemann & Company with his partner, New Orleans-based Edward Hanemann.   William Mohr was of German ancestry, and during World War I was subject to slurs and the estrangement of friends due to the war.  He apparently took his own life as a result. My middle name is of German ancestry, and the story passed to me is that that side of my New Orleans-based family took to referring to themselves as French Alsatian rather than as German during WWI. 

New York Times, June 22, 1918:

"Stacked" Use of R184s on a Stock Sale Memorandum

Stamp washing and reuse was somewhat common on the 1898 dollar values, prompting ink experimentation that would help prevent effective cancel washing, and rules regarding stamp cancellation that required not only ink cancellation but mutilation through cuts or punch-outs.  

By late 1899, cancel washing and stamp reuse had become so common that the Commissioner of Internal Revenue made it mandatory for all revenue stamps of 10 cents or more be mutilated by three parallel cuts into the stamp.  So from January 1900, many of the dollar denominated revenue stamps are found with cut cancels.  The regulation seems to have been mostly ignored for the documentary battleships.

Today is featured 8 $1 stamps that have been appropriately cut cancelled.  However, they have been stacked on a stock sale memorandum.  While the regulations regarding cancelling don't address stacking the stamps this way, I do not believe this way of applying the stamps to the document would have been approved by revenue agents.

A Malcom & Coombe sale memorandum to Eames & Moore for 400 shares of Southern Railway requiring $8 of revenue stamps:

The stamps are stacked rather than spread out across the memo, making it difficult on quick inspection to insure that $8 worth of stamps were used.  Careful inspection indicates that there are 4 pairs of $1 stamps.

On the right side it is possible to see four layers of stamps

Reverse side of sale memo, focusing on the area behind the stamps.  The cut cancels penetrate all of the stamps and through the memo.

The main problem I see with this way of applying the stamps is that the bottom 6 stamps could have been used previously, all cancelled with ink and cuts, and we would never know as they are covered by the top two stamps.  Clearly, this way of applying high value stamps to documents is not common, as this is the first instance of stamp stacking I've come across on stock sale memos.  I am fairly sure that revenue agents would have fully disapproved of this practice.

I wanted to check whether there may have been a specific prohibition against this practice.  An 1899 internal revenue circular spoke to the new requirment for 3 parallel cut cancels.

Though certainly published in December 1899, the content of a circular from the US Commissioner of Internal Revenue was reprinted in The Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office, January 16, 1900:

A review of section six of the earler 1898 war revenue law makes no mention of a prohibition of stacking stamps before cancelling them.  However, the law does say:

That in any and all cases where an adhesive stamp shall be used for denoting any tax imposed by this Act, except as hereinafter provided, the person using or affixing the same shall write or stamp thereupon the initials of his name and the date upon wich the same shall be attached or used...

It seems to me that it is implicit that in order for the above to be enforced, all the stamps on the document must be visible.  At least in this sense the stacking on the Malcom & Coombe memo is not permitted.

Certainly, stacking wasn't necessary to fit all the stamps on the memo of sale.  Here are two examples of extensive real estate use on stock sale memos:

Mr. Feuchtwanger sold 600 shares of Southern Railway to Eames & Moore, requiring $12 of revenue stamps.  He or his clerk placed 12 $1stamps on the reverse side of the memo.

A. H. Combs & Company sold 1500 shares of Texas Pacific, requiring $30 of revenue stamps.  11 $2 stamps were placed on the front of the memo; 4 on the reverse.

W. S. Keyser & Company, Timber and Lumber Exporters

 

W. S. KEYSER & CO.

APR

1901

PENSACOLA, FLA.

Advertisement in the Florida Sentinel Annual of 1904

Mr. Keyser as a young and older man in the1910 Yale History of the Class of 1880.

Bill of Exchange Fragments: Illinois Trust & Savings Bank and the Story of the Wingfoot Air Express Crash

Back of bill of exchange fragment:

Ill. Tr. & Sav. Bk.

17

JUL

1901

CHICAGO

Front side of bill of exchange fragment:

The Illinois Trust and Savings Bank pioneered the establishment of the trust business in Chicago and the midwest, and became one of America's largest financial institutions in the early 20th century.  They also built a grand main bank building at the corner of Jackson and La Salle in Chicago, pictured on the postcard below:

The building would be severely damaged in 1919 when a Goodyear dirigible doing business as the "Wingfoot Express", crashed into the center of the roof, piercing the skylight of the central atrium and bringing with it the airship that was a ball of burning hydrogen by the time it made impact.  By the time the time the airframe hit the floor of the building, the gas tanks that fueled the airship's engine exploded.

Business hours were over by the time of the crash, limiting the carnage, yet still there were 10 deaths.  The building was seriously damaged.

A more fulsome version of the story can be found at the Chicagology website.