Bank Cancels: The Corn Exchange Bank

THE CORN EXCH BANK

MAR

14

NEW YORK CITY

I figure the cancel, if complete, would read The Corn Exch Bank.  

 

The Corn Exchange Bank was a retail bank founded in 1853 in New York state. Over the years, the company acquired many community banks. In 1855, the Corn Exchange Bank moved into an existing building in New York City at the northwest corner of William and Beaver Streets in Manhattan. In 1894, the bank completed its new headquarters, an 11-story building designed by Robert Henderson Robertson located at 11-15 William Street. Between 1923 and 1925, together with a number of other New York banks, it held a small stake in the Connecticut-chartered Bank of Central and South America. In 1929, it was renamed the Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company. In 1954, it merged with Chemical Bank and the combined entity took the name Chemical Corn Exchange Bank. After Chemical Corn merged with New York Trust Company in 1959, the words "Corn Exchange" were dropped, creating the Chemical Bank New York Trust Company.

Insurance Cancels: A. J. Reibling & Son, Rochester, New York

 

A. J. REIBLING & SON.

1898

from the Rochester City Directory of 1933

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Harry L. Horton

 

Harry L. Horton, from The Stock Exchange in Caricature, 1904:

Mr. Horton must have been well known for telling stories, even if he was only talking to himself.

From the website of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Athens & Sheshequin:

Harry L. Horton, Millionaire New York Banker

December 14, 2020Written by Katie Replogle

Throughout their respective histories, the Athens and Sheshequin Universalist Societies have received donations from people who were, as far as I can tell, never members of either congregation.  Most of these non-member donors were local residents, but in 1895 one donation came from a wealthy and prominent New York City financier.

In 1893 the trustees of the Sheshequin Universalist Society resolved to install an iron fence around the cemetery.  Donations were solicited, and about $150 was collected from fifteen people over the next year or two.  One of the donors was “H. L. Horton,” who gave $25.

Although the Hortons were the most numerous family in Sheshequin at this time, only a few of them were recorded as members of the Universalist Society, and “H. L. Horton” was not one of those few.  Ever curious about these non-member donors, I searched the 1900 census of Sheshequin and found four Horton men whose first names started with “H.”  But, after several hours of digging through on-line archives, I was ready to admit defeat.  None of these men seemed likely to be the donor.

Then it struck me: $25 was a lot of money in 1895, equivalent to about $750 today.  “H. L. Horton” was no ordinary donor.  I remembered Harry L. Horton, the Sheshequin native whom the local newspapers referred to as the “millionaire New York banker.” He could easily have given $25 in 1895.

Harry Lawrence Horton was born in Sheshequin in 1832 to William B. Horton and Melinda Blackman (a daughter of 1833 member Franklin Blackman).  Harry’s three sisters, Elizabeth Horton Kinney, Amazilla Horton Kinney, and Mary Horton Shores, were all members of the church in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Harry left Sheshequin at the age of 21 and spent about eleven years in business in Milwaukee, WI, before moving to New York City in 1865.  There he founded H. L. Horton & Co., a brokerage and banking firm, with offices on Broadway in lower Manhattan.  Later he set up offices in London and Paris.  Horton was a member of the New York Stock Exchange.

Harry L. Horton’s business and social life connected him with many prominent and wealthy people.  His daughter Blanche married Edward Francis Hutton, the founder of the E. F. Hutton brokerage firm.  In 1895 Horton hosted a dinner for the Duke of Marlborough and local businessmen.  In 1914 he was photographed with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

But Harry retained an attachment to his home town and his rural roots.  He was active in the Bradford County Society of New York City (yes, there was such a thing!).  The 200 (all male) members were Bradford County natives who lived and worked in New York City.  Every year they held a dinner at a posh New York hotel, where they joked about life in Bradford county and sang humorous songs.  At one of these events, Horton, who was the president of the society at the time, led the group in “the battle song of Bradford county, the chorus and all the verses of which run:

“We’ll take him down

“To the old frog pond

“And sou-wow-wowse him in!”

Harry Horton also visited family and friends in Bradford county periodically.  Local newspapers noted that he was here in 1897, 1901, and 1912.  He may have also visited in 1895, when he donated toward the cemetery fence.  In that year he also gave a “fine bell” to the Methodist Episcopal church in Black (Sheshequin township), “near which place he spent his boyhood days.”

Harry Horton died at his home in Manhattan on Dec. 17, 1915.  To the surprise of many, his estate was valued at “only” $300,000 (about $7.5 million in 2020 dollars), not the millions he was thought to have had.

Promissory Notes: The Chateaugay Ore & Iron Company Buys Dynamite

 Chateaugay Ore & Iron Co miners c.1920 under Lyon Mountain in New York state

The Chateaugay Ore & Iron Company, located at Lyon Mountain, New York in the Adirondacks, was built on a substantial deposit of iron ore starting in the mid-1800s.  The owners of the company, Andrew Williams and Smith Weed of Plattsburgh, NY, made huge fortunes in the 19th century.  By 1902, surveys discovered that the deposit was far larger than originally estimated, extending the life and value of the mine and company.  Iron from the company is a part of the Brooklyn, George Washington, and Golden Gate Bridges.  By the 1960s, miners had to operate at a depth of 3500 feet, and with the expense of such deep mining the site was closed by 1967.

The company would have been a major user of dynamite in the mining process.  The Clinton Dynamite Company was one of their providers:

Six month promissory note by Chateaugay Ore & Iron Company to the Clinton Dynamite Company for $2392.77, March 29, 1901

Stamps on reverse side of promissory note with copy of R172p:

C. O. & I. CO.

MAR 29 1901

NEW YORK.

Reverse side of promissory note:

Unfortunately this note does not tell us how much dynamite was purchased.

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:

The Eagle Paper Company of Richmond, Virginia

 

EAGLE PAPER CO.

APR

24

1900

RICHMOND, VA.

Advertisement in the Richmond Times Dispatch of April 27, 1907:

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Walter S. Gurnee

 

While it appears below that Walter S. Gurnee Jr. was fond of wine and cigars and the trappings of wealth, his father, Walter S. Gurnee Sr., was the far more distinguished and accomplished of the two, having amassed a fortune from scratch and become Mayor of Chicago.  Walter Sr. was also a founding member of the Chicago Board of Trade.  It is clear where the money and connections came from to establish Jr. with a seat at the New York Stock Exchange.

Humbert Tin Plate Company

HUMBERT

JAN

2

1899 

TIN PLATE CO.

George J. Humbert

From The Progressive Men of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 1899 and its biography of George J. Humbert, builder and owner of the Humbert Tin Plate Company:

The Humbert Tin Plate Company has from the start had a market for all its product.  Its brand, "Humbert," is a favorite everywhere.  It was the first American tin-plate company to break down the barrier the Welsh tin-plate manufacturers had built up on the Pacific Coast.  It began to ship its plates there in trial lots.  Purchasers soon discovered that they were actually superior to the Welsh plates.  The "Humbert" captured the market in a brief time.  In 1898 the association of capitalists to control the American tin-plate industry began to take shape.  George J. Humbert had demonstrated his genius for organization.  These men of millions called him into their councils.  Finally, in February, 1899, at Chicago, the great scheme of consolidating the tin-plate mills of America was consumated.  Mr. Humbert, the chief owner of one of the finest mills in America, was a factor in that great deal.  The consolidated company, obnoxiously known as the Tin Plate Trust, is the "American Tin Plate Company", incorporated under the laws of New Jersey with a capital stock of $50,000,000.  It includes 380 mills, all the mills in the United States except one.  The capitalization of the separate mills was enormously increased before the sell-out to the combine, the stock of the Humbert mill rating with the highest.

The American Tin Plate Company would be merged into US Steel.

The Eastern Tinware Company

 

EASTERN TINWARE CO.

Aug.

27

1898

PORTLAND, CONN.

From The Hartford Courant, May 10, 1999:

During the early part of the 20th century, the sounds of stamping echoed through the little town of Portland. The Eastern Tinware Co., also known as the American Stamping Co., produced various items made of tin.

"The products are plain and retinned stamped ware," reads the 1896 souvenir edition of The Middletown Tribune, which goes on to say, "the company also does galvanizing and retinning for outside people as well as stamping."

The company was located off the Air Line railroad near the Portland train station and covered about 3 acres. The site covered 40 acres if one includes the housing for the 400 to 450 workers. A private reservoir of 100,000 gallons supplied the factory and mills.

A spur off the railroad extended into the company's premises "thus affording superior facilities for receiving raw material and forwarding the manufactured product."

Traveling salesmen helped the factory thrive during the early 1900s.

"A corps of salesmen is kept continually on the road in the company's interest, selling jobbers and dealers throughout this country as well as foreign countries," read the Tribune.

But the corps of hawkers began to decline as the demand for tin fell and was replaced by a thirst for aluminum. The stamping company discontinued business in 1916.

Promissory Note of the Farmers & Mechanics National Bank of Georgetown, Washington, District of Columbia

 

Promissory note for $250 by Annie Theo Brown from the Farmers & Mechanics National Bank of Georgetown.  Collateralized with 7 shares of Washington Gas Light Co. stock.  Six cents tax paid on 2 cents per $100 or fraction thereof on promissory notes.

Farm. & Mec Nat. Bk.

AUG 18 1898

Georgetown, Wash. D.C.

Corner of Wisconsin and M Street NW in Georgetown, D.C., ground zero of Georgetown's shopping and commercial area.  The building is the former home of the Farmers & Mechanics and Riggs Banks, and is now a branch of PNC.  Farmers & Mechanics remains inscribed below the building's cornice.

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: George F. Cummings

AUG 27 1901

CUMMINGS & CO.

Mr. Cummings must have had a past that included acting.  By 1901 he was one of the most senior members of the New York Stock Exchange.

George F. Cummings in The Stock Exchange in Caricature from 1904:

Advertisement, Blue Pencil Magazine, September 1900

Triple Cut Cancelling Devices

Featured last Sunday on this site was a stock memorandum of sale with four pairs of $1 R184, all stacked on top of each other and cancelled with three cuts that penetrated all 8 stamps and the memo itself.  The cuts were simple, penetrating the paper and not perforating or removing paper in the process.  The purpose of that post was to feature the eight stacked stamps; today will feature the cutting devices and other types of cut cancels.

Down below is reprised the circular from the Commissioner of Revenue and the Treasury that mandated these cuts that was initially issued on December 1, 1899.  By January of 1990, businesses had rushed in to supply the necessary equipment to apply the 3 cut cancels efficiently.  Two firms advertised their new cutting devices in the January 6, 1900 edition of The American Stationer.  David Thompson tipped me to the first of the adverts below:

Advertisement references the new regulations requiring the cutting of revenue stamps.

The circular ordering the mutilation with three cuts:

There are numerous types of this three cut cancel mandate that show up on the dollar value revenue stamps.  Here are a few examples:

DeHaven & Townsend stock sale memo for 100 shares of Western Union Telephone Company to Eames & Moore.  The three cuts are prominent on the left stamp.  The sale of the shares took place less than two weeks before the end of the tax period, June 30, 1902.  Curiously, a section of overprint on the right stamp is missing.  Both stamps show the varnish square.  This type of cut cancel with the somewhat jagged cuts is one of the most common.

Thomas Denny & Company cancelled R184 with three very close parallel and non-jagged cuts aligned with the bottom and centered on the ink cancel .  It appears as if the cancelling device combined the ink cancelling and the cutting processes.

G. M. Carnochan & Company cancelled R185 pair.  The cancelling device, like the Denny device above, includes the cutting device with the inking device.  However, the cuts are to the side of the cancel and not the bottom and the device supplies ink to the cuts as well.  A curiosity is that the date tablet is upside down relative to the company's initials.

Harry Content's cancelled stamps commonly feature these more dramatic 3 parallel perforations.  Often they serve to mutilate the stamps beyond collectability.  The stamp on the left is practically confetti despite being hinged to an album page.

Cotton Brokers: Lehman Brothers

LEHMAN BROS

NOV  16 1899

Lehman Brothers are most famous as a New York financial firm that crashed and burned during the 2008 financial crisis.  I'm not a scholar of their collapse but I would assume they speculated just a bit too much on the long side of mortgage derivatives.  But while the firm grew in the 20th century to become a major player in finance, their origins were a bit more humble, as they began as southern "cotton factors" that brokered cotton between producers and American and European industrial buyers.  

Lehman Brothers has several types of cancels that can be found in the 1898 period.  The normal circular dates stamps I would assume were part of regular New York trading activity.  But the more interesting type shown here might have been from transactions at their more southerly operations.  I'm looking for on-document Lehman Brothers examples to know.

Bill of Exchange Fragments: The Canadian Bank of Commerce

The Canadian Bank of Commerce merged with the Imperial Bank of Canada in 1961 to form the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), now one of the Big Five Canadian banks.

 Reverse side of document fragment:

THE CANADIAN BANK OF COMMERCE

AUG

18

1900

front side of document fragment:

Seal of Canadian Bank of Commerce:

CANADIAN BANK OF COMMERCE - 1867

While the Canadian Bank of Commerce was in the business of facilitating international trade, in part through the example of the bill of exchange fragment above, the bank also played a significant role in the expansion of businesses to Canada's extensive western prairie regions.  Vestiges of that expansion remain:

Canadian Bank of Commerce National Historic Site of Canada

201 Main Street, Watson, Saskatchewan

General view of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, showing its neo-classical style, evident in its three-bay facade with classical decorative treatment, particularly the pedimented front gable with bulls-eye window and heavy dentilled cornice, fluted pilaster © Parks Canada Agency / Agence Parcs Canada, 1990.

Heritage Value

The Canadian Bank of Commerce was designated a national historic site in 1976 because of its prefabrication technology and the entrepreneurial imagination of the bank. The heritage value of this site resides in its historical associations with the expansion of eastern banks into the Canadian west as illustrated by the building’s physical characteristics.

The former Canadian Bank of Commerce (CBC) bank at Watson, Saskatchewan is the largest surviving example of the prefabricated bank buildings erected by the CBC in railway towns across the prairies. Designed by Toronto bank architects Darling and Pearson, and prefabricated in Vancouver by British Columbia Mills, Timber and Trading using a patented sectional wall system, the bank structures were shipped by railway to newly established towns and assembled within days. The neo-classical styling of these wood-frame buildings mimicked the stone and brick bank buildings of larger urban centres at a minimum cost, and projected the same air of respectability and confidence. By erecting these buildings quickly and early, the bank hoped to monopolize local trade. The use of three standard designs created by Darling and Pearson allowed the bank to convey a consistent and immediate impression of stability, at a minimum investment. Erected in 1906-07 using the largest of the three designs, the Watson Bank is the most intact example. While other banks also made use of prefab technology, it was the CBC that most fully exploited the potential of the prefab banks and made them enduring features of the western Canadian landscape.

Source: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, Minutes, June 1976.

New York Stock Brokers in Caricature: Sylvester L. Blood

Stock Memo of Sale for 20 shares of what appears to be Consolidated Ice Company to John Wallace & Company

 

Stock memo of sale for 100 shares of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway to Eames & Moore

Mr. Blood must have owned an early automobile powered by benzene in addition to his yacht, somewhat standard equipment for wealthy New York bankers and brokers of the day.