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State-Chartered American Commercial Banks, 1781–1801

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Benjamin J. Klebaner
Benjamin J. Klebaner
Affiliation:
Professor of Economics, The City College of New York
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Abstract

As is generally known, the 1790s was the first decade in which the American banking system expanded. Professor Klebaner has taken the trouble to ascertain the fate of the state-chartered banks founded in that decade. He has put his material into lists that we are glad to publish as a unique source of banking history.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , Winter 1979 , pp. 529 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1979

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References

1 Hammond, Bray, Banks and Politics in America, From the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton, 1957) 6Google Scholar, puts the number at 18. However, the Essex Bank was chartered only in 1799, and the Bank of South Carolina in 1801, though as Hammond states (144), both were doing business in 1794.

2 Van Fenstermaker, J., A Statistical Summary of the Commercial Banks Incorporated in the United States Prior to 1819, Kent State University Bureau of Economic and Business Research, Research Paper No. 2 (Kent, Ohio, 1965)Google Scholar, 4 shows $19,200,000 for the 32 banks of 1801, apparently excluding the Bank of the United States. Hammond (Banks and Politics, 144–145) gives a figure of $28,300,000 for the 29 he lists for 1800, including $10,000,000 for the Bank of the United States.

3 Davis, Joseph S., Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations (Cambridge, Mass., 1917), Vol. II, 108.Google Scholar

4 Virginia Acts 1792 c.76, Hening's Statutes at Large (Philadelphia, 1823), Vol. XIII, 592. Similar arguments were offered in a November, 1784 advertisement usging Maryland to charter a bank, quoted in Bryan, Alfred C., History of State Banking in Maryland (Baltimore, 1899), 17–18.Google Scholar On the contemporary discussion of the utility of banking, see Miller, Harry E., Banking Theories in the United States Before 1860 (Cambridge, Mass. 1927), 11–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Virginia Acts 1792, c.77 Hening's Statutes at Large, vol. XIII, 599; Christian, W. Asbury, Richmond: Her Past and Present (Richmond, 1912), 58–59.Google Scholar

6 Chadbourne, Walter W., A History of Banking in Maine, 1799–1930 (Orono, Me., 1936), 13Google Scholar, mentions an eighth charter (for a Rutland Bank in 1799). No such law was enacted. Rutland had altogether 1231 residents in 1810. Reed, Jonas, History of Rutland (Worcester, 1836)Google Scholar makes no mention of a bank.

7 Dillistin, William H., Directory of New Jersey Banks (n.p., 1942)Google Scholar. On North Carolina, see Knox, John Jay, A History of Banking in the United States (New York, 1900), 544Google Scholar; Boyd, William K., Currency and Banking in North Carolina (Durham, N.C., 191?) 17.Google Scholar Blodget, Samuel, Economica (Washington, 1806)Google Scholar lists a 1795 bank with $110,000 capital in Wilmington, but this never materialized; Atlanta Public Library. Georgia 1800–1900. Series 13 (Banks and Banking) (Atlanta, 1955), 268; Knox, A History of Banking, 573.

8 The Bureau of the Census Population Division shows 17 “urban places” with a 1790 population of over 4,400, and 21 with more than 5,000 in 1800. Two of these, Northern Liberties and Southwark, were annexed by Philadelphia in 1854 (unpublished Census table sent to author).

9 Wettereau, James D., “The Branches of the First Bank of the United States,” Journal of Economic History, vol. II (December 1942 Supplement), 79, 83, 88.Google Scholar Holdsworth, John T., The First Bank of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1910), 38Google Scholar erroneously gives 1799 for Washington and Norfolk and Savannah. The latter was opened in August 1802. (Wettereau, The Branches, 83.) The State Bank of South Carolina was incorporated under the same statutes as #22 (see footnote 13, below), but declined to accept this charter. (Clark, Washington A., The History of Banking Institutions Organized in South Carolina Prior to 1860 [Columbia, S.C., 1922], 56.)Google Scholar The 1801 charter was revoked and a new one issued in 1802. (South Carolina, Statutes at Large, vol. VIII, 6–14.) Lesesne, J. Mauldin has written a comprehensive monograph on The Bank of the State of South Carolina (Columbia, S. C., 1970).Google Scholar

10 Ricketson, Daniel, History of New Bedford (Boston, 1858) 80.Google Scholar On Savannah, see footnote 7, above; on Richmond and Norfolk, see Royall, William, History of Virginia Banks and Banking. (New York, 1907), 9–10.Google Scholar The first Norfolk-headquartered bank opened in 1837 (Ibid., 84). Starnes, George T., Sixty Years of Branch Banking in Virginia (New York, 1931), 29Google Scholar also mentions Bank of Virginia branches in Petersburg and Fredericksburg. The bank refused branches for Lynchburg and Winchester (41). For a generally useful list that, however, omits some banks, see Edinburgh Encyclopedia, (American edition of 1813), vol. III, 229, quoted in Gouge, William M., A Short History of Paper Money and Banking in the United States, from 1690 to 1832 (Philadelphia, 1842), 240.Google Scholar Ellis, Franklin and Evans, S., History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, (Philadelphia, 1883) 511.Google Scholar The Farmers Bank in Lancaster opened in 1810. (Edinburgh, Encyclopedia.) Weston, Thomas, History of Middleboro, Mass. (Boston, 1906), 299.Google Scholar

11 Weise, Arthur J., History of the City of Troy (Troy, 1876) 70.Google Scholar By an act of April 6, 1808 the charter was amended, permitting the bank to move to “the compact part” of Troy; the move was made (Ibid., 15). By 1805 Troy's population exceeded Lansingburgh's.

12 Hasse, William F. Jr., History of Banking in New Haven (New Haven, 1946), 6Google Scholar; The New Haven Bank, A Century and a Half of Banking in New Haven (New Haven, 1942), 7Google Scholar, 8, 12. The $100,000 capital originally specified was reduced to $50,000.

13 Gloucester: Massachusetts Acts and Laws 1800 c.5, preamble; South Carolina Statutes at Large, vol. VIII, 1–6. In a 1796 petition for incorporations, the bank claimed to have invigorated industry and helped commerce. (Lesesne, Bank of South Carolina, 7.)

14 Bank of New York was The Bank of New York NBA from 1865 to 1922, The Bank of New York from July to September 1922; Bank of New York & Trust Co., from September 1922 to July 1938; Bank of New York & Fifth Avenue Bank, April 1948 to May 1952; and The Bank of New York since 1952. Dillistin, … New York, 8. The original Bank of Delaware was acquired by the Security Trust Company in January 1930. The latter became the Equitable Security Trust Company in 1952 after another merger. The name Bank of Delaware was adopted in April 1958.

15 Thus the Bank of North America merged with Commercial Trust Company ($27,000,000) to become the Bank of North America and Trust Company in 1923. The latter (asserts $68,000,000) merged into the Pennsylvania Company for Insurance on Lives (assets $126,000,000) in 1929, which became the Pennsylvania Company for Banking and Trusts. Jay Cooke's historic First National Bank of Philadelphia (charter #1) merged into the latter in 1955, which became the First Pennsylvania Banking and Trust Company. The Providence National Bank merged in 1951 with the larger Union Trust Company to become the Providence Union National Bank. The latter (assets $173,000,000) merged in 1954 with the Industrial Trust Company ($313,000,000) to become the Industrial National Bank & Trust Company. Other examples are State Street Bank (5), Connecticut Bank & Trust Co. (6).

16 Chadbourne, History of Banking in Maine, 13; Gould, William E., “Portland Banks,” Maine Historical Society Collections and Proceedings, 2nd Ser. vol. IV (1893), 91–92Google Scholar; Willis, William, History of Portland, 2nd ed. (Portland, 1865), 571.Google Scholar

17 Walsh, John J., Early Banks in District of Columbia 1792–1818 (Washington, D.C., 1940), 56Google Scholar (Catholic University School of Social Science, Studies in Economics, vol. II); Cole, David M., The Development of Banking in the District of Columbia (New York 1956), 56Google Scholar, 57, 532. In 1827 the shareholders of the Bank of Columbia resolved to sell the bank building to the Bank of the United States (Howe, Charles E., “Financial Institutions of Washington City in its Early Days,” Columbia Society Records, vol. 8 [1905], 14).Google Scholar The trustees to liquidate the Bank of Alexandria were not discharged until about 1848 (Howe, 9). This bank passed from Virginia to Federal Jurisdiction with the grant of 10 miles square to D.C., retroceded in 1847. Stames, Sixty years of Branch Banking in Virginia, 24.

18 Bradbury, Anna R., History of the City of Hudson (Hudson, 1908), 94.Google Scholar

19 Bryan, State Banking in Maryland, 89, 91; Scharf History of Baltimore, 784. On the contraction see Temin, Peter, The Jacksonian Economy (New York, 1969), 59–68.Google Scholar

20 Holdsworth, John T., Financing An Empire – History of Banking in Pennsylvania (Chicago, 1928), II, 570.Google Scholar Howell, George R., History of the County of Albany (New York, 1886), 529Google Scholar; Munsell, Joel, Collections on the History of Albany (Albany, 1867), II, 84.Google Scholar

21 W.A. Clark Banking in South Carolina Prior to 1860. 260; Lesesne, Bank of South Carolina, 182.

22 The Nantucket Bank, originally chartered for 10 years (Act of February 27, 1795), was continued to the first Monday in October 1812 by Act of March 3, 1806 and extended to 1816 (but no new business after 1812) by Act of June 24, 1812, ch. 57. The Federally-chartered Bank of the United States had a twenty-year existence, 1791–1811.

23 13 Statutes at Large 99 §44 (1864); Comptroller of the Currency, Annual Report 1865, 4.

24 13 Statutes at Large 469 (1865).

25 Lewis, Lawrence, History of the Bank of North America (Philadelphia, 1882), 116.Google Scholar

26 Charter numbers are listed in Tables 1 and 2. The first 1865 charter was # 683, and the last, # 1626. The first of the 1865 converting banks in our tables (14) was # 952 and the last # 1532 (27). The Newport Bank was already included in a report of condition as of the first Monday of October 1865, published in the 1865 Annual Report of the Comptroller of the Currency.

27 Bank #15 became part of #7, and #16 part of #4. Bank #17 eventually became part of an Albany bank founded in 1803, State Bank of Albany.