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Auction: SW1008 - Bonds and Share Certificates of the World
Lot: 448

Wells, Fargo & Co. Bill of exchange, 20 Golddollar. San Francisco, 9. September 1867. Nr. 312436. Small format, with brown tax stamp, small dampstains. VF. American history on paper: The American Express Company was founded on 18th March 1850, through the consolidation of three companies active in the express transport of goods, valuables, and specie between New York City and Buffalo, New York, and areas in the Midwest: 1) Livingston, Fargo & Company; 2) Wells & Co; 3) Butterfield & Wasson. American Express was at first an unincorporated association of investors with Henry Wells (1805-1878) as president and William George Fargo (1818-1878) as secretary. According to the Company bylaws from 1850, the American Express Company had to be dissolved on 31. December 1859. In November 1859 the Company was auctioned off and bought by Aaron Freeman from Schenectady, New York, for $600’000. Freeman was a straw man for the old owners. On 1. January 1860 the Second American Express Company was founded by exactly the same owners. By the end of the American Civil War, its business had flourished so much — with some 900 offices in ten states — that it attracted competition in 1866 in the form of Merchants Union Express Company. For two years the companies engaged in cut-throat competition and, on the verge of financial exhaustion, finally merged on 25th November 1868, to form the American Merchants Union Express Company, with Fargo succeeding as president. The Company was renamed American Express Company in 1873. On Fargo’s death in 1881, his younger brother, James Congdell Fargo (1829–1915), became president and guided the Company for the next 33 years, introducing innovations such as the American Express Money Order (1882) and the American Express Travelers Cheque (1891), and opening the first European office in Paris (1895). (Britannica). When the U.S. Federal government nationalized the express industry in 1918, thereby consolidating all domestic express operations in the American Railway Express Company, American Express turned to its banking operations and its relatively new travel services, which had been launched in 1915. The classic American Express green charge card was introduced in 1958. Today American Express is mainly a credit card issuer and payments processor that also provides travel-related services worldwide. It’s headquarters are in New York City.

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