Hi uzuiwek,
Thanks for the information on the Granville Banks.
I did not mean to imply that the “Bank of Granville” in Ohio issued $4 notes. I brought up the other banks to help tell the story of Rathbun and his machinations. I realize my thread was going off topic (from the $4 notes). That is why I asked at the end:” Is this kind of information interesting?”. I understand that Greg wants to make this discussion board more “active”. So Greg is it OK to veer off topic to facilitate further discussions and hopefully gain more understanding of obsolete notes and their issuers?
Getting back to Granville, Haxby indicates that the “Bank of Granville (1st)” existed between 1839 and 1842. This was confusing to me since Rathbun went to jail in August of 1836, that is, 3 years earlier. Wendell Wolka in “A History of Nineteenth Century Ohio Obsolete Bank Notes and Scrip” says:
Quote:
After a period of almost 20 years (my note: after the collapse of the 1st bank, The Granville Alexandrian Society in ~1817), the bank was revived in 1836, sporting a slightly different title of the Bank of Granville – the Granville Alexandrian Society. The second revival, however, was only minimally more successful than the first. In 1837, the bank suspended specie payments along with most other banking companies and was gone from the scene by late 1841 to early 1842.
The cause for its second failure was apparently that some $50,000 in the bank’s notes had been loaned out with the understanding that they would be put into circulation very slowly and very far away from home. The loan holder apparently failed and let the money fall into the hands of a Buffalo, New York bank which immediately sent all of the money back for redemption. A large number of notes were still in their unopened original packaging.
The notes that I have seen from this bank are typically dated 1839. The earliest that I had seen in the past was the $5 note illustrated in Wolka’s book on page 411 (W1211-09) that is dated May 1, 1837. Heritage sold a $3 (Haxby G18) with the May 1, 1837 date on 9/21/2005. This was a year
after Rathbun was jailed.
Now you present a $5 note and label it as “common”. To me the note is NOT “common” since it is dated July 4, 1836. This is the same date as on my $4 Rathbun note, which is about one month
before Rathbun’s arrest during the time when he was trying to raise huge sums of capital to prevent his imminent downfall in August of 1836.
Whitman (see reference in my previous post) has several pages (see attachments) on Rathbun’s attempt to gain capital from the Bank of Granville starting in 1835. As you mention, the president of the “revived” bank was Henry Roop. It turns out that Roop was a Buffalo Rathbun minion and was appointed president by Rathbun himself. Your July 4, 1836 note is signed by Henry Roop as president on the bottom right!
In March of 1836, Rathbun received from Sherwood (the president of the Fort Erie bank in Canada) a proof sheet of the bank notes of the Bank of Granville. Rathbun was said to be ecstatic. In April of 1836 Rathbun traveled to New York City to complete the Paterson and Granville bank transactions and to arrange to have notes engraved for the Commercial Bank at Fort Erie, whose first notes are dated July 20, 1836. In July of 1836, Rathbun also sent agents by fast horse to pump more money
out of Granville.
Whitman (p. 160-1) also discusses the $50,000 in notes of the Bank of Granville. He says that Rathbun was supposed to slowly release the bank notes. However, the Buffalo assignees who were to settle Rathbun’s business affairs after his arrest were not a party to the agreement and sent the notes, in their original wrappers, back to Granville for redemption, probably in late 1836. Your 1836 note could have been part of this bundle.
You say that redemption ceased in 1837. Wolka also mentions this. Do you have a separate source for this statement? Most of the notes of this bank are dated in 1839. Your 1836 note seems to be of the same series as the ones that I have seen dated in 1839? Are these spurious signatures and dates? How did the bank survive until February 1, 1842 if note redemption stopped in 1837? How did it survive the Panic of 1837? As you say: ”There is some research to be done.”
Thus, your “common” Bank of Granville note dated July 4, 1836 corroborates what I have read in the Whitman book that the bank was in existence before 1839 which is contrary to Haxby. It also makes the Rathbun connection stronger. If anyone ever finds another “common” Granville note dated in 1836, I would be very interested.
By the way did you win the 1816 note? I remember bidding on it in last October’s Smythe auction.
Bernie
P.S.
I found some more information on the bank and its officers at:
http://publications.ohiohistory.org/ohstemplate.cfm?action=detail&Page=0021308.html&StartPage=296&EndPage=320&volume=21&newtitle=Volume%2021%20Page%20296I had to click the link twice to get a readable page.
This is part of an article by A. B. Coover “Ohio Banking Institutions, 1803 to 1866” in Volume 21 of “Ohio History”. These archives contain several hundred pages on Ohio banking during the Obsolete banking era.
P.P.S.
For the fun of it, I attach a picture of the Bank of Granville building built in 1816 that is still used today as the local Historical Society Museum.
http://www.granville.oh.us/PDF/Historic%20Home%20Inventory.pdfP.P.P.S.
Greg,
As you can see my research is being fostered by more detailed discussions on this subject. However, since it is “off-topic” with respect to “Four Dollar Notes”, should this stream be moved to a separate discussion topic.