This is quickly becoming a cashless society.
Checks too are going the way of the landline and printed newspaper. (And soon, the penny.)
It’s so easy to just tap (or click), and pay.
Bills are grubby. Checks are messy.
But that was not always the case. Look at this handsome relic, from 1853:
(Courtesy of Axl Aparicio)
There’s some great detail here. The paper was sturdy.
And $2 — well, that was real money back then.
Meanwhile, about that Saugatuck Bank: In 1852, Horace Staples — owner of a lumber and hardware business, silk and axe factories, shipping vessels and a thriving pier — founded it.
Two years later he moved it to National Hall — his new building a couple of miles upriver, just across the bridge from a small downtown area overshadowed by the far more dynamic Saugatuck section of Westport.
Eventually, Saugatuck Bank became Westport Bank & Trust (“A hometown bank, in a town of homes”).
It outgrew National Hall — which turned into Fairfield Furniture — and relocated to a pie-slice-shaped building nearby, where Church Lane feeds into the Post Road.
Most recently, that was Patagonia. Soon, it becomes an office for Compass, the real estate firm.
Which sells homes for a lot more than $2.
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I have a similar bill from Merchants Planters Bank in Georgia, dated from around the same time. This type of currency was ubiquitous back then, and isn’t hard to find now, actually! Very interesting to hear about the history of the bank!
$2 billion story:
When Major General Patton commanded the 82nd Airborne Division and Fort Bragg North Carolina the local mayor was railing about the mess the soldiers made downtown on the weekends.
Back then everyone was paid in cash so Patton ordered $2 bills and paid every soldier contractor employees with the $2s.
In two months every gas station dry cleaners bar hotel restaurant house of ill repute was buried in twos and the Mayor seeing the economic effects of the soldiers begged for forgiveness.
I have a World Series ticket in my Safety Deposit Box.1961 World Series, Box Seat, Game 1 in Yankee Stadium. The ticket cost $10.00. I turned down &7,500 to sell it. That’s the year Roger Maris hit 61 homers. They don’t make paper tickets anymore. It’ll be worth a million dollars some day. Mantle’s 1952 baseball card sold for over 5 million recently!
Opps.. $10:50 was the cost. What did my father do with the other 3 tickets?