Saturday morning and I had a small touch of a hangover, nothing breakfast and coffee wouldn’t fix. I planned to start with banking this morning and move on to the other shops from there. While the building still said ‘Second National Bank of the United States’ the actual institutional was now ‘Bank of St. Louis’ and it was owned by a group of state businessmen with the backing of the Bank of NY(BoNY). This was all in a time prior to the FDIC so trusting a bank meant trusting the people who ran that bank and having BoNY to guarantee deposits really helped.

The bonus was that they still had the 2nd Bank vault which wasn’t insubstantial even if this was just a wood frame building. I learned that I could deposit much of my gold and silver in ‘security deposit’ and when I started to discuss the size of account I intended to create the bank manager suddenly became my clerk. I had to wait about a half an hour for him to show up but I was assured that he was rushing to get here. I was provided with hot coffee and left to wait in the manager’s office, they didn’t have a conference room so major meetings were held down at the tavern I had visited last night. Yes the entire thing was third world and rinky-dink; welcome to the frontier.

While waiting I decided I could start my own local rinky-dink bank just to make things easier on myself. We still needed the east coast connections so the St. Louis bank had to be part of my plan in the early going, however creating my own connections at BoNY and other banks would help. I might be forced to take a trip back east, Michelle was going to take on a lot more responsibility if I was going to winter over on the East coast.

None of the current banks out here would survive to make the modern world but BoNY and Union Bank of Boston(State Street) would and I wanted to get my main deposits there eventually. Moreover I wanted them to back the local bank I planned on starting.

The managing partner eventually showed up begging apology that he had been at a meeting with several large banks from back east. I took this as good news and made polite. I discussed a deposit and safety box with him and seriously asked how much that could convert to USD immediately. Well he started hemming and hawing about St. Louis Dollars. I had to specifically point out that I had specifically said ‘US Dollars’ and wasn’t interested in locally sponsored currency. It all hardened my resolve on starting up my own bank.

I eventually got him to commit to tendering to me in USD and I agreed to take some of his local dollars for local spending so long as I got a 1:1 rate when I redeposited them later in the week. If they didn’t convert directly at local stores I wasn’t going to be a happy customer. That fully settled and put on paper I promised him thirty thousand in bullion within the next two hours and needed five thousand in dollars to spend. I also needed an insured safety deposit box. I handed him a thousand in bullion and signed the papers and left to the boat.

I brought help and security from the boat as we toted 120lbs of gold back into town. We had four men toting bullion and eight armed guards surrounding them. We also carried 100lbs of silver to go into the safety vault as well. It was a lot of money but not all of it, I still had a deal with Leavenworth in process and a lot more for my upcoming bank back home. My bank had to have it founding on something and gold would be the backstop for now.

Before I made the deposit I demanded that the Manager schedule me to meet with the board this week, I needed to understand who I was trusting. I was depositing/storing the modern equivalent of ten million dollars with them and I wanted to look these men in the eye. I got my $5,000 walk around cash leaving me with twenty five thousand to draw against in the bank. The rest went into a large safety deposit box which was stored in a proper vault that the Second Bank had brought in. My draw slips were basically pieces of paper with a stamp on them, frankly I was impressed that they had the wooden hand stamp to use.

The manager wished me good luck at the auction and it dawned on me as to what he thought I was going to spend the cash on. I made it clear that I didn’t know what he was talking about and that’s when I found out the auctioneer was in town and they were selling off slaves and assets seized for failure to pay taxes and levy’s. I thanked him and went to find the tailor.

Timmons and Amos were still trailing along so we took lunch at the tavern next, there was a servants table set just off the side of the main room but withing waving distance so Amos could serve us as we ate. It also allowed me to order normal food for Amos and he too got his choice of the three items on the house menu. I also got a chance to chat a little longer with the owner/brewer, his name was John Byrne and his family hailed from Ireland. He was willing to part with some beer and whiskey at a price, I figured we start this off easy and counted him out five hundred dollars.

John simply stared at me like I was insane when I handed him the money. I asked him for four barrels of good beer and a cask of good drink. I went on from there asking him to order me brewing and distilling tools and to find a good wine maker. Now he looked at me like I was a crazy person but I started to count out more money when he finally pushed back with “$500 is already too much mate.”

“Well, put it on my tab I responded and increase your brewing capacity, we’re going to do some serious business.” Was my response.

He finally shook my proffered hand and we had a deal. He agreed to have the booze delivered to my dock on Monday and reminded me that I still had a great deal of credit on my account. I asked for an accounting whenever we showed up and to please get me that gear and we were done. He did bring me a written receipt and a free shot which I happily accepted.