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Farmer's Joint Stock Bank

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Farmer's Joint Stock Bank
Company typeJoint stock company
IndustryBanking
Founded1835 in Toronto, Upper Canada
FoundersGeorge Truscott
John Cleveland Green
Defunct1854
FateClosed
Key people
1st President: Sir Francis Hincks

The Farmer's Joint Stock Bank was a bank that operated in Upper Canada, and later in the Province of Canada, from 1834 to 1854.

History

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Following the 1821 legalization of small notes and bills of exchange in Upper Canada,[1][2] the Bank was formed in 1834 as a private bank by George Truscott and John Cleveland Green in Toronto, Upper Canada.[3] Francis Hincks, a journalist and colonial administrator, was invited to become its first cashier.[a] In 1835, it was taken over by a group of Reformers[b] and constituted as a joint-stock company called the Farmers' Joint Stock Banking Company by deed of settlement.[3] The first board of directors appointed John Elmsley, a member of the Family Compact,[c] to be its first president, which forced Hincks and other Reform investors to leave and found the Bank of the People in December 1835.[d] When Upper Canada moved in 1837 to restrict the ability of institutions other than incorporated banks to issue their own banknotes, the Bank was exempted.[7]

A financial crisis that affected Upper Canada in 1837 resulted in a suspension of the Bank's activities for two months at the end of that year.[8] In 1838, it was barred from issuing banknotes that were not payable on demand.[9]

Economic conditions, together with poor management and political intrigue, led to a move by the board to wind up the Bank in January 1844,[10] which was not completed until December 1848 with its sale to new owners.[10] William Brown Phipps, who had been Manager since 1841, returned to become Manager of the revived Bank in March 1849.[10] In June 1849, it flooded Toronto and Buffalo with new issues of its banknotes, which were subsequently boycotted by merchants.[11] It was finally closed in 1854.[11]

Sources

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  • "Deed of Settlement of the Farmers' Joint Stock Banking Company" (PDF). torontopubliclibrary.ca. 1835.
  • Breckenridge, Roeliff Morton (1895). "The Canadian Banking System, 1817-1890". Publications of the American Economic Association. 10 (1). American Economic Association: 13–476. JSTOR 2560443.
  • Ryan, Christopher D. (2004). "William Brown Phipps, Private Banker" (PDF). Canadian Revenue Newsletter (44). Canadian Revenue Study Group, British North America Philatelic Society: 2–3, 6. ISSN 1488-5255.

Notes

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  1. ^ In essence, its first general manager.[4]
  2. ^ Truscott and Green, the original founders, had also started the undercapitalized Agricultural Bank[5]
  3. ^ son of John Elmsley (1762-1805), and also a director of the Bank of Upper Canada until 1834[6]
  4. ^ later becoming part of the Bank of Montreal

References

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Works cited

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