of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, pages 404-405
EARLY MUSCATINE BANKERS. Muscatine fared well in those early days. Greene & Stone, who had been sucessful merchants, were the pioneer bankers and for many years served their town and country well. Their failure in 1861 was caused by the stringency brought on by the breaking out of the war of the rebellion and the consequent closing to navigation of the Mississippi river, for this river was then the great highway which carried to market the grain from the Muscatine county farms and the products of the packing houses of the city.
This failure caused a good deal of embarrassment but it spoke well for Joseph A. Greene and George C. Stone that their creditors were paid in full, and that many of these made large sums out of the lands and property received by them in settlement from the bankrupt firm.
At the date of their failure, Mr. Greene was president of the Washington branch of the State Bank of Iowa, of which Howard M. Holden, once clerk in Greene & Stone's bank, was cashier, and Mr. Stone was president of the Muscatine branch of the State Bank, while Thomas Harbach was cashier. Mr. Greene at once entered the service of the United States as quartermaster and rendered the faithful service in this place that only a good business man can. At the close of the war he returned to Muscatine and was always a good citizen and a much respected man.
Mr. Stone immediately after the failure went to Chicago, engaging in the grain commission business, suffering the vicissitudes that attended that business in its early days. Later he went to Duluth and St. Paul and recouped his lost fortune in railways in the "Zenith City of the Unsalted Seas."
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