of
Muscatine County Iowa
1911
| History of Muscatine County Iowa 1911 | |
Source: History of Muscatine County Iowa, Volume I, 1911, page 406
AFTER FAILURE OF BANK. After the failure of Greene & Stone in 1861 and Mr. Stone's removal to Chicago, John B. Dougherty was elected president of the Muscatine branch, remaining in that position until January, 1869. Mr. Dougherty will be remembered as a man of high character, great dignity and sound judgment. Joseph Richardson, formerly in the bank of Greene & Stone, returned to Muscatine and was elected cashier to succeed Mr. Harbach. He served the bank and its successor, the Muscatine National, until January, 1869, when he was made president of the National Bank and died while on a visit to his old home in Massachusetts in the summer of 1869, a young man in his thiry-eighth year.
It may be due to the immaturity of my judgment at the time but I look back upon Mr. Richardson with a feeling that he was as good a banker as I have known. He had a wide and accurate knowledge of his business, was tactful, ready and resourceful in every emergercy. He was banking in a bad time--from 1864 to 1869--when values were apparently depreciating as the resumption of specie payments was approaching. I remember distinctly the severity with which he spoke of the passage of the Legal Tender Act of 1862, and of the predictions which he made of disaster resulting therefrom. I have lived to see how sound and true he was. From this act have sprung all our currency ills, the greenback and free silver coinage crazes, and we have only just got back to the gold basis and a sound standard. One thing remains to be done to complete our currency reform--the retirement of the legal tender notes.
The Muscatine was the first of the branches of the State Bank to change into a national bank. This it did early in 1865. The other branches gradually followed its course.
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