Arthur Smith submitted this fabulous red seal as a candidate for this space and I couldn’t get on it fast enough. There are so many threads from it, we’ll just have to see where it takes us.
Let’s top down starting with the note itself. With the selvage, you know it was saved as a keepsake by one of the bankers. Scrawled in pencil in the margin is “signed July 6, 1907, first one.”
A quick look at the officers for the bank in the Comptroller of the Currency’s annual reports reveals that the cashier was Ahijah W. Miles, who served from the bank’s founding in 1883 through 1919. Thomas Corwin Leonard served as president from 1908 through 1932, so it is obvious that he stepped in as vice president in 1907 and this was the first sheet he signed. He went on
