THE WILDCAT BANK OF TINKERVILLE

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V18 2015 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 18, Number 25, June 21, 2015, Article 23

For more information on how issuers of obsolete banknotes operated, see the recent post by Matthew Wittmann on the ANS Pocket Change blog about the "Wildcat Bank of Tinkerville." -Editor

Luckily, there is a wonderful first-person account of the rise and fall of a wildcat bank by Caroline Kirkland (1801-1864). Born Caroline Matilda Stansbury, she was a well-educated woman from New York who moved to Michigan to head the Detroit Female Seminary in 1835 with her husband, classics scholar William Kirkland. William became caught up in the speculative land boom that accompanied statehood, and in 1837 purchased eight-hundred acres of land where the village of Pinckney was founded about fifty miles west of Detroit.

Feeling somewhat isolated in their new environs, Caroline spent her days writing long and observant letters to friends and colleagues about the trials and tribulations of Western life. These letters coalesced into her first book, A New Home–Who’ll Follow? or, Glimpses of Western Life, which was first published by C. S. Francis in 1840 and quickly became a runaway success that went through numerous editions. Writing under the nome de plume of Mrs. Mary Clavers, Kirkland’s work consisted of perceptive and often satirical sketches of life in the fictionalized frontier town of ‘Montacute.’

the lively passage excerpted below chronicling the rise and fall of the “Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Bank of Tinkerville” is a wonderful example of her keen eye for detail and sharp wit. Kirkland’s narrative captures something of the enthusiasm that so often accompanied such ventures, at least initially, as well as the impact that these schemes had on the community. The entire book ... is well worth a read.

Some thirty banks or more were the fungous growth of the new political hot-bed; and many of these were of course without a ‘local habitation,’ though they might boast the ‘name,’ it may be, of some part of the deep woods, where the wild cat had hitherto been the most formidable foe to the unwary and defenceless. Hence the celebrated term ‘Wild Cat,’ justified fully by the course of these cunning and stealthy blood-suckers; more fatal in their treacherous spring than ever was their forest prototype. A stout farmer might hope to ‘whip ‘ a wild cat or two; but once in the grasp of a ‘wild cat bank,’ his struggles were unavailing. Hopeless ruin has been the consequence in numerous instances, and every day adds new names to the list.