Research note: searching for working-class Philadelphia in the records of the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society.

The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society (PSFS) was founded in 1816 as the nation's first savings bank. Its stated purpose, as articulated in its 1817 Articles of Association, was to provide "mechanics and tradesmen" with a safe repository for whatever small savings they could amass. The original Board of Managers, which was largely drawn from the reform-minded Philadelphia Quaker business community, believed that by paying interest as a "reward for saving" it could contribute to the teaching of regular habits of work and thrift. The founders of PSFS looked to the British provident societies or savings banks as their model. Their aim was to secure "a profitable mode of investment to those workers who had no friends, ... or sufficient resources to assist them in the care and employment of their earnings, and who frequently, from total ignorance of the accumulating power of money, neglect to provide beyond the wants of the day."(1)

During its early years, PSFS was a working-class bank and maintained a philanthropic character. Until 1865 individual accounts were limited to $3,000 and annual deposits to $500. In line with its mission, PSFS's investments were heavily concentrated on home mortgages - mostly in the working-class communities of Philadelphia. The vast majority of depositors were mechanics, tradesmen, laborers, and domestic servants. They came from all racial and ethnic groups (African Americans, Germans, Jews, Slavs, Italian, and Irish). PSFS customers represented all segments of the working class in industrializing Philadelphia. Railroad workers, clerks, clothing workers, seamstresses, caterers, grocers, iron molders, machinists, sales people, coopers, harness makers, stone masons, domestics, carpenters, bookbinders, surgeons, accountants, cabinet makers, truckers, washer women, and day laborers were but a few of the occupations listed in the bank's deposit records.

The archives of the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, which came to the Hagley Museum and Library in March of 1993 after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation liquidated the bank's assets, contain two types of records with information on PSFS individual account holders. Upon opening an account with a minimum of $1.00, depositors had to sign a signature book which listed street address and occupation. Each depositor was assigned an account number and given a ledger page that recorded deposits, withdrawals, and account balances. Signature books and deposit ledgers are connected by account number and the name of the depositor. The collection at Hagley also contains similar records from the Western Saving Fund Society (WSFS) which was founded in 1842 to serve working-class depositors in West Philadelphia, and merged with PSFS in 1982. WSFS records are similar to those of PSFS, but they also contain identification books which provide a somewhat fuller portrait of the bank's customers. Identification books recorded data documenting place of birth, height (short, medium, tall), figure (thin, slight, medium, heavy), color of eyes, color of hair, nationality, number of years the depositor lived in Philadelphia, and "peculiarities." This last category includes information about skin color, scars, marital status, and number of children. All this information can be correlated with data on savings rates (deposits and withdrawals) in the depositor ledgers.(2)

On occasion, minute books and correspondence files provide more detailed information about individual depositors. For example, an 1816 deposit ledger shows that PSFS's first customer was an African American house servant, Curtis Roberts, who worked in the house of the bank's first president, Condy Raquet. There is some information on Roberts in PSFS's first minute book. We know that he lived on Union Street (now Delancey) probably between Front and Second, which was an African American community in the early 19th century. At different times in his life he was a waiter and day laborer. On average he saved $3.05 per year.(3) A November 21, 1821 letter in the "closed accounts" file provides some interesting information about another African American, Hannah Gardner, a domestic who had once been a slave in the household of merchant, Thomas Scott. After she was freed, she continued to work there. She opened a PSFS account on March 18, 1820. Before she died, Mrs. Gardner asked a friend to give her belongings to Scott to forward to her children in Kentucky. Scott requested the release of the money that Mrs. Gardner had saved (a total of $22.16). His letter read:

A coloured woman by the name of Hannah Gardner deposited in your institution a sum of $35 on the 23rd of March last, all of which she has not withdrawn; about two months ago the said Hannah Gardner died, but previous to her death she desired a person to hand over all her effects to me to be forwarded to her children in Kentucky.

The deceased was at one time a slave in the family of the subscriber, and afterward a freed servant, when she earned the money deposited....

A July 12, 1842 affidavit signed by William Walker Dinkins speaks to another aspect of life in Philadelphia's African American community. Dinkins swore that in 1819 he owned a dry goods store on 30th Street. At that time he employed a freed slave named John Griffin "a coloured man [who] was for many years previously ... a public porter stationed in the vicinity of the deponent's store...."

At some time during the said year 1819 as near as the deponent can recollect the said Griffin came to [the] deponent's store and stated to him that the said Griffin was thinking about emigrating the Republic of Hayti to which place a number of coloured persons were going - that he intended to reside there permanently.

Griffin had $15 on deposit at the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society that he could not withdraw because he did not have the time to give the required two weeks written notice. Since he was leaving in two days he asked Dinkins to "advance him the amount of fifteen dollars." The affidavit goes on to say that Griffin gave Dinkins his bank book in return for a fifteen dollar cash advance. Dinkins lost the bank book so he was unable to withdraw the money as long as Griffin was alive. Now, twenty-three years later, he had received information that Griffin had returned to the United States and had passed away. Dinkins was filing his affidavit in an effort to collect $15 from Griffin's estate.

PSFS files of closed accounts (1819-1855) contain hundreds of affidavits and letters of this kind filed by heirs (mostly wives, husbands, and children) seeking to collect funds from deceased depositors' accounts. Many of these files contain considerable biographical and work history information that provide useful data for social historians seeking to understand working-class life in antebellum Philadelphia. An analysis of these files together with the signature books, identification books, and deposit ledgers show that more than sixty percent of the bank's depositors were women and about fifteen percent were African Americans (at a time when African Americans accounted for about eight percent of the population of Philadelphia). Many of these African Americans had emigrated from rural areas in Chester and Delaware counties seeking opportunity in the urban environment. After 1800 Philadelphia attracted an increasing number of fugitive slaves. Many African American institutions had their origins in this period. The Mother Bethel Church opened its first account with PSFS in 1817. Located at Sixth and Pine Streets, it stands on the oldest piece of property continuously under African American ownership in the United States. Its fourth and present building was financed with a PSFS mortgage and paid off in 1944. Three early PSFS depositors appear to have been associated with the First African Baptist Church at 8th and Vine Streets. Mary Nutt was a midwife who lived at 63rd and Currant Alley and had property valued at $300 in 1837. According to bank records, she was a freed slave who moved from Virginia in the early 1820s and opened a PSFS account in 1830. Records show that she kept over $100 on deposit until 1842 when she died at the age of 55 of "remittent fever" (probably malaria).(4) Joshua Johnson lived at 37 Prosperous Alley between 11th and 12th Streets and between Locust and Spruce. He opened a PSFS account in 1818 when he was working as a "shoe black." As late as 1840 bank records indicate that Johnson was still working as a laborer. He died in 1842 of "general debility."(5) Finally John Gibbs and his wife Marcia, who lived at Eagle Court between 10th and 11th Streets, opened PSFS accounts in 1822. John worked as a waiter and Marcia was a washer. Their account remained active until 1828 with deposits averaging $2 per year.

The Guild of Caterers, described by W.E.B. DuBois in his landmark sociological study, The Philadelphia Negro,(6) had an account with the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society for most of the nineteenth century. In addition to documenting the activity on this account, an analysis of the bank's deposit ledgers and signature books confirms DuBois' observation that many of the most affluent members of the Philadelphia African American community belonged to the Guild of Caterers. About ten percent of PSFS's African American depositors identified themselves as caterers with another twenty-five percent identifying themselves as cooks or waiters. According to DuBois, these men and women became leaders of the Philadelphia African American community because catering was one of the few avenues open to ambitious, entrepreneurial African Americans who had the ability to make the transition from cook and waiter to public caterer. The Guild of Caterers filled an important niche in Philadelphia society at a time when most dinners, parties, and balls were held at home. The African American caterers offered a simple solution to the problem of domestic entertainment. They organized the household staff, determined the menu, and arranged for local merchants to provide extra food and tableware.

According to DuBois, the first prominent African American caterer in Philadelphia was Robert Bogle, who beginning in 1813 operated out of an office at Eighth, near Samson Street. He began work as a butler or waiter with a private family, arranging their meals and attending to other occasions. He soon went into business for himself and started doing work for a number of elite Philadelphia families. One of his first assistants was Peter Augustin, a West Indian immigrant who knew how to prepare French and Creole cuisine. Augustin went into business for himself in 1818 and is credited with founding the Guild of Caterers. He soon opened three accounts at PSFS, two in his own name and one in trust for a relative, Mary Catherine Lewis. Peter Augustin's bills and accounts were endorsed by his son James, as Peter was unable to write. By the late 1830s Peter Augustin had become quite wealthy. His personal property was valued at $10,000 and he kept more than $200 in each of his bank accounts at all times. PSFS deposit ledgers can be used to trace this accumulated wealth.(7)

On the investment side, PSFS mortgage books (1818-1908) contain lists of properties in Philadelphia's working-class communities that the bank helped to finance. Included are descriptions of the property, the house, purchase price, amount financed, and the date the mortgage was paid off. These files typically describe the size of the rooms, and whether the house had indoor plumbing, gas lighting, and heat. There is usually some biographical and employment information about the mortgagee, as well as notes about delinquent real estate taxes. For example, a November 29, 1851 mortgage application for a property at 79 Arch Street filed by dry goods merchant Charles Adams reads: "Adams owns and resides in a new three story brick dwelling with all the modem conveniences (gas lighting and indoor plumbing). The size of the lote is 17 feet front by 90 feet deep.... The cost of the property is $7200 of which he wished to finance about 2/3...."

The records of the Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, of course, need to be studied in conjunction with other research materials including the manuscript census, which provides information on age, family size, literacy, the relationship of the depositor to the head of the household. Taken together, these sources can provide important information to reconstruct the social history of 19th-century Philadelphia.

P.O. Box 3630 Wilmington, DE 19807

ENDNOTES

1. 1817 PSFS Articles of Association.

2. Since these records were maintained by PSFS until recently, few scholars have had access to them. However, shortly before the collection came to Hagley PSFS made the archive available to a team of economic historians (George Alter, Claudia Goldin, and Elyce Rotella). See, George Alter, Claudia Goldin, Elyce Rotella, "The Savings of Ordinary American: The Philadelphia Saving Fund Society in the Mid-Nineteenth Century," The Journal of Economic History 54:4 (December, 1994): 735-768, for an example of how the PSFS records can be used to figure out savings rates.

3. See Philadelphia Saving Fund Society, Deposit Ledger 1. (Accession 2060 Hagley Museum and Library).

4. PSFS account no. 14, 27.

5. PSFS account no. 379.

6. W.E.B. DuBois, The Philadelphia Negro (New York, 1967) pp. 32-36, 199-120.

7. PSFS account nos. 21,0089; 29,999; 25,582.