E. W. Clark & Company

E. W. Clark & Co. was a banking and financial firm founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, in 1837 by Enoch White Clark. Among its partners were American Civil War financier Jay Cooke and West Philadelphia developer Clarence Howard Clark.

The firm merged in 1960 with Janney, Dulles & Battles, Inc., to become Janney, Battles & E.W. Clark, now part of Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Clark came to Philadelphia from Providence, Rhode Island, in 1836. The next year, he created his firm with his two brothers, Luther Clapp Clark (July 4, 1815 - 1877) and Joseph Washington Clark (1810-1892); and brother-in-law, Edward Dodge.

The firm did well, earning enough to pay off Enoch Clark's debts in seven years, then to propel the Clarks to a place among the city's wealthiest families. The firm opened branches in New York City, St. Louis, and New Orleans, and made considerable money performing domestic exchanges in the wake of the 1836 revocation of the charter of the Second Bank of the United States and the Panic of 1837. Moody's magazine, a monthly publication of the Moody's credit rating agency, later wrote:

During the first ten years of its development the firm gained wide recognition and public confidence, owing to the indomitable energy of Enoch W. Clark.The drafts of this house drawn between the various branches, were regarded as the very best circulating medium in the West. There were more than $2,000,000 worth of these drafts in circulation within a short time after the establishment of the western branch offices and they were considered everywhere as the equivalent of gold.

At the outbreak of the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), the U.S. government borrowed about $50,000,000 from the firm, then recognized as "the leading domestic exchange house" in the country.

...
Wikipedia