The Olcott Papers, a New Source on
New York State Banking History
 

NEIL NEWTON GOLD
 

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K If ^HE University Libraries have recently been enriched by
the gift of an impressive collection of personal papers —
an addition to their already strong holdings on the early
history of New York State. The collection consists of the business,
financial and legal papers of Thomas Worth Olcott (1795-1880),
President of the Mechanics and Farmers' Bank of Albany and a
prominent figure in Jacksonian politics and finance. Mr. Olcott's
great-grandson (and successor in office), Douglas W. Olcott,
joined by other members of the Olcott family and by the Direc¬
tors of the Mechanics and Farmers' Bank, made the gift in honor
of the Bank's 150th anniversary.

Thomas W. Olcott was born in 1795, in the tiny North River
town of Hudson, 28 miles South of Albany, the son of New Eng¬
land folk who had joined the great Y^ankee invasion that descended
upon New York State after the Revolution. Little is known of
Thomas' childhood, except that it was a hard one. But life in Hud¬
son had its adventures even for a poor boy. Founded in 1783 by
hard-pressed Nantucket Quakers, Hudson had grown into a great
whaling and sealing port whose tonnage, some said, rivalled New
York's. To its shores came European traders. New York factors.
West India merchantmen and on one occasion, a Spanish galleon.

In 1808 the dimensions of the city's trade forced a reluctant
legislature to charter a bank, to be known as the Bank of Hudson.
When the Bank opened its doors the following year, young
Thomas Olcott, all of fourteen years, was one of its clerks. Un¬
doubtedly the shrewd and resourceful lad would have made a
name for himself in Hudson, but fate, in the form of his uncle,
Gorham A. Worth, had other plans. In 1811 Olcott was asked to

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