Chattanooga
Depression Scrip

Clearing House Scrip of 1893

$20 1893 Clearing House scrip

$5 1893 Clearing House scrip
Compliments of Neil Shafer

Written on back of the $50 Clearing House Certificate "This note and a $20 same series were presented to me on 4/27/1912 by Chas. A. Lyerly, President First National Bank Chattanooga. He said only about $5,000 was issued, all now redeemed and destroyed. It took 14 years to get it all back. There was also and $5 and $10 - with the $20 and $50 completed the series. Mr. Lyerly has a complete set of the blanks What he gave me are his only duplicates and probably all that exist." The notes were first issued August 19, 1893. On August 25, 1893 the notes were overprinted with a warning that the notes were not to circulate. Which probably means the the first notes were circulated.

$50 1893 Clearing House scrip, red overstamp across

Loomis & Hart Mfg. Co.

Originally Loomis & Hart was a partnership of J.F. Loomis and John A. Hart, organized to operate a sawmill in Chattanooga, receiving their logs by enormous rafts floated down the Tennessee from away up in the mountains of East Tennessee and the western tip of Virginia. They made money selling their first class lumber but had a terrible time finding a satisfactory market for their second class lumber, culls, etc. Eventually they conceived the brilliant idea of making it up into cheap - and I do mean CHEAP - furniture to sell to the poor white trash and Negroes throughout the south. Theirs was really the first of the southern furniture factories, although a concern in North Carolina claims the honor, but the latter started considerably later than 1869, when Loomis & Hart began.

Jack (Andrew Jackson) Gahagan was able to buy his way into the partnership at the time J.T. Arnold came in (~1885) and was made Treasurer, by virtue of having been a bank clerk. J.T. Arnold, in his strange, non-aggressive way, was made Secretary and given some little job around the office, which ultimately wound up by his keeping the books.

J.T. Arnold sound sense and judgment kept the firm on an even keel throughout the panic of 1893 and, except for a few years about that time, they made considerable money - around 10% of their capital - paying out their profits as dividends and, owing to the high and increasing value of their real estate, able to get deeper and deeper into the local banks for expansion funds.

John A. Hart lived 1845-January 15, 1891
A native of Illinois who grew up in Ohio, John Hart moved to Montgomery, Alabama in the 1850s. Hart returned to the north to join the Union Army in 1861. Following the Civil War, Hart returned to Montgomery. Elected to the state senate, Hart served as speaker of the senate. While in Alabama, Hart invested in several failed railroad ventures, losing most of his money. Hart moved to Chattanooga in 1869 and began work at the Chattanooga Times. Upon his father’s death, Hart received an inheritance that allowed him to invest in a partnership with John F. Loomis to begin the Loomis & Hart Lumber Company in 1875. Hart ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Chattanooga in 1878, before being elected to serve as Mayor for 1881.

$5 1893 Loomis & Hart Mfg Co. scrip
Compliments of Neil Shafer

$2 1893 Loomis & Hart Mfg Co. scrip
Compliments of Neil Shafer

$1 1893 Loomis & Hart Mfg Co. scrip
Compliments of Neil Shafer