SMITH, Joseph. Printed check signed ("J. Smith"), and counter-signed by S. Rigden, Kirtland, Ohio, 8 March 1837. 1 page, oblong (6¾ x 3 in.), elaborately engraved in various typefaces, two oval images of a farmer along left and right edges, a larger allegory of a wheat cutter at rest in his fields at center top, with two additional ovals on either side showing a female head in profile with the denomination "ten" printed upon them.
THE MORMON ANTIBANK. A ten dollar note drawn against The Kirtland Safety Society, payable to J. C. Kingsbury, and signed by the charismatic Mormon leader and his close deputy, Rigden. The Kirtland Society, a financial adjunct to the Mormon Church, was denied a banking charter by the state of Ohio, and Smith responded by renaming it the "Kirtland Antibanking Society." Its existence was underfunded, precarious and short. It issued some $4 million dollars in notes, but never had more than $10,000 cash on hand. With the onset of the 1837 depression the antibank went antibankrupt, closing its doors after only a year of operation, in November 1837. Two historians of the early Mormon Church concluded that finance was "too sordid, or perhaps too exact, a business to be conducted by revelation" (Cannon and Knapp, Brigham Young and his Mormon Empire).
SMITH, Joseph. Printed check signed ("J. Smith"), and counter-signed by S. Rigden, Kirtland, Ohio, 8 March 1837. 1 page, oblong (6¾ x 3 in.), elaborately engraved in various typefaces, two oval images of a farmer along left and right edges, a larger allegory of a wheat cutter at rest in his fields at center top, with two additional ovals on either side showing a female head in profile with the denomination "ten" printed upon them.
THE MORMON ANTIBANK. A ten dollar note drawn against The Kirtland Safety Society, payable to J. C. Kingsbury, and signed by the charismatic Mormon leader and his close deputy, Rigden. The Kirtland Society, a financial adjunct to the Mormon Church, was denied a banking charter by the state of Ohio, and Smith responded by renaming it the "Kirtland Antibanking Society." Its existence was underfunded, precarious and short. It issued some $4 million dollars in notes, but never had more than $10,000 cash on hand. With the onset of the 1837 depression the antibank went antibankrupt, closing its doors after only a year of operation, in November 1837. Two historians of the early Mormon Church concluded that finance was "too sordid, or perhaps too exact, a business to be conducted by revelation" (Cannon and Knapp, Brigham Young and his Mormon Empire).
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