RN-G1 on $22,225 check, Louis Gloss & Co, San Francisco 1878

Interesting 1878 check drawn on the London & San Francisco Bank, to Louis Sloss & Co, for $22,225.00 ($558,000.00 in today’s dollar). Endorsed by Louis Sloss on the reverse; also bearing the hand stamp of B. Davidson & Co. San Francisco. B. Davidson & Co. was a branch of the (Banking) House Of Rothschild in London.

Louis Sloss and Lewis Gerstle, both from Bavaria, arrived in Sacramento around 1850 and entered into the dry goods business together under the name of Louis Sloss & Co. They married Sarah and Hannah Greenebaum, sisters from Philadelphia whose brothers were also in business in Sacramento. In the wake of the floods that devastated Sacramento in 1862, they moved to San Francisco. Five years later, when the United States purchased Alaska from Russia, Sloss and Gerstle saw a potentially lucrative business opportunity. They formed the Alaska Commercial Company in the fall of 1868 and were immediately rewarded by the federal government with the exclusive right to take fur seals from the Pribilof Islands. The company would become a commercial powerhouse all along the Pacific Coast over the next twenty years.