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Women Building the Wells Fargo Legend |
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Wells Fargo has a long history of hiring and doing business with women, echoing Henry Wells sentiment upon establishing Wells College for women in upstate New York in 1869. Give her the opportunity! and the banking and express company he founded did just that. Hundreds of women worked at Wells Fargo's headquarters as auditors, clerks, advertising copywriters, stenographers and telephone operators. Today, about two-thirds of the banks employees are female including regional, area and market Presidents as well as top ranking senior executives. Women have truly helped and continue to help build the Wells Fargo legend.
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Here is a handful of lengends in our history. |
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Wells Fargo agent in Roseville, California, from 1884 to 1908, Cassie Hill also represented Western Union Telegraph and the Southern Pacific Railroad in this important transportation crossroads. She became agent after her husband’s sudden death, earning a living to raise her five children. She handled everything from El Dorado County pears to prize European race horses. Hill invested in the town’s grain elevator and downtown real estate, and, very late in her life, enjoyed driving one of Roseville’s first automobiles. |
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Marie F. Putnam was the only woman among 300 employees of the Abbot-Downing Co., stagecoach manufacturers. From 1865 to 1895, Putnam stitched leather seats and trim for every stagecoach that rolled out of the Concord, New Hampshire factory, including those bought by Wells Fargo & Company. Courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society |
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At the age of 14, Delia Haskett Rawson was the first—and perhaps youngest—girl stage driver ever to carry the U.S. mail in California. Her last regular run was in 1885, some 9 years after her first stage run. She was the only woman to ever belong to the Pioneer Stage Drivers of California and served as its vice president. |
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Tilla Patterson was the Wells Fargo agent at the Winchester, California office from 1892 to 1910. Stationed at the Santa Fe Railroad depot, Miss Patterson also served as the railroad agent and the Western Union telegraph operator. Agent Patterson used her business connections to help build the collection of the county library where she volunteered. |
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Florence Scott earned her medical degree from the University of California in 1896. In 1922 she was asked to provide medical exams and emergency care for the Wells Fargo Nevada National Bank in downtown San Francisco, beginning the Bank's company-paid health care. |
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Eleanor P. Gibbons studied engraving at the Cooper Union in New York, and then set up her own design and engraving firm, Eleanor P. Gibbons & Co., in San Francisco. She designed some of the envelopes for Wells, Fargo & Co.’s famed Letter Express, including special ones for service to Hawaii, and a highly detailed design commemorating the1892-3 Columbian Exposition. |
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Beyond the railroad lines, where passengers and packages arrived by stagecoach, Julia Lois Jones was agent at Mariposa, near Yosemite, from 1892 to 1902, succeeding her sister, Lucy Jones Miller. The two sisters ran the Wells Fargo office for over 25 years. Miller was also postmaster while Jones served three terms as Mariposa County’s Superintendent of Schools. Jones and Miller handled just about everything in the course of business: apples and oranges, gold, photographs, government books and even a bass drum. |
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As Uncle Sam called men, one by one, into the military during WWI, women filled in patriotically. Mrs. Evangeline Sawyer did so at Wells Fargo & Co.’s Winona, Minnesota, office, earning praise from the regional superintendent. |
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A preacher’s daughter whose family settled in southern Minnesota, Lillie Predmore served as Wells Fargo’s express agent in the town that bore her family’s name. Her younger sister, Mrs. Freda Kester, succeeded her in 1914. |
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Audrey Strand |

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In the mid-1970s, Audrey Strand became Wells Fargo’s first woman “special agent”—a designation bestowed on the likes of James B. Hume, the one who brought Black Bart to justice. Her responsibility was to report “embezzlement, irregularities and mysterious disappearances” to the FBI, Controller of Currency and the U.S. Attorney. |
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In 1960, Wells Fargo suddenly expanded from two offices in downtown San Francisco to a network of retail branches throughout Northern California. At the same time, new computer technologies were introduced to handle the booming business. For her effective management of the engineers and technicians, Janet Wright became the first woman Assistant Vice President at Wells Fargo in 1964. |
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Virginia Fellingham, a rancher in Livermore, California, drove stagecoaches for the 20th Century Wells Fargo Bank for more than thirty years. She and her family have appeared in hundreds of parades and civic events. She also depicted the legendary 19th Century stagecoach driver Charlie Parkhurst for television. |
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