A $50,000 loan to the City of Albany to enlarge the Erie Canal. Printed document, accomplished in manuscript, signed and endorsed.

Albany: 2 July, 1836. Fine. 1 leaf, 162 x 135 mm. Cashier's check of the Mechanics and Farmers' Bank made out to Erastus Corning, Mayor of Albany, in the amount of $50,000. Signed on recto by New York Secretary of State (and later Governor, Senatory, and Civil War General) John A. Dix, comptroller Azariah C. Flagg, and Surveyor General William Campbell. Endorsed on verso to chamberlain P.V. Shankland, and signed by Corning.

A check $50,000 drawn on the Mechanics and Farmers Bank, payable to Erastus Corning as Mayor of Albany, and endorsed by him on verso. Corning was an American industrialist whose speculations in land, manufacturing, (truncated) and transportation made him one of the wealthiest men in the United States. His Albany Iron Works provided material for the Union army during the Civil War. The Erie Canal, which linked the Hudson River to Lake Erie, was the Interstate of its day, and the foundation of New York's economic expansion in the first half of the 19th century. The railroads rendered it obsolete, but in 1836 the city fathers of Albany, apparently ignoring that writing on the wall, raised funds to expand the canal from 40 feet wide to 70, and deepen it from 4 feet to 7, enabling it to handle much larger boats carrying much more cargo. (Inventory #: 5651)