William Fargo

William George Fargo ( born May 20, 1818 in Pompey, New York; † August 3, 1881 in Buffalo, New York) was a pioneer of the U.S. postal, railway and transport.

From age 14 on, he had to take care of themselves for a living and received little education. For some years he was a clerk in grocery stores in Syracuse. In 1841 he was freight agent for the Auburn & Syracuse Railroad Company in Auburn, in the following year Express carrier between Albany and Buffalo, and finally 1843 Agent in Buffalo. In 1844 he founded with Henry Wells ( 1805-1878 ) and Daniel Dunning his first express company ( Wells & Co., after 1845 Livingston & Fargo ), which was mainly west of Buffalo experience in the transport service. The lines of this company (the first only went to Detroit over Cleveland) were rapidly extended to Chicago, St. Louis and other Western targets.

In March 1850, when was built by an association of competing lines the American Express Company, Wells Fargo became its president and secretary. In 1852 he founded - in the Californian Gold Rush - inter alia Wells with the company Wells Fargo & Co. for stagecoaches and banking services. This company has set up an express service between New York and San Francisco, via the Isthmus of Panama and on the Pacific coast, where the Company long held a virtual monopoly. 1861 Wells Fargo bought the Overland Mail Co., which was founded in 1857 with Fargo's support as a postal service for the United States. From 1862 to 1866, Fargo, who belonged to the Democrats, mayor of Buffalo and from 1868 until his death in Buffalo, he was president of American Express Company, which merged in 1868 with the Merchants Union Express Co.. He was also a director of the companies New York Central Railroad and the Northern Pacific Railway.

Fargo, the largest city in North Dakota, was named after William Fargo.

The company co-founded by Fargo, the bank Wells Fargo and the credit card company American Express are global corporations today. The Wells- Fargo - forwarding services are one immortalized in the song " The Wells Fargo Wagon" of the musical The Music.