A visually striking and historically resonant check on the Agency of The Bank of California, Gold Hill [Nevada], No. 48451, dated November 16, 187_, in the amount of $67.70 in Gold, payable to “C. Jas. King of Wm. & Co.” — that is, C. James King of William & Company, the commercial firm carrying the famous name of San Francisco’s most celebrated press martyr. The instruction reads “and charge this Agency as advised / To The Bank of California, San Francisco,” signed for the bank by its Gold Hill agent. A 2-cent Internal Revenue stamp is affixed at left, as required by law. The reverse bears an endorsement signed “C. James King & Co.” and a rectangular “Bassford & Co.” cancellation stamp. The check blank was printed by Britton Rey & Co., S.F.;the celebrated San Francisco lithography house, and the very firm that published the famous broadside images of King’s assassination in 1856. In fine condition, with light fold and minor soiling; graphics and text sharp throughout.
James King of William (1822–1856) was the most celebrated and consequential newspaper editor in Gold Rush San Francisco. A former banker ruined in the financial panics of the early 1850s, he founded the Daily Evening Bulletin in October 1855 and within months had transformed it into the city’s most powerful voice — a crusading organ of civic reform that attacked corruption, gambling, election fraud, and the criminal class with an energy and fearlessness unmatched in the California press. His name, “of William,” was the distinctive suffix he adopted to distinguish himself from other James Kings in San Francisco — and it became one of the most recognizable names in California history. On May 14, 1856, King was shot on Montgomery Street by James P. Casey, a corrupt city supervisor whose Sing Sing prison record King had just exposed in print. He died six days later. The public outrage that followed triggered the formation of the Second San Francisco Vigilance Committee, which tried and hanged Casey on the day of King’s funeral. The event reshaped the political history of California.
This check, payable to the King firm’s Comstock Lode operation, places the King name squarely in the heart of Nevada’s Comstock boom — the Bank of California’s Gold Hill agency having been one of the most important financial institutions on the Lode, through which, as the bank’s own historical marker notes, nearly one billion dollars in gold and silver passed. The combination of the King firm name, the Gold Hill–Bank of California context, the Britton Rey printing, and the intact revenue stamp make this an exceptional piece of California and Nevada financial history, with a direct connection to one of the most dramatic episodes in the story of the American West.