Albe M. Saxton

His Grandfather, Aaron Saxton, was a farmer in Vermont, and his father, James J. Saxton, born 1786, grew up on the farm there. During the War of 1812, James was a soldier in the American Army. He married in Vermont in 1807 and in 1813 went west to Lorain County, Ohio. During the Battle of Lake Erie the family could hear the booming of the cannon eighteen miles away. In 1834 the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and in 1840 to Racine County, Wisconsin, where James J. Saxton died in 1856.

Albe M. Saxton was born near Cleveland, Ohio, February 21, 1821. He was educated in the local log schoolhouse and at a private academy in Cleveland. In 1841 he went to St. Louis, and not finding the employment he expected, he commenced successful trading in farm produce on his capital of $56, all he possessed. That winter he attended night sessions of a Commercial College in St. Louis, and in the summer of 1843 was clerk on a steamboat running up the Illinois River. In April 1843 in St. Louis he met Charles A. Perry, who was planning to open a mercantile business at Blacksnake Hills, just about to become the town of St. Joseph.

On May 1, 1843, Albe M. Saxton and Elias H. Perry (1819-1890), the younger brother of Charles A. Perry, opened their store in St. Joseph, in a log house on Main Street at Francis. It was the first store in St. Joseph designed to serve the white inhabitants. (Joseph Robidoux had dealt with the Indians.) Soon they built a brick building stocked with dry goods, queensware, etc. They also engaged in the Salt Lake trade. The oxen that hauled the wagons as far as Salt Lake were then driven on to California where they commanded a good price. They later substituted mules for the oxen and carried on their freighting operations clear to the Pacific Coast. In 1843 Albe Saxton pre-empted a quarter-section of land a few miles east of St. Joseph at the usual homestead rate of $1.25 per acre. This land he later sold for the building of the State Hospital for $100 per acre.

In 1848 Saxton withdrew from the firm of Middleton & Perry to form a partnership with Robert Washington Donnell to open a retail store. The firm continued profitably for ten years, growing into the largest wholesale business in St. Joseph. Their 'People's Store' was located on the southwest corner of Fourth and Felix Streets where the First National Bank now stands. In 1853, when the westward emigration to the California gold fields was heavy, Donnell & Saxton, in company with Milton Tootle and others, built and operated two steamers, Omaha and Silver Heels, which carried on an extensive trade between St. Joseph and St. Louis. At the store, Donnell and Saxton had, in 1851, employed a young man, aged nineteen, fresh from his home in Kentucky, Rufus Lee McDonald. Although he started work without pay, in order to learn the business, McDonald displayed such ability and industry that Donnell & Saxton arranged to sell the business to him.

They then determined to organize a Saint Joseph branch of the highly regarded Bank of the State of Missouri. This Bank had started in St. Louis in 1837 and in twenty successful years had established five branches in different parts of the state. The leading citizens of St. Joseph subscribed to the stock of the new branch and operations began with Robert W. Donnell as president and Albe M. Saxton as cashier. In 1858 a building for the branch was started on the southeast corner of Fourth and Felix Streets, which was after the arrival of Joseph Pfeiffer to handle the stonework. The building has been occupied continuously since by banking institutions, since 1900 by the Missouri Valley Trust Company. The National Banking Act was passed by Congress in 1863 and in 1865 the Bank joined the national system, becoming the State National Bank. In 1870 the Bank was closed profitably and the State Savings Bank was organized with Mr. Saxton as president and Charles B. France as cashier. In 1881 Mr. Saxton retired, leaving C. B. France as president, R. L. McDonald as vice-president, and Ernest Lindsay as cashier.

Albe M. Saxton was interested in a number of business enterprises. In partnership with T. D. Hastings, he built eighty miles of the Kansas City and Northwestern Railroad and 350 Miles of the St. Joseph and Western line

In 1883 Mr. Saxton and J. W. McAlister organized the Saxton National Bank with Saxton as president, McAlister as cashier. To build their new Bank on the northeast corner of Fourth and Francis Streets, they graded down the high bank on which the Presbyterian Church had stood. On that site, an imposing stone building, one of the most costly in the city, was built. Flanking the front door were two lions carved of stone, long remembered in St. Joseph. Mr. Saxton had another pair of these lions carved (no doubt by the Pfeiffer Stone Works) for his country estate east of St. Joseph on the Pickett Road, not far from Saxton Station on the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad. His farm there was large and well improved, one of the finest in the area.

Mr. Saxton married in 1856 Mrs. Sarah E. Flint. There were no children. Mr. Saxton died in June 1889. His bank was consolidated with the Schuster-Hax National Bank in 1894, and ten years later was merged into the First National Bank. The building of the Saxton National Bank is no longer standing and its lions are in Clay County. The other pair, however, faithful to their trust, still guard the gate on the Pickett Road.