The Bank of Stebbins, Post and Company was formed in Cheyenne in 1876. Or 1877. Or 1878, depending on which resource to believe. Morton E. Post had been a resident of Cheyenne since the 1860’s, and his store was opened there in 1867. W.P. Stebbins was a New Yorker who became involved in a number of Western banking ventures.
Post became the sole owner of the bank in the late 1870’s. He purchased a portion of a mining company in the area around Deadwood in the Black Hills, and built a quartz mill there to crush gold ore. In 1880 Stebbins and Post opened a bank in Silver Cliff, Colorado, and in 1882 Stebbins, Post & Mund was established as a financial institution in Miles City, Montana.
A telephone directory published in Cheyenne in 1881, which is claimed to be the first such in the United States, shows Stebbins, Post & Company to have phone number 1.
Sometime in 1883, Post became the sole owner and changed the name of the institution to Morton E. Post & Co.
This used check was signed in the name of John London, who had arrived in Cheyenne around 1881. (Note that he signed the 1883 check shown above.) He was to act as post trader or sutler for the company in their Fort Laramie office from 1881 into 1888.
Post apparently liked the idea of facsimiles on the checks used by his business, and had the same one he used printed on John London’s checks.