William Fargo Founder of American Express
William Fargo Founder of American Express

Biography of William Fargo

Early Life

William Fargo founder of American Express was a famous American businessman and entrepreneur. He was born in the year of 1880 on May 20 in Pompey, New York in United States of America. He was taught by his father at home for his basic learning and intellectual growth but later on he started his early education in his local town school when he was just 6 years of age. Later on, after his early education, he didn’t continue his education because of his family financial problems and some other issues.

Initial Career

As William Fargo was unable to continue his education that was the reason he started trying to find a job in a very young age. He started his career by getting a job of Clerk in a grocery store when he was just 13 years old. After some jobs, he started his career by becoming a freight agent for the Auburn and Syracuse Railway which is located in Auburn in the year of 1841.

Co Founder of American Express

William Fargo is widely credited as co founder of American Express with Henry Wells. After his initial career as a clerk in different grocery stores and a freight agent for different companies, he started another job of an express messenger between Albany and Buffalo. After initial jobs, now he was thinking of a business to start. He was working in Harden Express at that time, when he met with Henry Wells who had the same ideas and was irritated of different jobs. They shared their ideas of starting their own project of American express with and as a result, American Express came into being in the early 1850s.  Initially, Both of the guys had the knowledge of the field that was the reason of success of the company in its initial years.

American Express

American Express was co founded by William Fargo and Henry Wells in the year of 1850. The company was founded by investing 50,000 by both guys and the main idea behind this company was to make it a banking and credit services company. Wells was the first presidents of company from 1850 to 1867 and later on promoted company on larger bases.  Generally American Express is a financial services, insurance, banking and credit services sector company with its branches in more than 25 countries all over the world including Argentina, France, Japan, India, Sweden and Mexico. Presently this company has the 62,000 employees working with it and its head quarter is in New York City, New York in United States of America. The employee growth of American Express is about 2% with global revenue of 31.6 billion United States dollars. It was ranked firstly in the best place to work list in the year of 2000.

Death

He died on August 3rd in the year of 1881. He was about 63 years of age at the time of his death.