Monroe, Wisconsin: The Wild Midwest

I’m excited to bring today’s post to readers as it ties together the Goetz, Young and Leuenberger stories in a way that I never anticipated. It turns out that between late 1857 and 1871 Monroe, Wisconsin was the distribution headquarters of a nation-wide currency counterfeiting ring, perhaps the widest and best organized such ring in the country. This was at a time when currency forgery was endemic in the USA, from the U.S. Marshals Service website: “By the 1860s, an estimated one-third of the currency in circulation was counterfeit.”

It turns out we were a leading cause of that statistic.

The information I’ll present today is based on the work of local historian Tom Mitchell, who just published his findings in the September newsletter of the Green County Historical Society. For the most detailed account of the story of the ringleader’s immediate arrest, consider becoming a GCHS member— they’ll send you a copy of Mitchell’s fascinating work. Alternatively, come to the museum in person and get a copy gratis. (Over the next two months I and other knowledgeable GCHS members will docent at the museum between 1 pm and 4 pm on the weekends— come see the collection, it’s free entry.)

I’m going to build on Mitchell’s story by looking at how the Monroe gang was connected to established counterfeiting operations in New York. I want to make it absolutely clear that this Monroe operation was not small, Secret Service agent Thomas Lonergan testified in court that “five out of every 12 inhabitants of Monroe are dealers in counterfeit money” and that these operatives “flooded the entire West with counterfeit money.” That’s nearly half the town’s population (and perhaps more of its economy) directly tied to organized crime. Here’s the thing: historically, currency counterfeiting and prostitution are linked. If you can move people around clandestinely, you can move other illicit goods, just as I’ve discussed previously regarding the international market for pornography.

Equally shocking is the type of bills being counterfeited: “The bogus bills were from nationally chartered banks along with some U.S. Treasury notes.” This is incredible, as it suggests that the counterfeiters had “ins” with the privileged banks Lincoln trusted to help him win the US Civil War. (This war lasted from 1860-65 and was fought to prevent Southern States exercising their right to secede from the Union, threatening powerful Yankee bankers with millions in lost assets.)

Monroe’s counterfeit currency gang was lead by a rogue Chicago police detective** named Napoleon Bonaparte “Bone” Latta (1827-1908), who claimed to be a hoop-pole merchant. (‘Hoop-poles” are lengths of straight, slender green sapling wood which are used to bind barrel sides together, or alternatively used to train grapes or hops.) Latta was in fact a career criminal and from a family of counterfeiters and horse-poisoners. Working the Michigan/Indiana border, Napoleon and his wife had been in the counterfeit currency business since 1853 at least. Napoleon’s father, William B. Latta, had enriched himself the same way and by 1857 he owned a “fine farm” called “Latta Hotel” near Freedom, Michigan. The family specialized in selling bills from New York and Rhode Island banks. (Traditional counterfeiting centers from at least the 1600s.) Michigan press called the Lattas members of the “most extensive gangs of counterfeiters in the west.”

William Latta, the father, was busted for counterfeiting in 1857 in Michigan and his farm became St. Joseph County’s “poor house”— i.e. a place for the mentally ill, paupers and widows to both live and support themselves by operating a working farm. Green County, WI also had an asylum/ “poor house” called Pleasant View Farm which served its purpose well until social service philosophies changed. It’s now a county-run nursing home.

Excerpt from “ History of St. Joseph County, Michigan” by Harry Gardner Cutler. Page 90. 1/2

Excerpt from “ History of St. Joseph County, Michigan” by Harry Gardner Cutler. Page 91. 2/2

After being disrupted in Michigan, the Latta crime family relocated to a farm in Green County and used Monroe as ground zero for a distribution network that stretched as far south as Mexico and west to New Mexico. This occurred over the months of late 1857 through early 1858, which was also very eventful for the gang’s Ohio/New York contact, Joshua D. Miner. More on Miner shortly.

Known territory of the “Bonelatta” counterfeiting gang. Black stars represent gang activity territory; red stars represent key settlements for the gang. Blue stars represent the source of the counterfeited bills (New York State and Rhode Island). Indiana and Iowa were probably also part of the network, but were not being actively investigated during Bone Latta’s trial in 1871.

Latta got most of his fake bills from New York state, which he then sold wholesale to “Texas men” at a rendezvous in St. Louis or other towns along the Mississippi. Readers will remember from my last post that the railway connecting Monroe to the Mississippi lines was the first track to be built through Monroe, and was organized by Brooks Dunwiddie, our 40-year judge. This railway company was started the same year Latta came to town. Why did the gang choose Monroe?

One answer may be political heritage. Southern Wisconsin, like much of Texas, was settled by political refugees from the 1848 revolutions in Europe. (How else could a kid be saddled with “Napoleon Bonaparte”!?) Many of these political refugees would have had exposure to smuggling networks through banned literature (and other contraband) supply chains in Central Europe. Among their number were a contingent seasoned in political subterfuge, ‘provokatsiya’ operatives, who were no longer welcome (or useful!) back home. During those 19th century decades in which the Midwest was settled the USA was used as a dumping ground for Europe’s ‘political problems’.

Napoleon’s scattered supporters would have come across a lot of this in the Midwest, too.

Latta’s genius was in organizing the distribution of notes which were created by expert forgers back East, namely the infamous Tom Ballard. One of Tom’s brothers [either George or John] was the Secret Service’s main witness against Latta in 1871, but under the name “Bill Watson”. This is an important point, because the Ballard Brothers’ involvement links Latta with the counterfeiting underworld in New York and into the deep South— both important locales for the Young family of Monroe, WI, whose legitimate source of income was the grocery store next to Ludlow’s “national” bank. The Youngs moved to Monroe during the final years of Latta’s operation.

Bone Latta was a smart businessman and a smart criminal. He had look-outs posted at Monore’s railway station and carriage station, as well as around the Square, where he held meetings in a local saloon. Interestingly, most of the buildings along the Square, which was being developed during the 1850s onward, have basements that are connected. You could, theoretically, walk around the entire Square underground and enter/exit from any building around the ring. The town courthouse stands in its center.

Latta was well-liked in town and charismatic: while 40% of the townsfolk worked with him, the other 60% stood silently by. This was probably out of fear as much as self-interest, as it is hard to imagine how an operation as big as Latta’s could operate without the connivance of local bankers and law enforcement.

When Treasury men finally came for Latta, they didn’t come for him alone: a number of local big wigs were also arrested. Confederates included Casper Oswald of the ‘Monroe House’ hotel, as well as Robert Allensworth of the ‘American House’ hotel. Many other men posted thousands of dollars bail in Janesville on July 27th, but remained anonymous. Clearly local Janesville editors were amused by who these gentlemen were:

Janesville Daily Gazette, July 27th, 1871.

That Allensworth of the ‘American House’ was involved strongly suggests German-speaking immigrants were prime local targets of the counterfeiting ring, and such a supposition is supported by German press out of Minnesota:

Minnesota Staats Zeitung, July 6th 1871. “Janesville, Wisc., July 1st. In Monore, WI, yesterday more of the dangerous counterfeiters were apprehended, who for a long time had put into circulation in the Western states large sums of counterfeit money; they operated under the widely talked-about Napoleon Bonaparte Latta, alias Boney Latta. Large sums of false money were found in the possession of the forgers.”

At least one member of Bonelatta’s gang was notorious for paying his legitimate workers in counterfeit currency, so one might surmise that they weren’t all loved as either neighbors or employers. There was considerable local buzz when the great and good were called to account, from Mitchell:

Townspeople learned that others in Monroe— maybe a dozen prominent businessmen— would be picked up another time, as either suspects or witnesses.

Next day in Janesville, those arrested appeared in U.S. court for a hearing before the commissioner. Bail was set for their next appearance on July 28th. All posted bail ranging from $10,000 for Latta, to $2,500 and $1,000 for the others. Latta and Sherman made their bail and returned to Monroe on the Saturday night train.

Things came unstuck for Latta in 1871 after a series of events in Washington D.C. disrupted his patronage at the Treasury. In addition to this, Latta had gone into production with Ballard locally by running a ‘mill’ for false currency out of Gratiot, WI. Secret Service agents found the printing plates buried under gooseberry bushes at a rural residence Tom Ballard and his brothers occupied— their mother’s farm, “the old Dan Tuttle place on the road from Monroe to Warren [Illinois].” Tom Ballard had being giving information on Latta to the Secret Service since 1869.

Map showing Gratiot in relation to Monroe, WI and the Mississippi River. The direct route between Monroe and Gratiot is a 27 min drive.

Why had Tom Ballard turned snitch? It has to do with Tom Ballard’s NYC boss, who was the Latta’s New York contact: Joshua D. Miner. Tom Ballard’s counterfeiting career began around the time the Lattas moved to Monroe in 1858. Prior to this year, Ballard had learned engraving while painting “fancy carriages” in NYC for a relative of organized crime figure Joshua D. Miner.

Miner himself was from a notorious counterfeiting family in Steuben County, NY— however, the source of Miner’s success was not NY, but Ohio. As a young man Miner fathered an illegitimate daughter in his native Steuben County, then decided to move to Ohio (alone), where he was busted passing fake $5 bills in that state.

Why did Miner move to Ohio? I believe that the most likely possibility was that many members of the prominent Miner family of Connecticut (patriarch John Miner 1635-1719) had recently immigrated there via the neighboring New York county of Ontario (just north of Steuben, NY). Joshua D. Miner probably ran to a place he knew he had relatives, or where at least he knew he could hustle under cover of a respectable family name. Having been busted in Ohio, Joshua D. Miner was sentenced, imprisoned, escaped, recaptured in 1858, and then immediately pardoned by Ohio governor Salmon Portland Chase, who was also a founder of the Republican Party:

Excerpt from “The Coniackers”, St. Louis (MO) Globe-Democrat, June 17th 1884.

It was after Salmon Portland Chase’s intervention that Miner returned to New York; set up counterfeiting on an industrial scale with several Midtown New York City factories (classic organized crime practice at this time); found engraver Tom Ballard; and got involved in politics.

Miner was politically connected with the NYC Republican party during the “Boss Tweed” period of Tammany Hall corruption. When Lincoln became president under straightened circumstances in 1861, many Southern states were in process of seceding, which had negative financial implications for the Lincoln administration. Lincoln appointed Salmon Portland Chase to be his Treasury Secretary and win the war through manipulating currency laws. Chase, in turn, hired Tom Ballard to make notes for his new wartime money system— the engraver employed by the counterfeiter Chase had just pardoned in Ohio… As long as the Lincoln machine needed Ballard, the Monroe network was safe.

Lincoln needed to control currency issue to pay for the enormous cost of the fighting. (Lincoln was a Republican, though they called the party “National Union” for the hostilities.) In order to achieve his goals, Lincoln had the Treasury issue/control a national currency called the “greenback”, while at the same time he allowed favored “national” banks to continue issue their own currency IF they’d help arrange gold and silver loans (often from overseas) for the Union’s war effort. All other banks had to stop issuing their own currency, or their board-members would be held personally liable.

Not everybody thought Chase’s currency policies were worthy of respect.

Arabut Ludlow, our local banking magnate, had founded his “First National Bank of Monroe” by 1865. (He’d been a banker since 1856.) During the Civil War, Ludlow was very active persecuting Monroe community members who were not comfortable with Chase’s cause, just as his son would persecute Judge Becker during WWI with the help of a yes-man named Paul F. Neverman. That same Neverman wrote a book in 1948 which explains Yankee bankers’ terror in response to the Southern states’ secession:

Excerpt from Paul Neverman’s “The Wisconsin Centennial Story of Disasters and Other Unfortunate Events”, 1948.

Arabut Ludlow’s bitter attitude toward political dissidents is probably explained by the dollars and cents above; the town’s leading banker didn’t lose time using his power to oppress his enemies:

From the Monroe Sentinel, Aug 6th 1862. This newspaper was printed out of Arabut Ludlow’s store building. 1/2

Monroe Sentinel, Aug 6th 1862. 2/2

Arabut Ludlow was able to build his luxurious residence in Monroe in 1857— the year the Lattas came to town— and outfit it beautifully over the course of the war. Images of Ludlow Manor are provided below. There’s nothing else like it in the county. (The people who run it now are not related to Arabut and do Green County a service by keeping this part of our past in superb condition!)

Modern view of Ludlow Mansion’s exterior. The one-story extension on the left was not part of the home during Arabut’s time.

The Study in Ludlow Mansion, with sympathetic period furniture. (Not Arabut’s furniture, though.)

While Arabut was busy guarding his own interests on the ‘home front’, Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary Salmon Portland Chase was responsible for designing the “greenback” currency-cum- “national bank” currency system. Tom Ballard was among the few men Chase hired to make his vision a reality… and perhaps even engraved Chase’s portrait for the “greenback”.

The Chase dollar, of which at least part was created by Tom Ballard.

From the US government website treasury.gov:

The notes [greenbacks] were to be engraved and printed by the American Bank Note Company in New York, the predecessor firm to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Although the U.S. Government began to print paper money in 1862, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing actually began operations quite modestly in that year with only five clerks and a bureau chief, housed in the Treasury building’s basement. It was not until 1877 that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing became the exclusive printer of U.S. currency and securities, moving to the Treasury building’s attic.

Chase, being the classy type of guy he was, saw the greenback in particular as a way of boosting his political image:

How Secretary Chase came to be portrayed on the one dollar bill is described in a pamphlet of his speeches, “Going Home to Vote.” Chase stated: “I went to work and made “greenbacks” and a good many of them. I had some handsome pictures put on them; and as I like to be among the people, and was kept too close to visit them in any other way, and as the engravers thought me rather good looking, I told them they might put me on the end of the one-dollar bills.”

As I mentioned, the “greenback” was far from the only currency recognized by the Union government. Special “National” banks were allowed to keep printing their own money in exchange for help financing Lincoln’s war. A good friend and admirer of Chase, John Thompson, set up the First National Bank of the City of New York in 1863 (now “Citibank”); and then named his separate 1877 creation ‘Chase National Bank of the City of New York’ (now “JP Morgan Chase”) after his “national bank” patron. The most successful ‘brands’ in American banking were set up as a consequence of government sponsorship during the 1860-65 period.

And if you though Arabut’s digs were swell…

One Rockefeller Plaza: Citibank’s iconic headquarters makes up one of the most imposing buildings in the immediate neighborhood.

Another Rockefeller creation: J.P. Morgan Chase’s NYC heaquaters ‘One Chase Manhattan Plaza’…. but that skyscraper is old news….

… soon JP Morgan Chase will have this at 270 Park Avenue! See what a Civil War can get you?

Chase’s/Lincoln’s prostitution of currency-issue was only valuable if there was an enforcement squad to protect the “national” banks’ new racket. The Treasury Departments’ “Secret Service” was born to meet this need and quickly earned a reputation for dishonesty, according to historian David R. Johnson.

Ballard worked for Lincoln for four years as a government engraver, and almost immediately sold his services to Miner (and crime-partner Henry C. Cole) by making them United States Treasury plates for $1 bills. Next he moved on to $2 plates issued by the “National Shoe and Leather Bank of New York”; followed by plates from three “national” banks in Poughkeepsie, NY (Farmers & Merchants, First National and First City Bank); and a couple more plates from the US Treasury. These Treasury bills were in denominations of $100, $500 bills respectively. One needed very high-level contacts to pass off forgeries of notes which would probably only be used by the most sophisticated economic actors circa 1863-1871. These denominations will be partly explained by what happened to both Latta and Ballard once they got caught…

While 1858 was an awesome year for Tom Ballard and organized crime in Monroe, 1871 was the year it all came tumbling down. The Bonelatta gang were safe until Chase’s crony, Hugh McCulloch, lost his place as Treasury Secretary. When George S. Boutwell took that office in 1869 under Grant, the gang lost its protection. (Chicago’s branch of the Secret Service had received complaints about Bonelatta since its founding but did nothing substantial until 1870, after Boutwell’s arrival.) Boutwell sent men to parley with Tom Ballard shortly after his appointment. Naturally, Ballard squealed on Latta. Within months a case was built and Napoleon Bonaparte Latta was on trial by July 1871… but the story doesn’t end here.

Remember those ridiculously high domination bank notes that Ballard made and Latta distributed? Latta only served six years before he was given a presidential pardon by Hayes; what jail-time he did serve was very light:

Wisconsin State Journal, April 3rd 1877. “Queer shoving” meant passing counterfeit notes back then.

When Ballard, a career criminal mind you, was caught counterfeiting a few years later, President Grover Cleveland (Democrat) pardoned him in 1887. It’s hard to imagine who could successfully profit from passing counterfeit bills of $100, $500 denominations at this time unless they were operating under the umbrella of the Treasury itself…

Recap: In 1857, the Bonelatta counterfeiting family is busted and relocates to Monroe, WI; a few months later Salmon Portland Chase springs notorious counterfeiter Miner, who finds money to set up industrial-scale counterfeiting operations in NYC and hires Tom Ballard. Ballard’s Bonelatta gang contacts use Monroe as HQ distributing Ballard’s new product along the Mississippi. Monroe, WI banking and legal notables begin investing in railroads: first to the Mississippi. Arabut Ludlow (local banking boss) builds his luxuriant Ludlow Manor in this same year. In 1863, Chase initiates the “National Bank” scheme to support the Union during the War; Arabut founds his own “national bank” and persecutes political opponents of Chase. Monroe, WI becomes counterfeiting capital of the Midwest. Arabut’s national bank is the dominant bank in Green County, were everyone owed him money at one time or another and 40% of the townsfolk work with Latta. This nation-wide scheme unravels when Tom Ballard turns snitch. The key men in the scheme get presidential pardons; most gangmembers aren’t prosecuted.

There is more I have to say on this topic, but I think regular readers will see where this is going and how it relates to Leon Goetz’s weird sub patent forty years later— and clandestine Republican Party arms sales out of Ohio. I will next look at the 19th century counterfeit currency industry in more detail, highlighting connections with our old friend Brigham Young of the Later Day Saints and the Galician Network.

** The information about Latta being a former police detective in Chicago is from Chicago Tribune reporting, and Tom Mitchell cautions it may be inaccurate.