November 26, 2007

The initial act passed by the first state legislature in 1836 was the establishment of the Real Estate Bank of the State of Arkansas. Capital was raised for the bank by the issuing of two million dollars’ worth of five-percent bonds. The 1839 stock certificate shown here represents twenty-five of those Real Estate Bank shares. The bank, which was a source of political corruption and financial mismanagement, was taken over by the state in 1855. The legacy of the failure much damaged Arkansas’s financial future.