Duncan, Joseph C.

Born: 1819-XX-XX Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Died: 1898-10-14

Scion of a prominent Philadelphia family, Duncan as a young man moved to Springfield, Illinois, where he opened his own business, but fled the city owing $40,000 to his creditors. Duncan edited a monthly newspaper, The Prairie Flower, in Shelbyville, Illinois, but he had difficulty adapting to frontier journalism and the paper discontinued publication after a few issues. He moved to Bloomington, Illinois in 1841, where he engaged in a mercantile business which failed. From 1846 to 1849, Duncan served as postmaster of Bloomington. In the spring of 1849, Duncan resigned as postmaster and moved to California, where he found prominence as a journalist, banker, poet, art connoisseur, auction house owner, and embezzler. In 1860, he was living in San Francisco and working as an editor. He owned $6,000 in real estate and had a personal estate of $5,000. Later in life, he became notorious for the failure of the Pioneer Land and Loan Bank. He died in a shipwreck off the coast of England.

Gravestone, St. Keverne Churchyard, St. Kerverne, United Kingdom; Combined History of Shelby and Moultrie Counties, Illinois (Philadelphia: Brink & McDonough, 1881), 84; Table of Post Offices in the United States on the First Day of October, 1846 (Washington, DC: John T. Towers, 1846), 19; Register of all Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1845 (Washington, DC: J. & G. S. Gideon, 1845), 381; Register of all Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval, in the Service of the United States, on the Thirtieth September, 1849 (Washington, DC: Gideon, 1849), 468; Paul Drexler, "Joseph C. Duncan, the Bank Wrecker," San Francisco Examiner 9 April 2017, http://www.sfexaminer.com/joseph-duncan-bank-wrecker/, accessed September 7, 2018; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), San Francisco, San Francisco County, CA, 176.