Blake & Co (Agnell) originally consisted of Gorham Blake, Francis Wheeler Blake, and W.R. Waters. Blake & Agrell, predecessor to Blake & Company, conducted business as a partnership in Sacramento, California in 1855. An advertisement noted:

Assay Office 52 J Street between 2nd and 3rd Sacramento. Blake & Agrell, having established themselves in the business of melting, refining and assaying of gold of every description, are now prepared and well qualified to conduct business entrusted to them, faithfully and on the most reasonable terms...We guarantee the correctness of our assays and will pay all differences arising from the same with any of the United States Mints...

Later in the same year the partnership was dissolved, and a new firm, Blake & Co., was born. This consisted of Gorham Blake and W.R. Waters. This firm produced various issues in 1855 and 1856. The 1861 Sacramento City Directory still lists Blake & Co., consisting of Gorham Blake and W.R. Waters, but it was at 54 J Street. The firm apparently was dissolved in 1862, for a June 25, 1863 newspaper advertisement indicates: "Assay Office, Waters & Co. (late Blake & Co.) No. 52 J Street, Sacramento."

An account in the Weekly Mountaineer, a newspaper published in Dalles, Oregon, November 4, 1864, notes that samples of gold were sent to San Francisco from the Boise region to be analyzed in the laboratory of Professor Blake.

Blake was a California pioneer, having arrived in that state comparatively early. In 1852 he was an agent of Adams & Co. at their Placerville (California) office, according to a letter in the files of the Wells Fargo Bank History Room, San Francisco.

Gorham Blake was a native of Boston County, Massachusetts and died December 17, 1897, in Oakland, California, at the age of 68 years. Among his other activities he was an organizer and member of the Sacramento Committee of Vigilance.

Blake, Mr. F.W., was born in Boston, July 24, 1828. He went to California in 1852, settling in Weaverville, and engaging in the assaying business, and subsequently moved to Unionville, Nevada, where he opened an assay office, and was married to Miss Sarah Meador, of that place. In 1866 he came to Silver City, and was engaged as assayer for all the principal mines and mills in this locality. He erected the granite block on Washington Street, and took a very active interest in the affairs of the county generally. In 1873 he left with his family for New York, remaining there until 1875, when he returned to the west, locating at Prescott, Arizona, where he engaged in banking and assaying, and also as agent for Wells, Fargo & Company’s express, and served one term as mayor of Prescott. His death occurred August 2, 1895, at Prescott, Arizona, and his widow and only son (a native of Silver City) stayed there, where his son carries on his
father’s business.

From A Historical Descriptive and Commercial Directory of Owyhee County, Idaho (January 1898, Silver City, Idaho), p.101: Owyhee Avalanche (1898):

The development of the American West in the 19th century encompassed so many events over such a broad area that even today many details still remain to be studied. One such story began with the chance appearance of a small silver ingot in Bowers and Merena’s Abe Kosoff estate auction late in 1985. Accidentally misattributed to a California firm, this piece had actually been issued by an assayer in the Nevada boomtown of Unionville. Slowly the search for data about this ingot-maker led to the unraveling of the life of a little-known pioneer banker, assayer and expressman — Francis Wheeler Blake.

Born in Boston on July 24, 1828, Blake’s early years in the east are unknown until he set sail for California in 1852. Choosing the faster sea route over an arduous overland journey, Blake took a ship to Panama, crossed the Isthmus on foot or mule-back, then sailed to San Francisco on board the steamer Constitution.

Shortly after his arrival on May 22, 1852, Blake headed for the northern California gold fields of Trinity County. There he found employment as an agent of Rhodes & Lusk Express in Weaverville, but soon realized that he could do much better for himself by opening his own business. Thus EW Blake & Co. Express was founded later in 1852 to operate stages between Weaverville and Shasta.

From the very beginning, and for the rest of his life, Blake was closely affiliated with Wells Fargo & Co. At first his line simply connected with their stages at Shasta. Then when he built his Weaverville office in 1854, which was one of the first brick buildings in town and cost the staggering sum of $5,000, he shared space with Wells Fargo, becoming their Weaverville agent. In addition to operating his daily express to Shasta and back, Blake also conducted a banking business which handled gold dust for the miners in the vicinity.

Blake sold his brick office building in August 1857, although he remained in business in Weaverville for two more years. Competition was heavy in both the express and banking businesses, which may have prompted Blake to abandon his ventures in 1859. Wells Fargo transferred their Weaverville agency to Greenhood & Newbauer’s Northern Express, and Blake left Weaverville.

By 1861 he had relocated in Carson City, capital of the newly created Nevada Territory. There he operated a storage and commission business in partnership with J.O. Pope, and was a respected member of the business community. In April 1862, Blake was one of the 12 founders of the Odd Fellows’ Carson City Lodge No. 4, but within two years he joined the rush to the booming mining camp of Unionville, Nevada.

In March 1864, Blake purchased Block & Co.’s assay office in Upper Unionville, moved the equipment to a more auspicious location in Thomas Ewing’s new brick building on Main Street, and reopened in April as “Blake & Co., assayers.” The firm’s first ad stated, “Gold and silver Bullion, and ores of every description melted and assayed; and returns of bullion made in bars or coin, at the option of depositors.

The Humboldt Register newspaper reported on July 2 that "Blake’s assay office... has been glutted, in the past two weeks with crude bullion from the mail. A month later when the paper stated "Blake & Co. received Wednesday, for melting, 16,000 ounces crude bullion.”

Throughout the next two years similar notices appeared nearly every week stating the various amounts of bullion which he had received or the size of refined ingot shipped the preceding week. Besides his profitable assay business, Blake also served as a secretary of the local chapter of the I.O. O.F. [International Order of Odd Fellows], as well as secretary of both the Humboldt Salt Mining Co. and the Twilight Tunneling Co.

However, as with most mining booms, Unionville’s heady days were short-lived. By early 1866 the Register was complaining: "The times are dull, and many seek to improve their fortunes by going ‘to other scenes and pastures new’.” Thomas Ewing, who operated an extensive retail merchandise store in the same building as Blake’s assay office, shipped in April “a monster stock of groceries, liquors, clothing, hardware, mining tools, provisions, and the like” to the bustling new mining camp of Silver City, Idaho Territory.

Blake must have already decided to move north to Silver City, for his last advertisement appeared in the Register on April 28, and he quickly sold his assay business to H.M. Judge, previously an assayer for the Ophir Mining Company in Virginia City. When Ewing left Unionville on April 30 to follow his goods north, Blake was one of those accompanying him. Also in the party was Edward B. Blake, believed to be Francis’ brother, but about whom little else is known.

By July the new firm of Blake & Co., assayers, had begun operations in a building on Washington Street, with E.B. Blake opening a small sign painting business next door, but there was still one item of unfinished business in Nevada. On November 8, 1866, Blake, who was then 38 years of age, married 22-year-old Sarah E. Meador in the tiny Nevada community of Limerick.

The Silver City assay office continued to prosper. In July 1867, Blake & Co. advertised in the Owyhee Avalanche: “We guarantee our Assays to conform to the standard of the U.S. Branch Mint. Bars discounted at current rates. Pai’ticular attention paid to assays of Ore of every description.” A later history of Owyhee County stated that he was engaged as assayer for all the principal mines and mills in this locality.

When the couple’s only child, Edward Meador Blake, was born on August 7, 1867, it is thought that he was named for Edward Blake who accompanied Francis to Idaho the previous year.

In 1868 Blake became the local agent for the Manhattan Life Insurance Company of New York, and is also reported to have built an imposing stone building known as the Granite Block. The following year he expanded further by purchasing Charles P. Robbins’ jewelry and watchmaking store located in the Granite Block, and by early 1870 he had also moved the assay office into this building.

Blake’s various business enterprises remained unchanged until October 1873, when the assay office apparently closed. The November 15 issue of the Avalanche reported, “Mr. and Mrs. F.W. Blake and Master Eddie took their departure for Boston last Thursday evening. Mr. Blake goes to visit his old mother, whom he has not seen for 23 years, and will return about the middle of next month.” The newspaper was in error, though, as Blake did not return to Silver City, and his jewelry store was closed the following April.

The Blake family remained in the east, possibly residing in New York as well as Boston, until they moved to Prescott, Arizona Territory. On October 29, 1875 the Arizona Weekly Miner stated that Frank W. Blake had been appointed agent for the new Arizona and New Mexico Express Company which would connect Prescott with the railroad at Caliente.

Returning to the express business was not enough, though, and by August he had opened an assay office in Prescott. The editor of the Miner was moved to comment, “We have known Mr. Blake, as an Assayer, for nearly a quarter of a century, in California, Nevada, and Idaho, and have yet to hear the correctness of a single assay of his questioned.”

This assay office, like those previously established elsewhere, immediately proved to be a success, enabling Blake to take on the positions of secretary and bookkeeper of the Peck Mining Company. In his spare time he was also involved in locating the Grecian Bend mine in the Tiger mining district, the Atlas mine in the Hassayampa district, and the Apache mine in the Weaver mining district.

Early in June 1877, Wells Fargo &, Co. opened their Prescott office, and naturally chose F.W. Blake as their agent. Soon he was also appointed agent and general superintendent for the Peck Mining Company, was elected mayor of Prescott, and once again began selling insurance on the side.

Blake remained Wells Fargo & Co.’s agent in Prescott until 1884, when he allowed the position to be filled by his brother-in-law, John Frank Meador. Mrs. Blake’s father had settled in Arizona’s Salt River Valley and the Blake’s became fairly close to the Meador family.

For the next four years Blake turned his attentions to other projects such as the Walnut Grove Water Storage Co., the Piedmont Cattle Co., the local Masonic chapter, the First National Bank in Prescott, and for a time he even served as cashier of the Bank of Prescott. At one point, a local newspaperman rightfully called Blake “the hardest desk worker in Prescott.”

In 1888 Blake again assumed the position of Wells Fargo agent, which he held until ill health forced his resignation in 1895. Edward M. Blake then succeeded his father as agent and held this office until 1899.

On August 1, 1895 Francis Blake died in Prescott of Bright’s disease. He was buried in the local Masonic- cemetery, where his wife was also laid to rest when she died in 1923.

For 42 years Blake had been an expressman, banker, and assayer, serving countless thousands of people in four states and territories. “He was a man of more than ordinary ability,” one obituary stated. “His death will cause widespread sadness.” Blake’s integrity and character were without reproach, and perhaps his greatest achievement was the creation of some stability in raw mining camps scattered in the remote regions of the west.”