The Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company was a

banking institution Financial institutions, sometimes called banking institutions, are business entities that provide services as intermediaries for different types of financial monetary transactions. Broadly speaking, there are three major types of financial insti ...

based in

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wi ...

, which existed from 1830 to 1857. The Panic of 1857, an economic depression, resulted after the company's

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

offices ceased operations due to bad investments, especially in agriculture-related businesses. During the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...

(1853-1856), much of Europe's farm labor was engaged in the military, resulting in Europe becoming dependent on American crops for food. At the conclusion of the war, European farm production resumed and American agricultural exports declined, causing a drop in value of American foodstuffs. Because of the

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

, word of the office closure spread quickly and many investors, already shaky over declining markets, caused a financial panic. The markets would not recover until two years later. Due to the economic decline from failure of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company, the railroad industry and many businesses experienced declining demand for their products. Railroad workers were laid off and many businesses were shut down. Embezzlement by employees and officers of the company is sometimes mentioned as another contributing cause of the office's closure.

References

Defunct companies based in Cincinnati Banks based in Ohio Banks established in 1830 Banks disestablished in 1857 Bank failures in the United States 1830 establishments in Ohio {{US-bank-stub