Hon. John Jay Knox was Comptroller or Deputy Comptroller of the National currency for seventeen years. He was born in Oneida county, New York, March 19, 1828. His ancestors were Scotch Irish, and came originally from Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1759. He received his early education at the Augusta Academy and the Watertown Classical Institute, and was graduated from Hamilton College in the Class of 1849. Among those in college with him were Senator Hawley of Connecticut, and Chas. Dudley Warner. After leaving college he became teller in a bank at Vernon, of which his father was President, at a salary of $300 a year, where he remained from 1850 to 1852. He spent some time in the Burnet Bank at Syracuse, and was afterwards cashier of the Susquehanna Valley Bank at Binghampton. He and his brother, Henry M. Knox, established a banking house at St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1857, shortly before that State was admitted into the Union. The first steamboat launched on the Red River of the North, establishing a most important communication for the business interests of Minnesota, was transported in the dead of winter across country on runners, from Sauk Rapids to Breckenridge, and Mr. Knox was one of the few who paid the expenses of the enterprise. In the financial discussions which preceded the establishment of the National banks, Mr. Knox took a prominent part, and made many valuable suggestions on the currency question. He advocated a safe and convertible currency, the issue of a uniform series of circulating notes to all the banks, and the guarantee by the Government of circulation secured by its own bonds. In 1862 he was introduced to Secretary Chase and the Hon. Hugh McCulloch, then Comptroller of the currency. The attention of the Secretary had previously been attracted to the financial articles of Mr. Knox, published in _Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine_. He was shortly afterward appointed to a clerkship under Treasurer Spinner, and was subsequently transferred to the office of Mr. Chase, as disbursing clerk, at a salary of $2,000 a year. After three years in this position he became cashier of the Exchange National Bank at Norfolk, Va., but finding the southern climate uncongenial, after a year he returned to Washington. He was commissioned by Secretary McCulloch to examine the mint at San Francisco, and to select a site there for a new one. His report upon the Mint service of the Pacific Coast was printed in the Finance Report of 1866, with a complimentary notice by the Secretary. The site selected was purchased from Eugene Kelly of New York for $100,000. He subsequently visited New Orleans and discovered a deficiency of $1,100,000 in the office of the Assistant Treasurer. He took possession of that office, and for some weeks acted as Assistant Treasurer of the United States.